USAMP Major General Wallace F. Randolph
 Major General Wallace F. Randolph 1942 |
|
| period of service |
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|
|---|---|
| Launch: | June 2, 1942 |
| Commissioning: | 1942 |
| Decommissioning: | 1951 |
| Renaming: | Nausett ACM-15 (1951)
Thunderbolt (1961) |
| Fate: | Sunk as an artificial reef in 1986 |
| Technical specifications | |
| Displacement: | 920 ts |
| Length: | 58 meters |
| Width: | 11 meters |
| Draft: | 3.7 meters |
| Speed: | 12 knots |
| Crew: | 135 |
The Major General Wallace F. Randolph (also MG Randolph ) was a minelayer of the United States Army . It was delivered to the US military in 1942 by the Marietta Manufacturing Company (West Virginia). After its decommissioning, civilian missions followed until the ship was sunk as an artificial reef off Florida in March 1986 .
Military history
The USAMP (United States Army Mine Planter) MG Randolph was launched on June 2, 1942 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia , where it was one of 16 ships delivered to the US Army by the Marietta Manufacturing Company .
Their job was to lay defensive minefields for the Army Coastal Artillery Corps off the east coast.
After the United States Navy took over the mine-laying task in 1949, the MG Randolph also became their property in 1951. Renamed to USS Nausett (ACM-15) , the ship was in reserve in Green Cove Springs (Florida) until 1960 , without ever being put into service again.
On July 1, 1960, the Nausett was finally discharged from the Navy, cannibalized and sold to "Caribbean Enterprises".
Later use
It was later used by Florida Power & Light as a test platform for research into lightning strikes. This is how it got its last name: Thunderbolt (lightning bolt).
Finally, the ship was sunk on March 6, 1986 as part of the Florida Keys Artificial Reef Association Project, about four miles south of Marathon in the Florida Keys . As an attraction for divers, it is now relatively intact and upright on a sandy bottom at a depth of around 40 meters.
Web links
- Article about the wreck (Engl.)
- USAMP Major General Wallace F. Randolph at navsource.org
Individual evidence
- ↑ List of ships built by MMC ( Memento from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Explanations for the renaming
Coordinates: 24 ° 39 ′ 40 ″ N , 81 ° 6 ′ 11 ″ W.