News-Info-Alerts

Re: The USS Oriskany's Final Battle

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: August 17, 2003

"States, communities in battle over carrier
Navy ship may be scuttled to form artificial reef

By LARRY WHEELER, The News-Press Washington Bureau
Published by news-press.com on August 11, 2003

They called her “Mighty O,” and for much of the Vietnam War she was one of the Navy’s most heavily used aircraft carriers.

Today, the USS Oriskany is at the center of one last battle.

Moored on Neches River near Beaumont, Texas. Two Florida coastal communities are squabbling over the right to sink the decommissioned flattop off their coasts to create one of the world’s largest artificial reefs. Its presence could pump millions of dollars into local recreational diving and fishing industries.

Texas also is interested in the Oriskany, which would be the largest Navy ship ever scuttled to form an artificial reef.

Competition for the ship already has sparked accusations of favoritism in Florida and threatens to become a political problem for Gov. Jeb Bush and the administration of his brother, the president.

Like most Navy vessels that served in wartime, the Oriskany has a dramatic history and a devoted following of former crew members. The Internet is peppered with sites honoring the vessel and her crew.

Commissioned in 1950, the carrier saw action in the Korean War and launched 12,000 sorties against North Vietnamese targets in 1965. In 1966, 44 pilots and crew members died in a fire below the flight deck.

Fitting goodbye

The ship, named for a town in New York near the location of a Revolutionary War battle, also has special meaning for Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona. On Oct. 26, 1967, McCain, then a young naval aviator, took off from the deck of the Oriskany on his 23rd bombing mission of the Vietnam War. Later that day, he was shot down and captured by the Viet Cong, who held him as a prisoner of war until January 1973.

The decision on where to scuttle the Oriskany will be made by Capt. Larry Jones Jr., program manager of the Navy’s inactive ships program. Jones and his staff are working with the Maritime Administration, an arm of the Transportation Department, on guidelines that states, local governments and others must follow to apply for the carrier.

Officially, the Navy cannot sink the warship on its own. The Oriskany, moored on the Neches River near Beaumont, Texas, falls outside an exchange program between the Navy and the Maritime Administration that has made smaller vessels available as artificial reefs.

Navy officials have asked Congress to insert language into pending defense bills that would authorize a reefing program for large warships.

Turning the Oriskany into a fish habitat would allow the Navy to give the 53-year-old warship a fitting goodbye. Naval officials have been trying for more than 10 years to scrap the carrier, but one salvage company went bankrupt and another couldn’t complete the work.

The Navy has set aside $2.8 million to hire a contractor to clean the 911-foot-long ship of hazardous material. The contractor also will tow the vessel out to sea and sink it.

As a measure of how lucrative large artificial reefs can be, the USS Spiegel Grove, once part of the Navy’s amphibious fleet, has generated about $14 million in revenue since it was sunk near Key Largo a year ago. An estimated 35,000 to 40,000 divers have visited the vessel.

At 510 feet, the Spiegel Grove is the largest Navy ship to be intentionally submerged to form an artificial reef.

Accusations of ‘politicization’

Competition for the right to use the Oriskany as an underwater tourist attraction began after the Navy alerted artificial reef officials in coastal states that the ship was available.

Last month, Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission endorsed a site in the Gulf of Mexico as the best place to sink the aircraft carrier. The location 24 miles south off Pensacola Naval Air Station beat out four other Florida coastal communities.

But an entrepreneur working with three South Florida counties is contesting the decision.

Stephen O’Neal, a businessman with a history of involvement in artificial reef programs, said the state commission used a rigged scoring system based on Pensacola’s rich naval aviation tradition and political connections in Tallahassee and Washington.

“Instead of being an honest broker and looking at facts, they took a state agency and politicized it,” O’Neal said of the commission.

The Pensacola site is too far out to sea and will attract fewer visitors than the South Florida location, which is less than two miles off Miami Beach, O’Neal said.

Officials with the wildlife conservation commission acknowledged that their scoring system gave Pensacola points for its naval heritage but denied that the decision was motivated by politics.

“The thing that jumped out at all of us was there were over 150 steel-hulled vessels sunk in the South Florida program and there were less than 20 vessels in the Panhandle,” said Jon Dodrill, a natural sciences manager with the commission. “We were looking at it from a statewide perspective.”

O’Neal has complained to Jeb Bush about the process. And the Historic Naval Ships Association has sent a letter to acting Navy Secretary Hansford Johnson supporting O’Neal’s bid.

Pensacola officials say they’ll fight to make sure the state commission’s original decision remains unchanged.

“We think we have positive things going for us and that’s the reason that the decision was made,” said Escambia County Commissioner Bill Dickson, a retired Navy captain and former naval aviator who is spearheading the community’s bid for the carrier.

So far, the only other state officially interested in the Oriskany is Texas.

“It makes sense to sink it off Texas,” said Dale Shively, the state’s artificial reef program coordinator. “I don’t think the Navy wants to pay for towing it all the way to Florida or some other state.”

©2001, The News-Press"