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USA Today tells us;

A decommissioned Air Force ship is being prepared at a Virginia shipyard to become a new habitat for marine life and an attraction for recreational divers in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

A $6 million project to turn the 524-foot-long General Hoyt S. Vandenberg into a reef is scheduled to culminate in the spring of 2008, with the vessel’s sinking in 140 feet of water about six miles south of Key West.

Retired in 1983, the Vandenberg floated for 24 years among ships in the U.S. Maritime Administration’s James River Naval Reserve Fleet at Fort Eustis, Va.

he Vandenberg began its nautical life in 1943 under a different name, the Gen. Harry S. Taylor, as a troop transport ship.

After participating in World War II, the Hungarian Revolution and the Cold War, it was overhauled to become a missile-tracking vessel in the Atlantic. When christened for that assignment, it became the Vandenberg, named after the former Air Force general and director of the Central Intelligence Group, predecessor to today’s Central Intelligence Agency. Read More…

 

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