Once-classified Navy
stealth ship 'Sea Shadow' has been sold to an Alameda shipyard for scrapping
The
$2.5 million bid from Bay Ship & Yacht Co. won the federal government
auction. The firm was interested not so much in the space-age stealth ship but
the barge that houses it, which will be converted into a drydock, reports 'The
Sacramento Bee'.
Sea
Shadow was built in 1985 by Lockheed Martin in Redwood City, under contract
with the U.S. Navy, for a price of $50 million. The goal was to test whether
radar-evading technology proven in fighter aircraft could also be applied to
ships.
The
experiment was a success. Sea Shadow proved in exercises that it could sneak up
on aircraft carriers undetected.
After
trying unsuccessfully to give Sea Shadow away to a museum, the Navy decided
earlier this year to sell it for its scrap value alone. It was offered with a
unique submersible barge, known as HMB-1, which was originally built for a CIA
mission in 1974 to retrieve a sunken Russian submarine from the floor of the
Pacific Ocean and later became Sea Shadow's garage.
Source: marine link. 8 July 2012
http://www.marinelink.com/news/original-stealth-scrap346070.aspx
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