The Navy has obtained authority to blast and sink as many as two real ships a year in the Gulf of Alaska over the next five years to give pilots and gunners authentic targets for their sights.
But ocean campaigners say that even decommissioned, stripped-out ships, like the ones the Navy will use as targets, contain residual hazardous materials that can poison the Gulf’s rich habitat for years. They’re trying to stop the target practice before it begins.
The levels of contamination are so miniscule compared to other pollutants in the ocean as to be insignificant. But that is beside the point. The environmental groups have a reflexive opposition to anything of the sort, regardless of the opportunity costs associated with it.
The ocean campaigners are right… we should start efforts now to raise all sunken ships in the worlds oceans…. today! Save a whale, scrap a rust-bucket. :-p
Let’s raise the Yamato and The Musashi. I’m sure all that bunker oil and ordnance in their magazines are poisoning the sea around the PI and the Western central Pacific.
Maybe we could turn the Yamato into a starship while were at it to recycle it into something useful. Yanno, Kill two birds with one stone. The Ecomaniacs would probably rave that we would be polluting the galaxy then, so there’s probably no way to win.
Nice Starblazers callback.
Sweet! After I get done towing this oil rig to Cook Inlet, I’m more than willing to hook up to some hulk and bring it north! I’m only half joking. We used to tow the Reserve Fleet ships out of Suisun Bay up the Columbia River for maintenance, and we’ve towed target ships before. I’m sure we’ll be bidding on this.
As part of Project “CHASE”, aka cut-holes-and-sink-em in ’66, we loaded 8000 tons of old ammo on an old Victory ship (the Van Zandt, IIRC) at the ammo depot in Kitsap, Washington. Load included 400 tons of old 16 inch ammo. She was towed out 250 miles and sunk. Hydrostatic initiators blew at 4000 feet. Amazingly, not much indication of it on the surface.