DECEMBER 23, 2014 — The Navy has awarded a contract
for the towing and dismantling of the decommissioned aircraft carrier Ranger
(CV 61) to International Shipbreaking Ltd.
Under the contract, the company will be paid $0.01.
The price reflects the net price proposed by International Shipbreaking, which
considered the estimated proceeds from the sale of the scrap metal to be
generated from dismantling.
This is not a sales contract, it is a procurement
contract. $0.01 is the lowest price the Navy could possibly have paid the
contractor for towing and dismantling the ship.
The ship will be towed from the Navy's inactive ships
maintenance facility in Bremerton, WA, to International Shipbreaking Ltd.'s
ship dismantling facility in Brownsville, TX, for complete dismantling and
recycling.
The ship is expected to depart Bremerton via tow in
January or February 2015, and arrive in Brownsville after four to five months.
The ship is too large for passage through the Panama Canal and must be towed around
South America. Ranger was the third Forrestal class aircraft carrier to be
built.
The ship was laid down Aug. 2, 1954, by Newport News
Shipbuilding & Drydock Co., Newport News, Virginia, and commissioned at the
Norfolk Naval Shipyard on Aug. 10, 1957. Ranger was the only ship of the
Forrestal class to spend its entire career in the Pacific. The ship made a
total of 22 Western Pacific deployments, was an active participant in the
Vietnam War, and was the only West Coast-based carrier to deploy in support of
Operation Desert Storm.
Ranger was decommissioned July 10, 1993, after more
than 35 years of service. It served as a retention asset for potential future
reactivation until stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on March 8, 2004,
and redesigned for donation. After eight years on donation hold, the USS Ranger
Foundation was unable to raise the necessary funds to convert the ship into a
museum or to overcome the physical obstacles of transporting her up the
Columbia River to Fairview, OR. As a result,
the Ranger was removed from the list of ships available for dismantling and
designated for dismantling.aircraft carrier Ranger (CV 61).
Source: marine log.
23 December 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment