USS Forrestal (CV-59) - Decommissioning and Fate

Decommissioning and Fate

Forrestal was decommissioned 11 September 1993 at Pier 6E in Philadelphia, and was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register the same day. After being stricken, ex-Forrestal was heavily stripped to support the rest of the carrier fleet. In 1999, the USS Forrestal Museum Inc. began a campaign to obtain the ship from the Navy via donation, for use as a museum, to be located in Baltimore, but this plan was not successful. The Navy removed the ship from donation hold in 2004 and redesignated it for disposal. According to the NVR, her final status is "donated for use as fishing reef." As of 2007, the ship was being environmentally prepared for sinking as an artificial reef as was USS Oriskany. Due to elements of the Forrestal design having led directly to current aircraft carrier design, the ship will be donated to a state and sunk to become a deep water reef, for fishery propagation and so that it will not be accessible to divers. The date for the sinking has not yet been announced.

On 15 June 2010, Forrestal departed Naval Station Newport in Newport, Rhode Island, where she had been stored since 1998, under tow for the inactive ship storage facility in Philadelphia. Forrestal is now tied up at Pier 4 in Philadelphia, next to USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67). It is expected Forrestal will remain there until the Navy decides her final disposition, which will either to be sold as scrap, sunk as a target, or scuttled as an artificial reef.

As of January 26, 2012 the Navy's Naval Sea Systems Command posted a notice of solicitation for the towing and complete dismantlement of multiple CV-59/CV-63 Class Aircraft Carriers in the United States, to include ex-Forrestal (CV 59), ex-Independence (CV 62), and ex-Constellation (CV 64).

The Forrestal will probably be scrapped at Brownsville, Texas.