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Thursday, July 21st, 2011

Two Never-finished Navy Ships Head to Scrap Heap

Author:     SCOTT HARPER
Source:     Virginian-Pilot
Publication Date:     15-Jul-11
 Link: Two Never-finished Navy Ships Head to Scrap Heap
Stephan:   This is how grotesquely bloated the American military budget has become -- two times as large as all the military budgets of all the nations in the world. This is right up there with losing $18 billion in cash which drained into somebody's pocket, or more likely pockets, in the first year of the Iraq occupation. Think of how many $100 bills it takes to equal $18 billion, just the physical mass of paper. Think about how many elderly people could have eaten with the money squandered in this two events, the ships and the pallets of money. Think about how many children could have been fed and decently housed. It is obscene, and I found the story only in a Norfolk, Virginia paper.

They are the two ships no one wanted, almost constantly embroiled in one dispute or another for the past 25 years. The two Navy behemoths have never gone on a mission, were never even completed, yet they cost taxpayers at least $300 million.

Now the vessels, the Benjamin Isherwood and the Henry Eckford, are destined to leave Virginia waters for good and be scrapped at a Texas salvage yard, with no money coming back to the U.S. Treasury.

The Isherwood, stretching more than 660 feet, began its final journey this week, unceremoniously towed Tuesday from its mooring spot in the James River Reserve Fleet, also known as the ‘ghost fleet,’ near Fort Eus-tis in Newport News.

Its destination: International Shipbreaking Limited in Brownsville, Texas, just above the Mexico border. There, the vessel will be cut up, its innards removed and disposed of, and its steel and other metals sold as recycled products.

The Eckford, of equal size, is scheduled to follow next Tuesday, leaving behind fewer than 20 junk ships in the ghost fleet, the smallest number since its inception during World War I.

Once the two Navy oilers have departed, ‘it will close one of the saddest chapters in American shipbuilding and for that […]

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