Rusty Navy: The Bay Area's 'Mothball Fleet' Enters a New Era (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Rusty Navy: The Bay Area's 'Mothball Fleet' Enters a New Era (2017)

kqed.org

51 pointsspking19 comments

As the article points out, the USS Iowa used to be anchored up there. Then it was transferred down to Los Angeles to become a museum. It was first towed by tugboats to the Port of Richmond for some inspections and work before it would be towed down the coast to LA.

There was a call for volunteer shore support on one of the sailing lists I was on. I thought, sure, I can do that. When the morning came, I was there with my trusty Harken sailing gloves. Pretty much on time, the Iowa comes up the channel making the Portrero turn into the harbor channel. It's just freaking huge and getting bigger. All of my fellow hands have their cameras out, recording the event.

Finally, it was slowly positioned next to the dock by the tugs and then someone yells down, at me, are you the shore crew? My fellow deckhands were still busy with their cameras. So I said, yes!, and he tossed down a line, a massive eyespliced hawser, to wrap around the dock bollard along with a bit of anti-friction paper to slip between the two. And then the Iowa came to a halt.

I had just tied up a battleship, single-handed.

Having seen an Iowa class ship (New Jersey) this made my jaw drop. You don't realize the scale of these things until you're next to one.

The Iowa class was designed to be able to transit the Panama canal, but then only just barely, with its 108 feet and 2 inch beam just fitting inside the 110 feet canal.

https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/iowa-class-battleships-are...

I read a write up on the square law scaling on ships and moving resistance in water. A guy there swore that if you leaned on a battleship with loose cables long enough you could overcome static resistance and move it, irrespective of the enormous mass differences between you and the ship. Basically, you can 'pull it along' if you keep trying.

I'd think that it depends more on the wind load than the mass of the ship.

An Iowa Class battleship is around 887 ft long and around 30 feet from the waterline to the deck (ignoring everything above the deckline), so that's 26,000 sq ft. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, it seems that it wouldn't take much wind speed to exceed the force a single human can exert.

Oh sure. The point being, there is no huge static resistance in a floating ship, absent other forces. It might take a while, but you can move one with human-scale force. Wind would defeat you for sure. Or current.

> Moving each ship cost about $1 million and involved a 45-day trip behind a seagoing tug. In August, the last of the scrapped ships were hauled away to Brownsville, Texas, where they are broken down and recycled.

I assume via the Panama Canal! Is there really nowhere on the west coast they could have gone?

I presume port space on the west coast is in high demand for receiving goods from Asia. Also, if I were proposing to tear apart a ship, I'd rather deal with the EPA in Texas than any of the west coast states.

Most commercial shipbreakers are in Asia. India and Bangladesh used to have the lion's share, but it's an industry that shifts with economic tides. Brownsville, TX is the only breaker yard in the United States.

They break (nuclear) ships in Bremerton. When I was stationed there I watched them pull apart a few subs and a boat.

I too was stationed in Bremerton! PSNS docks are in extremely high demand, since there aren't that many (on the West Coast, in the US, anywhere) that can work on nuclear-powered ships.

They also aren't equipped for traditional shipbreaking at scale: recycling the hull, recovering the steel, &c.

Have they upgraded their facilities to handle dangerous substances? I remember the French had to find a different place to scrap their warship because the public said thousands of poor people with acetylene torches swarming the hull at low tide couldn't handle asbesthos properly.

No pesky environmental regulations and lots of cheap disposable labour in Bangladesh.

I guess there aren't that many ships broken down to support a lot of locations.

The Glomar Explorer, of CIA/K129 fame was anchored there for years. When driving by there, I’d always look for the drilling tower. I’m not sure what happened to it but it was probably chopped up as well. The thing was massive.

Scrapped in China in 2015:

https://gallery.mailchimp.com/a053599b3fc3b483fb38d4ae4/file...

(Via Wikipedia.)

The Hughes Mining Barge, part of the Glomar Explorer project, was kept up there as well. It had a second life as a floating drydock for the Sea Shadow, a prototype stealth boat. The HMB and Sea Shadow were sold to Bay Ship for $2.5M with the proviso that the Sea Shadow was broken up (they couldn't find a museum). Bay Ship got to keep the HMB and it is now used at their Alameda Estuary facility.

My father was a designer on the HMB, and "Clementine", the huge Claw that was used to grasp the sunken Russian Golf Class sub and lift it into the Moon Pool of the HMB, through it's secret retractable floor.

Of course, that all happened after the HMB was submerged and maneuvered under the Glomar Explorer.

Just the HMB itself was HUGE!

When it was based at the Port of Redwood City, CA, I drove my dad to work there a few times, as I'd just gotten my drivers license.

It was really exciting that my father was involved with Howard Hughes and deep sea mining!

Of course, the CIA project eventually was revealed to the public, and my father received a large Presidential Commendation, which he had framed and hung over the kitchen table.

After it was declassified, he was then legally able to show me the claw, Clementine, and all the other photos he took during the construction of the Glomar Explorer and the HMB.

I still have several of the black and gray, cauliflower shaped, Manganese Nodules that were harvested from the deep ocean floor, as part of the CIA cover story that it was a mining barge for the Hughes Glomar Explorer.

It was only years later that I realized my father was involved in several CIA black Ops, starting in 1958 or '59 with the Lockheed A-12 at "The Ranch".

He took the "red flight" out of Edwards and would be gone for over a week at a time, but that's another story.

I grew up in Benicia. I always found the mothball fleet to be somewhat creepy (granted I was 5). A fleet of unused ships anchored just out of town, sitting dead still. Never moving, always waiting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com