wind63
Speaking of the ghost fleet, some people should feel confused, but when it comes to the U.S. National Defense Reserve Fleet (also known as the sealed fleet), everyone feels very good, and there are articles on the Internet that boast its combat effectiveness, anyway, the word of reputation has no verbal table, but is this the case?
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In fact, the ghost fleet has a long history, the United States from 1925 began to have, then the British Royal Navy also has, that is the product of many international treaties in that year, in order to accumulate the strength of the navy, the naval powers will find ways to retire the capital ships early and seal, in the war can be immediately re-commissioned, this method is very suitable for the era of war at that time, such as the Second World War, the U.S. Navy has used a lot of sealed ships, The 50 sealed submarines were also leased to the Royal Navy for use under the Lend-Lease Act.
After the end of World War II, the U.S. Navy mothballed most of its ships, which made the number of mothballed ships reach an all-time high of 2277 ships, but during the subsequent Peninsular War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, more or less mothballed ships were used, once again achieving the purpose of setting up a ghost fleet.
However, with the change of the times, the end of the Cold War and the world into a period of peaceful development, the powerful ghost fleet also shrank, in recent years the number is only about 178, and the model is mainly old ships, and now there are aircraft carriers (John F. Kennedy class has actually been scrapped), cruisers (early Ticonderoga class), destroyers (even Charles Adams class), frigates (mainly Perry class), amphibious dock landing ships (Anchorage class), tank landing ships (old Newport class), Submarine lifeboats and supply ships, among others.
The storage sites of the Ghost Fleet also decreased as the number of ships mothballed decreased, and at its peak there were eight storage sites, namely Stoney Point in New York, Eustisburg in Virginia, Wilmington in North Carolina, Port Mobile in Alabama, Beaumont in Texas, Sussen Bay in California, Astoria in Oregon, and Olympia in Washington, which have so far been reduced to three storage sites, with only Eustisburg in Virginia. Beaumont in Texas and Suson Bay in California, it can be seen that with the advancement of science and technology, a large number of old ships have disintegrated and returned, fortunate to be a museum, tragically as a target ship to play the last residual heat.
From these years, the ghost fleet's sealed ships have no longer been re-activated by the U.S. Navy, but as always, for foreign buyers to reseal a lot, the current best-selling or Perry-class frigates, although the naval powers and local tycoon countries do not look up to her, objectively from a high-tech point of view, these sealed ships have been obviously outdated for too long, but for third-rate naval countries and regions that are big ships, and therefore the ghost fleet storage site has gradually become the U.S. second-hand ship market warehouse, Completely parted ways with the original intention of the reserve fleet.