SS United States was a secret Cold War weapon

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

SS United States was a secret Cold War weapon waiting to be deployed

The fastest liner ever built was never really a liner. When the SS United States entered service in 1952, the US government had quietly paid around 50 million dollars of her 71 million dollar cost, because designer William Francis Gibbs had built her to a Pentagon requirement, a passenger ship convertible within days into a troopship carrying 14,000 soldiers 10,000 nautical miles without refueling. Her hull was subdivided far beyond commercial standards, her fuel capacity was military, and her 247,785 horsepower plant, capable of 38.32 knots on trials, existed so she could outrun any submarine afloat. Her true speed and hull lines were classified for decades, and she was even built inside a dry dock rather than launched down a slipway, keeping her form hidden from view during construction.

The secrecy went further than most passengers ever knew. Almost no wood was allowed aboard, an obsession of Gibbs against fire, so her interiors were aluminum, glass, and fireproof fabric, and the story goes that the only wood in the ship was the butcher's block and the pianos. Her superstructure held 4.5 million pounds of aluminum, keeping her light enough for speed and stable enough to carry lifeboats for a thousand more people than she could book. She took the Blue Riband in both directions on her maiden voyage and still holds the westbound record today. The troopship conversion was never called for, and the ship built for a war that never came now waits in Mobile, stripped and prepared to be sunk as the world's largest artificial reef.

[Radio KH6O]

And now she is preparing for her final voyage:

https://www.nauticalflock.com/news/ss-united-states-ready-to-sink-worlds-largest-artificial-reef-florida-2026

Jeff KH6O