Moth Balls Vallejo California June 1958

[patches]

Lot of big Warships in this Moth Ball Fleet, lets see if you can guess them.

[12thengr]

Hull # 29 U.S.S. Bataan, Independence class. (Later AVT-4). It looks as though the other flat tops are similar. Quite a number of cruisers. The two aft of Bataan appear to be Atlanta class.

[mikie]

Many years ago, I used to love driving my occasional trips from San Francisco Bay up towards Sacramento.  We used to pass by the Suisun Bay mothball fleet.  It was a fantastic sight.  They are all gone now.  Probably a good thing, but it was wonderful to see. 

Mikie 

[patches]

Here's some that are listed where I found this photo.

 

 USS Bataan (CVL-29)  USS Cowpens (CVL-25), USS Rendova (CVE-114), USS Bairoko (CVE-115), USS Badoeng Strait (CVE-116), USS Sicily (CVE-118).USS Astoria CL-90, USS Birmingham (CL-62), USS Vincennes (CL-64),USS Springfield (CL-66), USS Topeka (CL-67), USS Vicksburg (CL-86), USS Duluth (CL-87), USS Miami (CL-89), USS Oklahoma City (CL-91), USS Amsterdam (CL-101),USS Atlanta (CL-104),  USS Oakland (CL-95), USS Tucson (CL-98).

[12thengr]

Original USS Astoria, Vincennes & Atlanta were lost at Guadalcanal so these boats pictured would have been later wartime builds.

[tthen]

Very cool picture. My dad served on the Bairoko in 1945.

[TheCrustyBosun]

Lots of razor blades. No survivors. Sadly. Would have been nice to save an escort carrier and a cruiser.  Cabot survived into the late 90’s but efforts to turn her into a museum ultimately failed. I worked for the USS Lexington museum and remember stripping items off the Cabot to complete some of our exhibits before she was scrapped in Brownsville. 

[patches]

11 hours ago, 12thengr said:

Original USS Astoria, Vincennes & Atlanta were lost at Guadalcanal so these boats pictured would have been later wartime builds.

You are Correct Sir.

[River Rat 1]

Don't think to many ships are left there. Remember when in SBU XI we were doing our yearly training on the Sacramento River the FOB was on a barge in the month ball fleet where we would use it to sleep on for the 2 weeks of training was cold on that barge. One of my ships I was on the USS Proteus ended up in the moth ball fleet before getting scrapped.

[Salvage Sailor]

There's only a handful left at Suisun Bay & several at Pearl Harbor but they're being used for SINKEX ops during the biannual RIMPAC exercises.

 

 

 

 

[mikie]

We drove by on Thanksgiving on our way to Auburn. It was hard to see but I think there were 3 or 4 ships there. I

Mikie

[Spike]

I remember as a kid driving over the bridge and straining our necks to see the ships sitting there.

 

I also remember while going over the Bay Bridge during the 60's and seeing all the military trucks and equipment waiting to go to VN.

[patches]

I once posted a topic on the Moth Balls that were anchored in the Hudson River up from NY NY in the 60s a few years back, it was a popular topic with several replies, but believe it is deleted, as MOD Rusty Canteen went looking for it once and could not find it.

[12thengr]

 I don't know if this is the same facility but this postcard view just showed up on face book.

[Salvage Sailor]

That's the Mothball Fleet at Suisun Bay, CA 1968

 

[conn]

i remember the moth ball fleet along the Hudson river as a kid in the 1960s, what a site

never followed up what happened to it.

they were gone by 1972

[patches]

11 hours ago, conn said:

i remember the moth ball fleet along the Hudson river as a kid in the 1960s, what a site

never followed up what happened to it.

they were gone by 1972

I seen it only once, like in summer of 1970 on a day trip by boat out of Manhattan up to Bear Mountain and back.