6/8/2006: Sinking of the USS Oriskany
 

http://cellar.org/2006/oriskany1.jpg

When you have a massive aircraft carrier that nobody wants,any longer, the modern thing to do is to sink it to form an artificial reef. That's what they did on May 17th of this year, 24 miles off the coast of Pensacola, Florida.

A lot of you - four, actually - sent me to this page which documents the sinking, with 25 really amazing high-resolution photos. Shortly thereafter that site blew out its bandwidth bill and went down. It's back up now but I have copies of the 25 shots in case it does again.

http://cellar.org/2006/oriskany2.jpg

I recommend checking it out if you have the bandwidth yourself - the shots are amazing. I've sized six of them down to 800-wide for our purposes here.

http://cellar.org/2006/oriskany3.jpg

According to the page, the small boat on the deck of carrier contains a generator and electronics to set off the explosions. It was designed so this small boat would float free after the carrier sunk!

http://cellar.org/2006/oriskany4.jpg

http://cellar.org/2006/oriskany5.jpg

http://cellar.org/2006/oriskany6.jpg

In the high-res originals, you can see the fiberglass panels from the radar dome floating in the water briefly afterwards. Like little eggshell boats.

Huh. Wasn't there something about bubbles from a sinking boat causing other craft to also sink? (this was busted on Mythbusters, wasn't it?)

here's a couple of pages of The Oriskany in action off of 'Nam.

http://members.tripod.com/~ffhiker/index-2.html

http://www.fortunecity.com/boozers/whitehorse/506/

3...2...Has anyone seen my wallet?...BOOOMMM!:eek:

I always wondered why someone wouldn't take old carriers and other crafts and make offshore resorts, casinos, etc. out of them. Maybe even an offshore hotel. Hell, I'd love to have one to live on maybe. Seems like a waste to me even though I know the marine wildlife can use the cover.

Great topic..... really good pics.

the mythbusters myth was that the force of the sinking ship would pull you down with it in the "giant vacuum" caused by the sheer power of the sinking ship-- it did not pull a thing down.

I'm sure that Bill Gates would have liked this one for his private fleet.

The 30,800 ton Oriskany was started in early 1940s, finally completed in the 1950s, and eventually striken from the mothball fleet in 1980s. It was supposed to be scrapped in mid 1990s when a contractor defaulted. Navy eventually was able to remove enough PCBs and asbestos to make it a tourist site some 200 feet down. Always wondered if this was a solution to a ship that was too toxic.

Meanwhile the French also tried to scrap their 27,000 ton carrier Clemenceau in mid 1990s. First a Spanish company was supposed to disassemble it. But due to toxic waste problems, that contract later fell upon an Indian company. Problems even getting the carrier through Suez Canal eventually brought it back to France. This too might become a reef. But again, first there is this problem with a ship chock full of toxic waste materials. Making 200 foot deep tourist sites is an interesting concept. But can they really be made toxic free - and safe enough for tourists?

that would be a great thing to watch

Yes, this one cost $20 million to prepare.

btw...This was the ship McCain flew off when he was shot down in Viet Nam.:(

I should give thanks to wolf in preparing these, she had the images after the other site went down.

Me too. :lol:

And xoB. (Yours is top of the queue for tomorrow if I remember correctly)

I'm just saying I saved them too. Wolf was the one smart enough to send the pictures instead of the link. :smack: