Senator John McCain then a Lieutenant Commander was on A4 that had been struck by an errant missile. He had been waiting to take for authorization to fly when the missile struck his ship starting the fire.
In addition to the fire, the USS Forrestal was the first of the super carriers. It is a piece of Naval History. The Navy has since sold it for scrap. For a whopping penny.
Consider that it cost the United States roughly 218 Million dollars. That is $218,000,000.00. The Navy then operated the ship up until 1993. Even discounting the millions of dollars of damage caused by the fire in the South China Sea, the Navy did get it’s money’s worth from the ship. It was in operation from 1955-1993. That is 38 years, $5,736,842.11 per year in its value plus operating costs and repairs.
It is however rather astonishing that the ship sold for only a penny less than a billionth of the original cost without even factoring inflation. It is important to note the Navy did try to make a donation but there were no takers. Even still, scrap metal costs would lead you to believe the Navy could get a better deal than a single penny, current costs are $0.06-$0.10 per pound for steel http://rockawayrecycling.com/scrap-metal-pictures/scrap-metal-prices/ I’m just ball parking my math here, but I think it is safe to say that a penny was a rip off.
