USS Forrestal Headed for Scrapping

http://www.navytimes.com/article/20140204/NEWS04/302040030/Ex-Supercarrier-Forrestal-headed-scrapyard

I have a very good friend who was a Naval aviator and did at least one cruise on her . . . he flew A-4's.

During Vietnam we jokingly called her the Forest fire...Not a lucky ship.

My father served on the FID when he was with VA-85 as the maintenance chief. He was supposed to fill the CMC billet, but when the CO fired the current maint chief, my dad got picked to do it because there was not a lot of time before a deployment and he had the background needed to make the transition and others did not. I think he hated that job immensely. Later, he did get a CMC slot elsewhere and a tour back at NASC before he retired. He did three or four tours here at NASC.

TEOTWAWKI wrote:During Vietnam we jokingly called her the Forest fire...Not a lucky ship.

Yeah.... The Wikipedia article states that during an aircraft launch off the coast of Vietnam on July 29, 1967, a Zuni rocket cooked off on a parked F-4 Phantom Jet fighter, and flew across the deck, hitting a parked A-4 Skyhawk that was occupied by future Senator and presidential candidate John S. McCain III. It set McCain's aircraft on fire, and he escaped from it just before bombs started cooking-off. The incident destroyed 21 aircraft on the deck of the carrier, and killed 134 people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Forrestal_(CV-59)#1967_fire

ZVUGKTUBM wrote:The Navy paid a scrapping company 1-cent to take it "as-is" and tow it to a Texas scrap yard for recycling. Their profit will come from selling the scrap.

I think I would have tried to sell it to India or Brazil, first.

It was decommissioned in 1993, that's 21 years ago. When it was decommissioned, it was stripped of anything useful and has sat rusting ever since.

Curious, it was a Texas firm that offered New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagen (D) $1 MILLION for the contract to remove the thousands of cars from their streets and would contract to have it done in three months.

Mayor Nagen refused the offer saying he wanted to keep the contract for New Orleans companies. Years later the cars still weren't all gone. Of course the Democrat Mayor is now facing charges is he not? Who'd have thought?