The first US Navy “supercarrier,” the USS Forrestal was recently sold for scrap for the sum of one penny to the All Star Metals scrap yard in Beaumont, Texas. The Navy offered the carrier as a museum but did not receive any suitable applications. The ship is the first of three carriers scheduled to hit the scrapyard over the next few years. Built in Newport News Shipyard and commissioned in 1955, in her day she was the largest aircraft carrier ever built. Sadly, the ship is best known for a major fire and explosions on her flight deck in 1967 in which 134 sailors died and 161 were injured. Other serious fires in 1978 and 1989 earned her the nicknames, “Firestal”, “Forrestfire” and “USS Zippo.”
USS Forrestal Sold For 1 Cent, Heads To Scrapyard
At about the same time that the Forrestal was sent to scrap, Bath Iron Works in Maine floated USS Zumwalt, the first of three new high tech destroyers. (The USS Zumwalt‘s scheduled christening was cancelled due to the recent US government shut-down and is being rescheduled for this spring.) If USS Forrestal was a “supercarrier” the USS Zumwalt may be a “superdestroyer,” and a super expensive one, at that.
USS Zumwalt is the largest, most technologically-advanced destroyer ever built. She is also by far the most costly. The ship itself cost $3.45 billion to built. Research and development cost, however, approached $10 billion. The average unit cost for the three ships, including R&D, is expected to be close to $7 billion. In comparison, USS Forrestal cost $217 million in 1955. In current dollars, that would be roughly $1.9 billion.
The radical design of USS Zumwalt, which harkens back to monitors of the 19th century with tumblehome hulls and ram bows, has been controversial. The destroyer is designed with a wave-piercing hull, electric drive propulsion, advanced sonar and guided missiles, and a new gun that fires rocket-propelled warheads as far as 100 miles. The Zumwalt is also designed to have a significantly smaller radar signature. The ship is also believed to be suitable to be retrofit as a potential platform for futuristic weapons like the electromagnetic rail gun, which uses a magnetic field and electric current to fire a projectile at seven times the speed of sound.
The unconventional hull form has raised concerns about ship stability. The extremely high price of each ship has also resulted in the shipyard order being cut from an initial ten ships to the three currently under production. Defense Industry Daily Recently asked “The USA’s DDG-1000 Zumwalt Class Program: Dead Aim, Or Dead End?” Only time will tell whether the new technology will prove effective and also cost effective.
DDG 1000 Zumwalt-Class Guided Missile Destroyer
Thanks to Ulrich Rudofsy and Phil Leon for contributing to the post.
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Let me get this straight: at a time when they are talking about gutting Social Security and Medicare, are cutting foodstamps for the needy, cutting off unemployment for all those who lost their jobs to Wall Street’s greed and the wingnuts in Congress want to turn the country back to the good old days before the Civil War, the Federal government is GIVING away how many tons of metal, electronics, etc for FREE? (ok one cent–same thing). It’s one thing to donate a historic vessel to a state or nonprofit; but giving it to some business to make a bundle off of recycling parts and metals? I don’t want to hear about the Feds can’t afford this or that social program when they are playing Santa Claus to big business like this!
I guess you missed the part where they tried to get someone to take it for a museum and got no offers. It actually costs a huge amount to maintain even a decomssioned vessel so by getting rid of it they’re saving money.