THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 8, 1994 TAG: 9406080594
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY RICHARD PYLE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: 940608 LENGTH: NEW YORK
The 18,000-ton helicopter assault carrier was heading back to Norfolk today for decommissioning - a casualty of the Pentagon's post-Cold War cutback to a smaller, more modern sea force.
{REST} The carrier's visit to New York during the 1994 Fleet Week was to have been the last hurrah for a vessel that was launched in the early 1960s, before Vietnam, and served in three oceans, the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.
But there may be more in its future than the scrap heap.
New York City is considering acquiring the ship as a floating helicopter port, to be moored near the USS Intrepid Sea-Air Museum on the Hudson River.
Museum director Lawrence Sowinski says the Navy has approved the deal, if the city wants it. It would be paid for by city, state, federal and transportation grants, with the heliport operation supporting itself.
``I can't say it's a done deal, but it's economically feasible, and I think it's going to go through,'' Sowinski said. Only details of the financing remain to be settled, he said.
For the past week, the 602-foot carrier was berthed next to the Kearsarge, a sleek new state-of-the-art assault command ship designed to serve into the 21st century.
``She may look old, but she's lived in, and she's warm inside,'' said Capt. Phillip L. Sowa, a naval aviator who for the past year has commanded the Guadalcanal, whose haze-gray hull is worn by 32 years of duty.
Soon after it was commissioned in 1963, the Guadalcanal was dispatched to Panama to help protect Americans caught in civil unrest. That duty would be repeated elsewhere - off civil war-wracked Lebanon in 1974 and in 1983, and in Egypt after President Anwar Sadat's assassination in 1981.
In 1987, the carrier was dispatched to the Persian Gulf, where Iraq and Iran were in the seventh year of a bloody war.
U.S. warships were escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers under the American flag, and one tanker hit a mine. Guadalcanal rushed to the gulf with a squadron of minesweeping helicopters, and helped escort the Kuwaiti ships in the ``tanker war.''
Once its crew even rescued an Iraqi pilot shot down during a raid against an Iranian oil terminal.
A Navy videotape of the rescue was withheld by the Pentagon - reportedly out of deference to the families of American sailors killed two months earlier when another Iraqi plane mistakenly attacked the frigate Stark, killing 37 crew members.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, America's archenemy four years later, showed thanks with two gifts - a huge bag of toffee-type candy for the crew and a rug, which for a time hung on a wall of the captain's mess.
The Guadalcanal went to the Mediterranean during Operation Desert Storm. Last year, it participated in U.S. operations off Bosnia and in Somalia.
As the ship's fate hangs between destruction in Norfolk or rebirth in New York, its 750-member crew will be reassigned to other ships.
The crew ``feels, as a group, a pretty elite bunch,'' said Sowa. `` ``They feel a part of history, a place in time. It's going to be bittersweet.''
by CNB