A reserve fleet or (less formally) mothball fleet is a collection of naval vessels (both warships and support vessels) that are fully equipped for service but are not currently needed and thus partially or fully decommissioned. A warship is a Ship that is built and primarily intended for Combat. In earlier times and especially in British usage, these ships were said to be laid up in ordinary, whilst a similar phrase in unofficial modern U. S. naval parlance is ghost fleet.
Such ships are generally held in reserve against a time when it may be necessary to call them back into service, and are usually tied up in backwater areas near naval bases or shipyards to speed the reactivation process. They may be modified—for instance, by having rust prone areas sealed off or wrapped in plastic (or, in the case of sailing warships, removal of the masts). While held in the reserve fleet, the ships will typically have a minimal crew (or, less formally, a skeleton crew) that makes sure the ship stays in usable condition—if nothing else, the bilge pump needs to run continuously to prevent the ship from sinking. A bilge pump is a Pump to remove Bilge water.Because fuel can end up in the bilge electric bilge pumps are designed not to cause sparks
When a ship is placed in reserve status, the various parts and weapon systems that the vessel uses are also placed in a storage facility so that if the ship is ever reactivated, the proper spare parts and ammunition can be loaded aboard the vessel—though like the ships themselves, these stored parts and equipment are prone to fall into disrepair and obsolescence. Suisun Bay (pronounced "soo-soon" is a shallow Tidal estuary located at in central California, USA. For example, during the United States’ arms buildup under President Ronald Reagan (specifically, the 600-ship Navy plan), the US reactivated its Iowa-class battleships to serve with the fleet, but since the ships had not been used since the 1960s, the US Navy had trouble finding the various specialty items that were needed to make the ships operational and had to salvage parts from earlier battleships that had been relegated to museum ships. The President of the United States is the Head of state and Head of government of the United States and is the highest political official in United States by The 600 Ship Navy was a strategic plan of the United States Navy during the 1980s to rebuild its fleet after cutbacks that followed the end of the Vietnam War History The Iowa -class battleships were shaped by the Battle of Jutland, by naval treaties signed by various countries during the 1920s and 1930s and by the A battleship is a large heavily armored Warship with a main battery consisting of the largest Calibre of Guns Battleships were
In practice, the fate of most reserve ships is to be scrapped, since their technology quickly becomes so outdated they may not even be worth updating. Scrapped reserve fleet ships are sometimes used for experiments or target practice, or are sold to other nations (and occasionally to private companies for civilian conversion), or become museum ships or even artificial reefs. A live fire exercise is any Exercise in which a realistic scenario for the use of specific equipment is simulated For ships that are not original see Ship replica. For preserved incomplete ships see Ships preserved in museums. Steel from pre-nuclear age ships, called low-background steel, is used as shielding for precise measurement of radiation. In recent decades, the US Maritime Administration [1]has begun to scrap dozens of these vessels, many of which date to World War II. Exporting the vessels for shipbreaking, or dismantling, has caused international protests due to the toxic nature of the dismantled materials. Ship breaking or ship demolition is a type of Recycling involving the breaking up of Ships for Scrap. [2] More recently, the Navy has established a program to allow ships like Oriskany to be sunk in selected locations to create artificial reefs. Construction The name Oriskany was originally assigned to, but that hull was renamed when the keel was laid in 1942 An artificial reef is a man-made underwater structure typically built for the purpose of promoting marine life in areas of generally featureless bottom
Notes
- ^ U. S. Maritime AdministrationU.S. Maritime Administration
- ^ US Toxic 'ghost fleet' not wanted in the UK, Greenpeace International website (November 5, 2003) accessed at [1] June 20, 2006
Related works
Daniel Madsen. Forgotten Fleet. The Mothball Navy. U. S. Naval Institute Press. 1999.
To Sail No More. Seven volumes. Maritime Books. United Kingdom.
See also
The United States Navy maintains a number of its Ships as part of a Reserve fleet, often called the "Mothball Fleet".Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic