...what were they thinking?

tigerman

Manstein's revenge:

Every time i think about the Enterprise being scrapped after WW2 it pisses me off.  WTF were they thiking???  I mean, several lesser-known and important ships are preserved to this day as museums and memorials...

 

I agree 100%, but I'll go further. Why wasn't any of the surviving Pearl Harbor BB's preserved? That is a travesity unlike anything else IMO. The Nevada and Pennsylvania become A-Bomb fodder? WTF?

I read that not enough could be collected to buy the Big E from the navy. Hmmmmm, I didn't know that the navy actually purchased her. I sort of thought that we the people did with our taxes. .

Manstein's revenge

Every time i think about the Enterprise being scrapped after WW2 it pisses me off.  WTF were they thiking???  I mean, several lesser-known and important ships are preserved to this day as museums and memorials...

I agree 100%, but I'll go further. Why wasn't any of the surviving Pearl Harbor BB's preserved? That is a travesity unlike anything else IMO. The Nevada and Pennsylvania become A-Bomb fodder? WTF?

This has turned into a really interesting topic.  I'm starting to think that a worthwhile book could be written about the history of warship preservation in the U.S.

I think Seamac is right in every respect about the Nautilus.  A check on a couple of websites has left me a little confused about just how much of the financial burden is born by the Navy and how much by the support group, but it certainly looks like she's still owned by the Navy.  NAVSOURCE doesn't indicate that she was ever actually turned over to anybody else.  And so far as I can tell, the National Park Service doesn't have anything to do with the museum in Groton.  (The NPS operates the Cassin Young.)

I thought of another one:  the U.S.S. Barry (DD 933), which is tied up at the Washington Navy Yard adjacent to the Navy Museum.  According to her website ( http://www.history.navy.mil/visit/visit5.htm ) she's operated by the Commander, Naval District Washington.  She's not in commission, but she pretty clearly does still belong to the Navy.

I've been trying to figure out just how many American naval vessels were open to the public as "museum ships" in 1958, when the last effort was made to save the Enterprise.  I think the answer is two:  the Constitution  and the Texas.  (Were there any more at that time?  Maybe somebody can correct me.)  The latter had been turned over to the state of Texas in 1948, thus becoming, as far as I can tell on the basis of a little web surfing, the first WWII ship to be preserved (and the only surviving capital ship from WWI - unless we count the Mikasa again). 

In 1958 quite a few famous ships were on the chopping block, and various groups were starting efforts to save them.  (The Navy had turned the Olympia over to a private group, the Cruiser Olympia Association, the previous year; I'm not sure whether she was open to the public yet or not.  And the controversy over the preservation of the sailing corvette Constellation was heating up.)  So the concept of warship preservation was floating around in the atmosphere, but there was no way yet for anybody to understand all the implications and complexity of it.

Even if Admiral Halsey's campaign had been successful, I wonder how long a "save the Enterprise" movement would have lasted.  Even in 1956 a million dollars probably wouldn't have gone far, after eleven years of inactivity, toward putting her back in exhibitable condition - and, though I suspect nobody understood it completely yet, an ongoing fundraising effort would have been necessary to keep her that way.

But what a spectacle to think about.  Especially if she'd been equipped with a deckload of TBFs, F6Fs, and SB2Cs - maybe with her hangar deck full of SBDs, F4Fs, and...well, there weren't enough TBDs left by then to make up a full "squadron," but maybe one or two of them could have been found.  And maybe some pre-war types, with their silver fuselages and bright-colored markings.... 

Hello,

I think there is a case for the US Navy supporting the USS Nautilus.  Although it is labled as the "Submarine Force Museum", that organization is operated by the US Navy (see below, taken from the USS Nautilus Website http://www.ussnautilus.org/aboutus.shtml .  If you have never visited and get a chance I suggest you stop by, it is fairly easy to get to and it is a GREAT museum - admission: free.

The Submarine Force Museum, located on the Thames River in Groton, Connecticut, maintains the world's finest collection of submarine artifacts. It is the only submarine museum operated by the United States Navy, and as such is the primary repository for artifacts, documents and photographs relating to U.S. Submarine Force history. The museum traces the development of the "Silent Service" from David Bushnell's Turtle, used in the Revolutionary War, to the Ohio and Virginia class submarines.

So, it seems, the Navy does operate 1 museum for de-commissioned ships.

Chris

jtilley

Was that the case in 1946?  Nope. 

In that environment, it's not so surprising that the concept of spending a considerable sum to save an aircraft carrier would be considered...well, bizarre.  The notion that people would line up to go on board a preserved warship - and even part with good money for the privilege - must have sounded downright weird.   

The campaign in the late '50s to save the Enterprise came fairly near to succeeding. "Bull" Halsey himself led the campaign, and there were TV spots (mostly at the end of Navy Log, IIRC) where he sought donations. The goal, IIRC, was $1M which unfortunately wasn't met. I was still in elementary school, and sent in my $2.

Another thought occurs to me about all this.  (I'm not trying to excuse the fact that the Enterprise got away; I'm musing on why that tragedy happened.) 

We take it for granted nowadays that old ships are part of the American scene.  Many people regard them as awesome, almost religious relics; others see them as a means of expressing respect for military veterans.  Preserved ships are popular educational and tourist attractions.  Just about every kid in the eastern part of North Carolina takes at least one field trip to the U.S.S. NC during elementary school.  And there was a period in the 1980s when every architect or city planner working on a "waterfront revitalization" project in any American city included a "tall ship" (gawd I wish that phrase would disappear from the popular vocabulary) in the concept drawings.

Was that the case in 1946?  Nope. 

I've been raking through my (admittedly highly defective) memory, trying to think of the old warships that were on public exhibition in the U.S. at the end of World War II.  The Constitution  was on display, with her gundeck full of exhibit cases, curios, and a gift shop, in Boston.  The Constellation, with (I think) no masts or rigging, was still in commission, serving officially as "relief flagship" for the Atlantic Fleet; I'm not sure, but I don't think she was open to the public.   The Olympia, still in commission as IX (Unclassified Auxiliary) 40, was quietly rusting away on the waterfront at Philadelphia.  Those are the only ones I can think of.  (Can anybody else think of any others?)

In that environment, it's not so surprising that the concept of spending a considerable sum to save an aircraft carrier would be considered...well, bizarre.  The notion that people would line up to go on board a preserved warship - and even part with good money for the privilege - must have sounded downright weird.   

The responsible parties'  skepticism is certainly understandable.  But sheesh, wouldn't it have been great if they'd taken the plunge and found a way to save her?  My guess is that if she were around today she'd get at least as many visitors as any other preserved ship in the world.

Manstein's revenge

 I'm surprised some Senator or Congressman couldn't work out a deal for the money...

Since when has a Senator or Congressman ever had the interest of their constituents in mind?

Brian

jtilley

I certainly agree that the Enterprise should have been saved.  But it's not surprising that she wasn't.

The Navy itself does not preserve old ships.  So far as I know, the only exception is the Constitution, which is still officially in commission.  All the other preserved American warships have been saved, and are maintained, by state and/or private organizations.  The Navy transfers the ships to those organizations (sometimes with strings attached; there were rumors that, when the Iowa-class battleships went through their most recent recommissionings, the Navy might raid the North Carolina for spare parts).  The World War II ships, with few if any exceptions, spent some years (or decades)  in service and/or in mothballs after the war, before they were declared surplus and made available to the preservation organizations.  (That's why so many of them are now lacking WWII-era equipment, like radar screens and anti-aircraft guns.  That sgear got removed and replaced while the ships were still in active service.) 

The Enterprise had the rotten luck to become obsolete almost immediately, because her flight deck was too small to operate post-1945 aircraft.  So, though there was an effort to have the Navy save her (like it had saved the Constitution), she went to the scrapyard before the movement among state and private groups really got started.

The big problem those groups usually have when they take on such projects is that they have no idea what a staggering financial burden they're taking on.  Even if the ship herself is available free of charge, the costs of restoring her and maintaining her are hard for most people to imagine.  And those expenses have a way of increasing as the ship gets older.  Right now, the North Carolina (which I'm more familiar with than most of the others, because I know some of the good folks who work on board her) is experiencing, among many other problems, significant leakage due to corrosion, which obviously is due to simple old age.  (I sympathize completely.  I'm ten years younger than she is, and she's in better shape than I am.)  Some years ago the staff worked up a long-range plan that involved towing her up to Newport News, putting her in drydock, and patching the hull.  It's since become obvious that neither the ship's private support group nor the state of North Carolina will, in the foreseeable future, be able to afford the millions of dollars that would cost.  So, as I understand it, the folks in charge of her are now thinking in terms of building a cofferdam around her in her present berth.  (That wouldn't cost as many millions.  Don't worry - she won't sink; she's been sitting pretty solidly in the Cape Fear River mud for quite a few years.) 

Anybody thinking about taking on a ship preservation project needs to consider the fact that, when the ship was in service, hundreds - or thousands - of men were employed full-time maintaining her.  To maintain a preserved warship right nowadays requires an annual budget in the millions of dollars. 

I frankly am not optimistic that many, if any, more old American warships are going to get preserved.  The ones we already have are soaking up all the available resources - and I don't think the people in charge of a single one of them would tell you that her budget is big enough to maintain the ship properly.

One thing to remember in the midst of all this is that the U.S. has done a better job of preserving its historic warships than any other country has.  One of the biggest tragedies in the world of preservation, I think, is that not one single British battleship or battlecruiser exists.  The biggest surviving Royal Navy warship of World War II is H.M.S. Belfast, a light cruiser. 

Our system of warship preservation stinks in many ways, but it's probably better than anybody else's. 

I certainly agree that the Enterprise should have been saved.  But it's not surprising that she wasn't.

The Navy itself does not preserve old ships.  So far as I know, the only exception is the Constitution, which is still officially in commission.  [Later edit:  after thinking about that statement I realized that there are two other sort-of exceptions:  the Arizona and the Monitor.  Both, of course, are permanently under water.  The remains of the Arizona are maintained by the National Park Service.  The Navy theoretically owns that part of the Monitor that's still on the bottom of the Atlantic; those parts of her that have been brought up have been turned over to the Mariners' Museum.  I'm not sure how the details of that arrangement work; I imagine the Navy maintains some status as "owner" of the artifacts.]  [Still later edit:  the destroyer Cassin Young, which is berthed near the Constitution in the Charlestown Navy Yard National Historic Site, is owned by the federal government.  But she's operated by the National Park Service - not the Navy.]  [Even later edit:  see the posts below for a couple of more exceptions.  The first sentence in this paragraph really is an over-generalization.]  All the other preserved American warships have been saved, and are maintained, by state and/or private organizations.  The Navy transfers the ships to those organizations (sometimes with strings attached; there were rumors that, when the Iowa-class battleships went through their most recent recommissionings, the Navy might raid the North Carolina for spare parts). 

The World War II ships, with few if any exceptions, spent some years (or decades)  in service and/or in mothballs after the war, before they were declared surplus and made available to the preservation organizations.  (That's why so many of them are now lacking WWII-era equipment, like radar screens and anti-aircraft guns.  That gear got removed and replaced while the ships were still in active service.) 

The Enterprise had the rotten luck to become obsolete almost immediately, because her flight deck was too small to operate post-1945 aircraft.  So, though there was an effort to have the Navy save her (like it had saved the Constitution), she went to the scrapyard before the movement among state and private groups really got started.

The big problem those groups usually have when they take on such projects is that they have no idea what a staggering financial burden they're taking on.  Even if the ship herself is available free of charge, the costs of restoring her and maintaining her are hard for most people to imagine.  And those expenses have a way of increasing as the ship gets older.  Right now, the North Carolina (which I'm more familiar with than most of the others, because I know some of the good folks on her staff) is experiencing, among many other problems, significant leakage due to corrosion, which obviously is due to simple old age.  (I sympathize completely.  I'm ten years younger than she is, and she's in better shape than I am.)  Some years ago the staff worked up a long-range plan that involved towing her up to Newport News, putting her in drydock, and patching the hull.  It's since become obvious that neither the ship's private support group nor the state of North Carolina will, in the foreseeable future, be able to afford the millions of dollars that would cost.  So, as I understand it, the folks in charge of her are now thinking in terms of building a cofferdam around her in her present berth.  (That wouldn't cost as many millions.  Don't worry - she won't sink; she's been sitting pretty solidly in the Cape Fear River mud for quite a few years.) 

Anybody thinking about taking on a ship preservation project needs to consider the fact that, when the ship was in service, hundreds - or thousands - of men were employed full-time maintaining her.  To maintain a preserved warship right nowadays requires an annual budget in the millions of dollars. 

I frankly am not optimistic that many, if any, more old American warships are going to get preserved.  The ones we already have are soaking up all the available resources - and I don't think the people in charge of a single one of them would tell you that their budget is big enough to maintain the ship properly.

One thing to remember in the midst of all this is that the U.S. has done a better job of preserving its historic warships than any other country has.  One of the biggest tragedies in the world of preservation, I think, is that not one single twentieth-century British battleship or battlecruiser exists  [Later edit: unless you count the Mikasa, which was built in Britain for Japan].  The biggest surviving Royal Navy warship of World War II is H.M.S. Belfast, a light cruiser. 

Our system of warship preservation stinks in many ways, but it's probably better than anybody else's.   [Later edit:  Here's a link to an international organization called the Historic Naval Ships Association:   http://www.hnsa.org/hnsamap.htm .  Note, on the map, the comparison between the number of warships maintained by the U.S., compared to other countries.  The map doesn't tell the whole story; it doesn't include ships that don't belong to the organization (e.g., the Mikasa), and some non-warships somehow got onto the list.  But the overall picture is pretty clear:  the U.S. has preserved more warships than anybody else.]

So many things come to mind on this issue-I think the mindset of the country at the time was that everyone was tired of war and were not enthusiastic about the weapons & equipment of that war, no matter how historically significant they were.  I think everyone wanted to put it all behind them & move forward, and bad decisions were made as a result.

Blame it on the state of New York:

From Wikipedia:

Enterprise entered the New York Naval Shipyard on 18 January 1946 for deactivation, and was decommissioned on 17 February 1947. In 1946, she had been scheduled to be handed over to the state of New York as a permanent memorial, but this plan was suspended in 1949.^[7] Subsequent attempts were made at preserving the ship as a museum or memorial, but fund-raising efforts failed to raise enough money to buy the vessel from the Navy, and the "Big E" was sold on 1 July 1958 to the Lipsett Corporation of New York City for scrapping at Kearny, New Jersey. A promise was made to save the distinctive tripod mast for inclusion in the Naval Academy's new football stadium, but was never fulfilled; instead, a memorial plaque was installed at the base of what is still called "Enterprise Tower." Scrapping was complete as of May 1960. In 1984, a permanent "Enterprise Exhibit" was dedicated at the Naval Aviation Museum, Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida to house artifacts, photos and other items of historical interest.

Surviving Enterprise artifacts include the ship's bell, which resides at the U.S. Naval Academy, where it is traditionally rung only after midshipmen victories over West Point; and the sixteen-foot, one-ton nameplate from the ship's stern, which sits near a Little League park in River Vale, New Jersey.^[8] Her commissioning plaque and one of her anchors are on display at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. Various other artifacts and mementos (including one of her portholes) are kept aboard her namesake successor.

I am not sure what the Alabama's story is, but up here we have USS Massachussets, a few other ships in battleship cove, and further south in New York is USS Intrepid, and I think they were all bought (though probably through some special deal with the government) and maintained with private funding.  So I think in the end it was the navy/gov. going "hey, whatever, we are still getting money for them."   If some private group had approached the Navy/Gov. she might have had a fighting chance (pun intended), so I guess the question is why no historical preservation society stepped up and said "HEY!  WAIT!"  I agree though, why is it Intrepid is sitting in NYC and a floating museum, but Big E. probably survives as gas tanks and frames for some old Toyota cars.

Brian

New Hampshire

For better or for worse the military is about nuts and bolts.  As far as they are concerned they will beat a piece of equipment into unusability, rebuild it to get a little more life out of it, possibly rebuild again, but in the end when it is useless to them it is junk.  While certain traditions and moments in history may cause a little sentimentality, in the end it is about the book keeping.  And their thinking is "why keep it around rusting when we can get a few thousand dollars out of it from scrap?"

Sad, I know.  But, alas, the military is in the business of protecting and killing, not preserving history.

Brian

I can drive down to Mobile and see the USS Alabama any day of the week, but I I can't see the most decorated ship in US history?

For better or for worse the military is about nuts and bolts.  As far as they are concerned they will beat a piece of equipment into unusability, rebuild it to get a little more life out of it, possibly rebuild again, but in the end when it is useless to them it is junk.  While certain traditions and moments in history may cause a little sentimentality, in the end it is about the book keeping.  And their thinking is "why keep it around rusting when we can get a few thousand dollars out of it from scrap?"

Sad, I know.  But, alas, the military is in the business of protecting and killing, not preserving history.

Brian

My guess is at the end of the war the newer carriers and battleships were still viewed as usable and were protected.  The Enterprise was "used up", and was never going back to War.  And in our big government/ big business world of "what have you done for me lately", the Enterprise was scrap.  Even as a kid in the 60's I knew the significance of the Big E.  Having read and viewed more about her in my adult life has made me wonder why our fathers didn't see the significance of what she represented.  They probably should have held the Japanese surrender ceremony on her deck and in her retirement, parked her in the tidal basin in Washington D.C.  But then it took 60 years to get a proper WWII memorial on the National Mall to commemorate the greatest generation.  Rick

About the only times the Navy's interested in saving anything is if someone else has already started the work and spent a ton of their own money.. THEN they say, Oh, that's ours and you can't have it"..

Pennsylvania (the railroad station). Virtually every steam locomotive in the US. But if you are of a certain age, you'll remember that in the '50s it was ALL about "out with the old, in with the new".

I notice this sort of thing quite often, I am starting to think it is a combination of lots of thing - being in the right place at the right time, the supporters of whatever the article may be having the right contacts, a government or body that doesn't have more important projects or has financial issues at the specific time it is needed, red tape making things impossible due to inflexible individuals... the list goes on.

I am primarily a plane guy & I see / read thing occasionally that range from the sad to the downright scandalous. I think in days gone by, lots of article were retained / restored due purely to their historical or technological significance (unlike NASA's Saturn LUT's) & there was a willingness to support & fund such thing. Nowadays it seems to be a different story, all roads seem to end up at the coin, no matter what way you look at it. In Europe, EU money has been put to very many good preservation projects, but I cant help feeling like the who thing is a big back scratching / job's for the boys club with many seemingly "honorable" achievements being somewhat less honorable when you dig deeper.

In the UK a private group (with some initial "heritage" funding admittedly) has made the Avro Vulcan airworthy again, it is now privately funded & while still being operational it does struggle. We live in a different world now, many individuals are now just self infatuated members of the X-Factor generation generation & really couldn't care about the history, personal sacrifice & technological achievements that has helped them live in the safe & cosseted way they do, they are more interested in where the next bigger flat screen TV is going to come from;

"it's OK, I know I am broke, but I can keep spending because the credit card company / bank / government will bail me out" - live for today & forget about both tomorrow & yesterday just doesn't work!