By James Donahue

The U.S. Navy continued its old policy of using the world’s oceans as a dumping ground when it secretly exploded charges in the 32-year veteran carrier America and sent it to the bottom of the Atlantic.

The 1,048-foot-long warship now rests at 6,000 feet, about 60 miles off the coast of South Carolina, a naval spokesman told news sources. The sinking was secretly conducted May 14, much to the anger of a number of navy veterans who served on its decks.

In fact, an organization called the USS America Foundation was working hard to save the retired carrier and turn it into a museum.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it,” Lee McNulty, foundation president said about the incident. “Of all the carriers, that one should have been saved, just for the name America.”

The vessel was chosen from among an armada of retired and inactive warships at a Philadelphia Navy Yard for explosive tests, the spokesman said.

The idea was to collect valuable data on survivability in the design of the next generation of aircraft carriers, now in development. Thus the old ship was destroyed in a series of explosions that continued for 25 days before it flooded and sank.

It is the largest warship ever purposefully sunk by the Navy during peacetime.

The America was involved in the Vietnam War, the 1986 conflict with Libya, the 1991 Gulf War and her aircraft flew over Bosnia-Herzegovinia during the conflict there in the mid-1990s.

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