US Navy Will Help Free USS Intrepid
The United States Navy will assist in freeing the USS Intrepid from the mud that holds her stuck fast in New York Harbor. No details of what that help will exactly entail were announced.
The agreement comes after the floating carrier museum refused to budge Monday despite tugboats' attempts to pull it from the mud at its Manhattan pier. The ship has rested in the spot for 24 years.
Under the agreement — hammered out after four days of talks between officials of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and the Pentagon — the Navy will give salvage support to try to free the vessel. That support will fall within guidelines of the Army Corps of Engineers permit issued to the museum for dredging.
Still unknown is when the operation will be finished and the carrier towed to Bayonne, N.J.
"The Intrepid Museum is thankful to the Navy and to the Army Corps of Engineers for the great help they are providing to this effort," Arnold Fisher, the museum chairman, said in a statement.
Hopefully, this will get the Intrepid underway to the drydock. It would seem to me that the dredging they did before the attempt to pull her out on Monday was insufficient since the ship's props got stuck in the mud, but I presume they are going to address that. Here's the Wikipedia entry on the Intrepid, by the way and an article on the Essex class carriers.
By Christopher Fotos, Saturday, 11 November , 2006 @ 11:06 am
Been on the Intrepid (as a tourist), love the Intrepid, and at least one of my former bosses flew off the Intrepid during Vietnam.
The Navy will git ‘er done.
By mokus, Saturday, 11 November , 2006 @ 5:00 pm
The Navy got the Mighty Mo off a sand bar at Thinble Shoals, and she was hard aground, lifted 7 feet above the high water line. Getting the Intrepid out of the squidgy mud of NY Harbor won’t take long.