“Ex-America’s legacy will serve as a footprint in the design of future aircraft carriers,” he wrote.Īlthough no larger warship has ever been sunk, bigger civilian vessels have gone down. John Nathman, the Navy’s second-in-command, called America’s destruction “one vital and final contribution to our national defense.” before heading to the deep ocean, 300 miles off the Atlantic coast, for the tests, Dolan said. The Navy’s plan is to tow it to sea on April 11 - possibly stopping at Norfolk, Va. Since its decommissioning in 1996, the America has been moored with dozens of other inactive warships at a Navy yard in Philadelphia.
In 1939, Adolf Hitler, fearful of a loss of morale among his people should Germany’s namesake ship be sunk, ordered the pocket battleship Deutschland renamed for a long-dead Prussian commander. Issues surrounding a vessel bearing the name of its country are often more sensitive than for other ships. He said he was “unhappy that a ship with that name is going to meet that fate, but happy she’ll be going down still serving the country.” Pelletier, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., is a trustee of an association of veterans who served on the America.
The Navy’s plan raises mixed emotions in Ed Pelletier, who served on the America as a helicopter crewman when the ship cruised the Mediterranean shortly after its commissioning in 1965.
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