Quote:
Originally Posted by Botnst
back in the '60's one of my older sisters was dating a submariner when I was thinking about joining the USN. He pushed for subs by saying, "Two kinds of vessels in the Navy, submarines and targets."
On a previous subject, I think there is at least one surface combatant ship, not a carrier, that is a nuke. Not sure it's designation.
Found it: CGN. CG is a cruiser, "N" is nuke.
CGN-9 Long Beach
CGN-25 Bainbridge
CGN-35 Truxtun
CGN-36 California
CGN-38 Virginia
Example descriptor:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/cgn-36.htm |
There was also the South Carolina (sister ship to 36), and Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas (Virginia class).
I say WAS, because if I'm not mistaken, all of them were put in mothballs back in the 90's during the drawdown. I remember one of the newest, Texas, was decommed around '95 or so. Even the newest would be pushing 25 to 30 years old now anyway, due for retirement.
Basically, they got replaced by the new gas turbine jobs, Ticonderoga CG-47 class, Aegis air defense ships. CGN's were built along more traditional lines = harder to upgrade and overhaul. Gas turbine jobs were built to be modular, just swap out modules to upgrade equipment, lot less time in the yards.
Also there was the expense of the power plant. For a carrier where you could easily expect a 50 year service life, and not having to carry bunker fuel meant that much more aviation fuel on board, makes sense.