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Tuesday, June 20, 2000
Last of 4 scuttled warships blasted to bottom in RIMPAC
Navy studies sinking to assist design of battle-ready vessels
By Donovan Brooks
Stars and Stripes
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii - They don't go down easy, those warships.
Crippled and gutted, with all flood doors open, the last of four U.S. Navy gray ghosts sank in deep water near
Hawaii on Saturday as part of a military exercise.
Sunk were the former USS Buchanon, Ramsey, Gen. Hugh J. Gaffey and, lastly, the Worden.
For the Worden, a maverick missile was the fatal shot, fired by a fighter from the USS Abraham Lincoln's air
wing. The ship sank 90 minutes later, said Ralph Conway of the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. Conway
supervised the weeklong exercise, which was part of the Rim of the Pacific, military exercises going on in and
around Hawaii.
While the plane's air-to-surface missile was the final blow, it certainly wasn't the first. The assault on the
old guided missile cruiser was first hit by the Australian HMAS Adelaide's arsenal. Then, the attack submarine
USS Tucson hit the ship with a torpedo. But the missile damage was fatal, Conway said.
"The ships are designed well," he said. "They take a lot of damage."
The Buchanon proved to be the toughest of the old ships, frustrating American, Canadian and Australian forces
who tried to sink her for more than 24 hours.
On June 13, the Buchanon took three hellfire missile hits, three harpoon missile hits and had a 2,400-poun d
laser-guided bomb dropped on it. Still, it stayed atop the water. The next day, a Pearl Harbor explosives team
returned and placed 200 pounds of explosive in the ship, set it off, and the ship sank in six minutes.
The Ramsey and Gaffey took on a barrage of missiles and bombs Thursday from a multinational flotilla. The Ramsey
sank in about 90 minutes. But the Gaffey stayed afloat for eight hours, even after seven direct hits, Navy officials
said.
Conway said the Navy would analyze what firepower was needed to sink the ships to understand how the vessel
designs can stand up in combat situations.
RIMPAC spokesman Lt. Jeff Madsen said the ships were not subject to sometimes devastating secondary explosions
from fuel or stored ammunition that might occur to a fully operational ship.
All the ships had been cleaned to standards agreed to by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Chief of
Naval Operations, Conway said.
The ships all sank in water more than 14,000 feet deep, at least 50 miles from land, he said.
RIMPAC is a biennial military exercise taking place through July in and around Hawaii. About 22,000 military
members from seven nations are taking part.
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