Navy decides to scrap USS Bonhomme Richard after major fire

[UTUSN]

8. "a quarter of a century" - practically new!1

My first ship (of two) was an LST (Landing Ship Tank) built in 1945, of a type used at D-Day (built too late for D-Day), and we were using it, all rusty and leaky in Vietnam 22+ years later. It had been decommissioned and recommissioned a couple of times and had been used in Korea and Vietnam before. It got its final end in 1971 and was ignominiously unloaded on some civilian enterprise before being scrapped.

My second ship was brand new when we commissioning crew (“plank owners”) reported, and when my year was done I expected it to be running around for 30 years. But surprise, about 15 years later I received an invitation to its decommissioning ceremony, and I didn’t go. According to Navy tradition, the original commissioning crew are plank owners from when ships were made of wooden planks and were entitled to a piece of plank when it was done. It went to a junkyard for ships and I thought that was that. Well, imagine my surprise when a year or whatever later it arrived at a scrapping port NEAR ME to be scrapped! I went to see it, but the area was closed off and the scrapper business had no interest in plankowner traditions.