The city of Long Beach is enthusiastically but probably futilely trying to bring the USS Ranger—an aircraft supercarrier that's appeared in Top Gun, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home—to its shores as an elite school for the top one percent of Navy pilots a "floating museum," says the Long Beach Press-Telegram. A former sailor who served on the ship has founded a nonprofit (Top Gun Supercarrier of Long Beach Inc.) to help raise the money to buy the ship and the city council has declared its interest.
Unfortunately, the timing is a little off. "The Navy made the ship available for donation for eight years ...there were no states, municipalities or nonprofit organizations that had a viable plan to save the ship while it was available," says a Navy spokesman, but now the time for donation is past. They're unmoved by LB's impassioned endeavors and are still planning to sell the vessel—commissioned in 1957 and taken out of service in 1993—to a ship recycling company by early 2015.
· Long Beach launches last-ditch effort to save USS Ranger [LBPT]
· 16 Inch Guns, 3,000 People: USS Iowa Opening By the Numbers [Curbed LA]
Loading comments...