USS Forrestal Memorial

Photo courtesy of Raymond Giles

I would like to take a moment to update everyone as to the current status of this memorial project. As of right now, i am sad to say, things are basically on hold as far an outdoor exhibit are concerned. Due to lack of continued funding and public interest/involvement, we have no choice but to scale back our plans for now. We will continue to focus on maintaining this website and continue efforts to raise the funds needed to complete this project.

We most sincerely appreciate your donations and support. For it is your contributions to this project that will make it become a reality.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Here the USS Forrestal sits present day. This is the US Naval yard for retired vessels in Philadelphia, PA. It's really sad to see this.

undefined

undefined

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

decommissioned USS Forrestal is towed last June to a Navy site in Philadelphia for aging vessels.

Recycling, not reefs, in store for old aircraft carriers

By Miguel Llanos Reporter , msnbc.com msnbc.com, updated 4/7/2011 6:55:24 PM ET 2011-04-07T22:55:24

It's a heave-ho, U.S. Navy style. After several years during which turning old warships into artificial reefs was fashionable, four decommissioned aircraft carriers will instead be dismantled, and recycled, at shipyards.An environmental group that's been championing the shift said it makes sense: creating shipyard jobs in the U.S., instead of a potential toxic mess at sea.

"The Obama administration's new plan to recycle these four aircraft carriers appears to be a signal that the administration may be correcting long-standing misguided policies that not only squander resources, but American jobs as well," stated Colby Self of the Basel Action Network, a group that monitors global toxic issues and that last December issued a report critical of the artificial reefs.

The four decommissioned carriers are:

USS Constellation
USS Forrestal
USS Independence
USS Saratoga

The Navy would not comment but Navy records show that bids are being accepted to dismantle the veteran ships.Self said the Forrestal alone has some 40,000 tons of recyclable steel, copper and aluminum.

"With a strong metal market, these recoverable metals could bring a return of up to $30 million," Self told msnbc.com. "After accounting for the ship purchase price by competitive bid, towing, environmental remediation of toxic materials and labor rates, the recycling of this vessel should be a profitable venture for the domestic ship recycling industry and should give the local economy a great boost."

Dozens of other warships have previously been dumped at sea or turned into reefs after efforts were made to remove toxic material. BAN said that the environmental work on two recent aircraft carriers to meet that fate — the America and the Oriskany — cost more than $20 million each and that not all contaminants were removed.

The Oriskany was sunk off Pensacola, Fla., in May 2006 at a depth of 210 feet with the purpose of becoming an artificial reef. The America was used for live-fire tests and scuttled in May 2005 at a depth of nearly 17,000 feet about 250 miles off the coast of North Carolina. BAN estimates that recycling the Forrestal will save millions of taxpayer dollars and sustain about 1,900 jobs for one year. BAN said it was still concerned that plans might still be in place to sink the decommissioned destroyer USS Arthur W. Radford next month in waters off Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland.

Berthed in Newport, 'supercarrier' goes to sea one last time

02:24 PM EDT on Wednesday, June 16, 2010

By Richard Salit
Journal Staff Writer

The aircraft carrier Forrestal is towed out of its berth Tuesday and into Narragansett Bay, heading for Philadelphia. The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

MIDDLETOWN — Like a frail elder being helped out of bed, the rusty old aircraft carrier was carefully nudged away from the pier where it has sat idle for the past 16 years and slowly towed out to sea by doting tugboats on all sides. Still, the 1,067-foot Forrestal managed to regain its massive majesty as it traveled beneath the Claiborne Pell Bridge under blue skies one last time. “She’s tired,” said Steve Quadrilla, who watched from a nearby charter boat as the vessel that was his home from 1969 to 1972 passed. But, he said, “To see her moving along was a good feeling.” Decommissioned and tied up at Naval Station Newport in 1998, the Forrestal remained an eye-catching fixture on the Aquidneck Island shoreline ever since. By itself, the ship was a sight to behold. But since the Forrestal was docked alongside the Saratoga, another mothballed aircraft carrier that arrived the same year, the pair grabbed even more attention. Soon, however, the Navy base, once home to a bustling fleet of active warships, won’t even have any relics left. The Iowa, the retired World War II-era battleship, departed in 2001. And plans are under way for the Saratoga, the last remaining mothballed warship at the base, to also be towed away. It’s likely to depart in 2011, with the scrap yard its final destination. The Forrestal’s fate is uncertain. But as with the Saratoga, any hope of turning it into a floating museum was scuttled after the Navy determined that no viable proposals had been offered. As a result, the Forrestal will be towed to a Navy storage site in Philadelphia, due to arrive on Thursday, and will either be dismantled or sunk to create an artificial reef So large it was classified as a supercarrier, the nearly 60,000-ton Forrestal was launched in 1954. Despite its size, it could still attain speeds of 33 knots. The Forrestal saw action in the Vietnam War — as well as tragedy. On July 29, 1967, while operating in the Gulf of Tonkin and serving as a base for air strikes into North Vietnam, a rocket aboard the Forrestal misfired, igniting a massive fire that burned for hours, killing 134, and destroying 21 aircraft. Quadrilla, 62, of Plainville, Mass., was a petty officer second class while serving aboard the Forrestal two years after the fire. After both he and the ship retired, he joined other members of the USS Forrestal Association for exclusive Veterans Day ceremonies alongside the ship, docked at Pier 1 in Middletown. The association learned about the impending departure of the Forrestal, and Quadrilla, head of the New England chapter of the group, arranged to board the charter boat Amazing Grace with about a dozen others to watch the momentous event up close. It took a half-dozen smaller tugboats and the 226-foot, ocean-going Navy tug Apache to move the Forrestal from the dock and out into Narragansett Bay. “I couldn’t even imagine what it was like for the people that were crossing over the Newport bridge and looking at this massive aircraft carrier and not knowing what was going on,” he said. Navy spokesman Lisa Rama agreed, saying, “You would had to have been texting, reading a book or sleeping to not realize the vessel was going under that bridge.” Rama said that the Forrestal’s departure attracted a great deal of attention on the base. Both the Officers Club and Enlisted Club opened earlier than usual for personnel to gather and take in the spectacle and people driving down roads on the base pulled over to watch. “A lot of folks were lining the waterfront on the base,” said Rama. “A lot of folks are sentimental. The only vessel that’s left is the USS Saratoga. It looks a lot different at Pier 1.”