Bon Voyage, Old Girl

[rodeodance]

glad to see it put to good use. hope the fishes like her.

http://www.latimes.com/

Bon Voyage, Old Girl
The Navy sank the retired USS Oriskany today, sending it 212 feet down to become the world's largest man-made reef. VIDEO

[PsN2Wind]

1. Still sad to see the old flat tops go

Both that I made cruises on, Lexington and Midway, are now museums that I'll go see someday. The ShangriLa that I went on for carquals is long gone. Not exactly the days of "wooden ships and iron men" but the Lex did have a wooden flight deck where the planes landed.

[Branjor]

2. What are "carquals"?

I have two snapshots of my mother and me taken in 1963 at New York harbor with the USS Shangri La docked in the background.

[trof]

5. "carrier qualification"

Learning to land on a boat.

[Branjor]

9. Thank you n/t

[rppper]

3. submarines go to .....

all of the boats i served on with one exception are gone or awaiting the same fate....the woodrow wilson, ssn/ssbn 624, is razor blades(it's sail is part of a submarine park in washington state though), the james k polk(ssn/ssbn 645) is tied up awaiting being cut up, as is the uss billfish(ssn 676). the uss hunley(as-31) is part of the ghost fleet on the james river in Va. my last boat, the uss tucson(ssn 770)is alive and well in pearl harbor, but she was one of the last of the los angeles class built(1994) and has about 20 good years left in her.

it's sad to see the boats go because they take on a life of their own. each crewmember leaves a part of themselves with it. the boat takes on a soul of sorts...each one having their own quirks and stories. they are truely alive during their active years, and much like a human being, a husk of their former selves when left abandoned to rust away in then yards.

[Ganja Ninja]

4. They decommissioned my boat in 1993.

USS John C Calhoun SSBN 630 has probably been reincarnated as a Toyota somewhere.

[oneighty]

6. Aye, tear her tattered ensign down

set every threadbare sail and give her to the God of Storms, the lightning and the gale.

Burial at sea is a Navy tradition. I think it fitting.

I imagine many of the Navy ships I served aboard were made into toothpicks.

180

[PsN2Wind]

7. Yes 180

The mine sweepers were the last of those "iron men and wooden ships".

[oneighty]

8. My first mine sweep

Was USS Symbol AM 123 a two-hundred-twenty-foot long steel hull 'Auk Class' in Korea 1952.

Later sweeps (for me) were the wooden-hull MSOs/MSBs out of Charleston, SC. I was EOD and rode many an MSO.

180