In Our View: No Salvation For Warship

A small item carried by the Associated Press late last month delivered the final blow to an effort to bring a retired U.S. aircraft carrier to the Columbia River to serve as a museum.

The ship is the USS Ranger, one of the Navy’s first so-called supercarriers. In five decades of service to the United States, the oil-fueled Ranger saw combat duty in Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm — and appearances in movies such as “Top Gun” and “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” — before it was decommissioned in 1993 and retired to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.

Berthed near several other retired capital ships near the end of Sinclair Inlet, Ranger fires the imagination of anyone driving up Highway 3 toward Bremerton.

That included a group of retired Navy veterans who saw a permanent home for the Ranger on the Columbia River, across the river from Clark County in Fairview, Ore.

They identified a site where the carrier could be berthed and formed the nonprofit USS Ranger Foundation to acquire and preserve the mammoth warship, which is 1,046 feet long. More than 130 volunteers, including some Ranger veterans, raised more than $600,000 to get the project started. A land development company donated a 30-acre parcel near Blue Lake Park. Backers produced a study claiming the old carrier would bring 350,000 visitors annually and generate $46 million in economic activity.

Alas, it wasn’t to be. The Ranger won’t fit through the BNSF Railway bridge in Vancouver, which would have to be modified to let the almost 250-feet-wide vessel pass. The Army Corps of Engineers would have had to dredge portions of the river to allow the Ranger, with its 37-foot draft, to make it upriver to its final berth.

Acquiring, restoring and preserving an old warship is a very difficult proposition. In San Diego, a saltwater port and the Navy’s principal West Coast base, backers spent 12 years acquiring the retired carrier USS Midway. Their effort, which was ultimately successful, required a 3,000-page application and 36 different state permits.

In Clark County, an energetic group of volunteers spent more than a decade trying to restore and display PT 659. Made famous by John F. Kennedy’s service aboard PT 109, the World War II-era boats are on the other end of the spectrum from the mighty Ranger. Made of plywood and crewed by a dozen sailors, they were fast attack craft, designed to swoop in and suddenly attack big ships

PT 659 arrived in Vancouver in 1996 from Camp Withycombe, a National Guard base far from the water in Clackamas, Ore. It was stored in various places over the years as committee members worked to find it a permanent home and financial footing. Neither ever materialized, and the rotting boat was sawed into scrap in 2008, though several truckloads of fittings were salvaged to aid in the restoration of another PT boat.

But back to the Ranger and that Associated Press story. According to the Kitsap Sun, a company called International Shipbreaking recently bought the vessel for one cent and will now make arrangements to tow it from Bremerton around Cape Horn to Brownsville, Texas, where it will be dismantled.

Like most other old ships, Ranger’s days will end in a recycling bin. But its name will go down in the history of a nation grateful for the service of its thousands of sailors.