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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Pix from Navy SINKEX operation |
| 2003-08-04 |
| Edited for brevity. Hat tip to Hell in a Handbasket. On 21 July 2003 in a SINKEX operation by the US Navy, the USS Samuel Gompers AD-37 and two other ships were sent to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean off the coast of North Carolina. The ships involved in the SINKEX included the famed USS Cole. Of the three ships destroyed, the Gompers was the last to be sunk and slipped beneath the waves at 0006 22 July 2003. The first Harpoon missile to strike the Gompers was from the USS Cole, designation: Cole 4. Reports indicate it took 16 Harpoon missiles (400 lbs each) and over 40,000 pounds of ordinance to sink the Gompers. When the Harpoons finished, a squadron of bombers dropped 2,000 pound bombs on her to sink her. They have a few pix of the Harpoon launches, but they’re working to get a video and more pix of the actual sinkings, so it might be worthwhile to bookmark and check back periodically. |
| Posted by:Dar |
| #13 Man! Welding all the hatches shut puts a whole new light on General Quarters! Heh heh. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-8-4 4:51:14 PM |
| #12 PJAnon--Ah ha! Thanks for the info--this ignorant landlubber appreciates it! Guess since it was a live fire exercise they wanted the targets to stick around for a while so everybody could share in the fun. Makes sense... |
| Posted by: Dar 2003-8-4 4:32:56 PM |
| #11 When the Navy sets up a ship as a target for an exercise like this. All flammable materials are taken off, the hatches are all welded shut and the interior space is filled with a material that floats making them very difficult to sink. |
| Posted by: PJAnonymous 2003-8-4 4:19:05 PM |
| #10 Anyone else bothered by the fact that a defenseless ship with no damage control parties (and I assume all watertight doors wide open) took over 16 Harpoon hits and still needed more to sink? How's this reconcile with the USS Cole, which took one hit from Yemeni terrorists and was reported to be in bad condition (maybe a little journalistic license there). Was the damage really all that bad? |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-8-4 3:29:14 PM |
| #9 Anyone else bothered by the fact that a defenseless ship with no damage control parties (and I assume all watertight doors wide open) took over 16 Harpoon hits and still needed more to sink? OTOH, there weren't any spectacular flammables on board, like munitions, but still--maybe we should be phasing the Harpoon out as well? |
| Posted by: Dar 2003-8-4 3:18:44 PM |
| #8 Firing up a car that hasn't been used in ten years is miserable. I understand, but a car is just sheet metal that can be put together in just hours, whereas a modern ship's hull takes years. Maybe what I'm missing is how ships are designed. With a car, when you need a new engine, you unbolt the engine mounts, take out the old engine and plop in a new one. Perhaps with a ship, you might have to take the hull apart and put it back together again after the engine's installed. So installing a new engine or weapons systems might actually involve as much work as building a ship from scratch. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-8-4 3:12:24 PM |
| #7 I just love the idea of naming ships after the Muppets. It would be a great taunt: after destroying an enemy vessel, you could shout: "You've just been wasted by a bunch of muppets!". |
| Posted by: A 2003-8-4 3:07:03 PM |
| #6 Zhang Fei, the Gompers wasn't a Destroyer. It was a Destroyer Tender (repair ship) as was one of the other two ships that were sunk. These ships had reached the end of their life-cycle. At that point, it is better (and more cost effective)to replace them, than attempt to keep them in service. |
| Posted by: Bill 2003-8-4 3:05:14 PM |
| #5 Because they cost cubic dollars just to maintain. And you can't hardley maintain them if they never get any use, which means you have to have at least some sort of minimal crew just to use them once and a while. Which cost more money. Might as well not have decommisioned it. Firing up a car that hasn't been used in ten years is miserable. It takes a lot of money and even more work to get them back into condition. And that can still take me a year or more. For a friggin' car! I can't imagine what a destroyer would be like after a decade or two. I shake thinking about it. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2003-8-4 2:52:24 PM |
| #4 Why are they sinking a perfectly good destroyer? Couldn't they just mothball it? Given the amount of ordnance they used up, I'm real impressed at the sturdiness of the hull. I've got to figure that decommissioned ships like this could come in handy if we ever need to get a bunch of replacement ships out on the ocean in a hurry. So why did they sink it? |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-8-4 2:25:02 PM |
| #3 Still waiting on word of the USS Duke |
| Posted by: mojo 2003-8-4 2:08:38 PM |
| #2 Gonzo? We named a ship after a Muppet? |
| Posted by: Jim K 2003-8-4 1:08:34 PM |
| #1 Cool pics and hopefully more to come. There's a reference to a USS Gonzo on some of the photos. Is that actually the USS Gonzalez? |
| Posted by: Patrick Phillips 2003-8-4 11:11:04 AM |