Warbird Information Exchange

All right everybody... here's my first attempt to post a picture from photobucket. I'll start with a postcard shot of the "Iron Woman" from her glory days during WWII.

Looks like I've got the hang of this already, so I'll move on to the original photos. This is my first view of the Cabot -- sitting in a Brownsville, Texas
scrapyard in the spring of 2000. At the time I was full of hope that she was on the verge of escaping the cutting torch...

A closer shot and you can make out the fighting ship rising above the derelict fuel barges being cut up before her. The Cabot's Independence class pedigre is clear to
see -- the business-like flat-top perched on the graceful lines of a (Cleveland class) crusier hull -- a testament to the amazing industrial effort that turned out nine badly
needed carriers two years ahead of schedule.

The Cabot looms above her final berth -- a rough trench dredged out of the red Texas clay on the banks of the Rio Grande.

The CVLs were never classicly beautiful ships and by this time the Cabot was battered, rust-streaked, and listing... yet the power of her presence and the spirit of
courage and sacrifice she represented was unmistakable. It was all still there and with the right support it would have been possible to bring her back from the brink...

Seen from the island -- the famous straight, wooden flight deck lined with 40mm anti-aircraft mounts -- perfectly capturing the essence the aircraft carrier at the
time it came into its own as the dominant weapon at sea. Just imagine a restored TBF and F6F parked down there and the picture would have been complete. An
opportunity now lost forever...

One final shot of that straight wooden flight deck. The boards were rotten and spongy beneath my feet... and yet walking there, it took no effort at all to be
transported back in time. To picture the dusty flat Texas prairie fade away to be replaced by the rolling blue Pacific -- the ship healed over in a determined attempt to
evade her attackers -- the guns banging away, filling the sky with tracers and smoke. Making my way forward to where a lone Avenger would have sat on the port cat
-- I could easily imagine the sound, and shock and heat as the first of two Japanese kamikazes impacted the ship. At last, standing and pausing above the port AA
gallery, knowing that this was where scores of the Cabot's crew had died at their posts...

OK -- one last word on this subject. As depressing as it is to think of what might have been, I believe it is crucial to remember that the greatest memorial to the Cabot
and her crew still survives to this day -- in the form of a free country and a free world.

Can you tell me where she was before being sold for scrap? was it leased to another country?

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Hang The Expense

She was sold and scrapped right there in Brownsville, Texas. The scrapper was an Indian national by the name of PK Patel, whose family also did business on the
infamous beaches of Alang. The low price of scrap metal coupled with the efforts of preservation groups as well as US environmental and labor laws kept him in check
for about a year after the auction in Sept 1999. He finallly got around it all by bringing a gang of workers over from India listed as "ships' crew." They started breaking
the Cabot in Oct 2000 and within another year she was gone...

THANK YOU

That does make me feel a tiny bit better after seeing those pictures.

Tim

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www.tailhookstudio.com

wow,
Your really got right in there and got some awesome shots,
A very special thanks for sharing those as well as
the dialogue.

Any chance you got any photos from the hangar deck or other parts?

Did they just let you up there and snap away? or did you have to
sneak in...

thanks again,

hh

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"The best way to control the future is to create it".

TBdude,

one more thing.. I too have had a love of a trusty canon AE-1... a black
metal one, one of the first ones in the U.S. from around 74 or '75...
amazing camera given me a couple thousand rolls through her...
(started being the yearbk, sports, newpaper, weddings, then airplanes..
from the 7th grade on..

thanks again for the special shots...

henning

_________________
"The best way to control the future is to create it".

Tim -- it's my pleasure to share these photos with the group (that's exactly the kind of thing we're all here for isn't it)?

henning -- I definitely had permission from the owner to go out and see her. I didn't quite clear the idea of going on board with him, but once I was out there nothing was going to keep me away and so I chose to interpret his approval somewhat "liberally."

I personally didn't get any shots of the hangar deck -- it was somewhat dark, though now I wish I'd given it a shot (I guess I thought I'd have another chance later).

The impression that really sticks out is how vast and open it seemed (as opposed to USS Intrepid, which is divided up into exhibit areas). I found it very easy to imagine the sounds of men working and talking with each other as they readied their birds for the next strike against the Japanese. I remember conceiving of that as a potential element of a future museum exhibit -- the recreated sounds of machiney and men at war.

With no power to the ship, all of the other spaces were hopelessly dark. I peered into the pilot's ready room, just below the flight deck, but could barely see a thing (as I understand it, John Houston of the Rio Hondo Texas Air Museum was able to salvage this piece as well as the island, a section of flight deck, and some 40mm AA guns before he passed away -- I don't know what's become of those things since.)

The AE-1 is a truly great camera. I smashed mine in college, dug it out of the Tasman Glacier in New Zealand, and lost the first lens cap off the top of the Gross-glockner (tallest mountain in Austria) -- yet, with a little love and duct tape its still going strong! I only wish it could take digital photos!

Seems like I saw one of the ready room seats for sale on Ebay not long ago.
PJ