Intrepid Below Decks

[Willy]

As I was a crewmember on her sistership the USS Lexington in the 70s, most of this stuff is very familiar to me.

http://www.businessinsider.com/uss-i...-decks-2012-4#

[FSX68]

Thanks for sharing those photos. It was a shock to see how the rest of that ship was left is that condition. I haven't seen red lead paint in decades!!!

[PRB]

Thanks Willy. Interesting pics. The people "running" that museum really need to go talk to the people who manage the battleship museums, so they can learn something about preservation and restoration.

[brad kaste]

Yes,...it seems a bit odd that millions and millions of dollars would be spent in refurbishing the carrier,....but allow the look of abandonment display way below decks.

[aeromed202]

Super link although I'd be interested to know who got to do this and how. I also started wondering how some areas could be that un-managed, but by golly some of those images told more history that half the 'kept' areas ever could. I'm for leaving some of that stuff alone, I mean these images are what they are precisely because of the neglect. Hope to get out there someday and see for myself. When I was a kid, we went on a school trip once to the Battleship Massachusetts in Fall river, MA. That was creepy and fun at the same time and we all took turns aiming the Pom-Poms at traffic going over the interstate bridge and giving our teachers strokes by hiding from them.

[PRB]

Haven't been to Intrepid, but I have been to both Lexington and Yorktown, and both those sites seem to suffer from the same bizarre indifference to the ships themselves. It's almost like the see the ship as nothing more than a building to house other museum exhibits. Lexington has a glass walled off shopping mall on the hangar deck for crying out loud. With sliding glass door. Just like at K-Mart. On Yorktown, they converted the center-line elevator well into a frikken movie theater. What the heck?! And half the ship's compartments have been emptied of original equipment so they could use them to display pictures and models. When you visit the battleship museums, it's clear that the ship is the museum. As it should be.

[Willy]

As much as I'd like to take a trip down to visit the Lexington, I'm kind of afraid of what I'd see.

[Odie]

Very interesting, Willy! Thanks!

[Roadburner440]

I would hate to see the costs to make restore it all, and dispose of all that haz waste with todays regulations..... Is probably why it is locked away out of sight. Not that it is forgotten, but that it would take billions of todays dollars to "properly" dispose of the waste created during restoration. I saw these photos a few weeks ago when they were originally posted. I personally think it looks pretty good considering when it was decommissioned, and that no one has be cleaning the spaces for many years. Eventually all of that rust will take her from the inside out though.

[Willy]

As for hazardous waste, the Navy had a big drive in the 70s to remove asbestos from it's ships. I personally helped remove it on two different WWII era ships (USS Los Alamos and USS Lexington). But since the Intrepid was decommissioned in the early 70s, I've got my doubts that it was included in that program. Why spend all that money on one that's going out anyway?