Okręty wojenne w porcie w San Diego, po 1945 roku.

"In September 1945, immediately following the end of WWII, the US Navy put forth it’s first draft of what the peacetime fleet would look like. Using a very broad brush and not differentiating between types and classes, it recommended retaining 30% of it’s ships on active duty, placing 50% into mothballs, and scrapping 20%. Senator David Walsh (D-MA), an expert on naval affairs, calculated in September 1945 that this would require total manning of 500,000 men.

The post-WWII mothballing effort was a juggling act between the need to get men back to civilian life, and the need for their services to lay up the fleet. There couldn’t be warships still on duty without a crew, but, demobilization couldn’t be held up either.

When the Japanese emperor made his surrender announcement in August 1945, the total manpower of the US Navy hovered around 3,000,000 plus another 400,000 non-active reservists, female WAVEs, and recruits still in training.

In early November 1945, about six weeks after the surrender signing aboard USS Missouri, Congress outlined the first demobilization plan for the US Navy. A minimum of 33% of the fleet’s WWII manpower, about a million men, was to be out no later than 15 February 1946; and of this, 327,000 by Christmas 1945 and 865,000 by New Years Eve. By the end of April 1946, 50% of the wartime manpower would be out. By 1 September 1946, the process would be essentially completed with 3,000,000 WWII veterans mustered out, leaving about 490,000 on active duty in January 1947 including new sailors recruited in the meantime.

In November 1945 Congress set a target of 1,079 active-duty warships to be in service at the end of 1946. This was to include WWII-veteran warships and vessels built in the meantime. While it might sound counter-intuitive, the US Navy had to maintain at least a snail’s pace of new commissionings even as relatively fresh ships were mothballed. This would avoid block obsolescence problems (entire generations of ships simultaneously wearing out) down the road, and would also avoid bankrupting shipyards."

Solidny artykuł o tym co stało się z masą okrętów i statków gdy przestały być już potrzebne.

#historia #starszezwoje #statki