KEY WEST, Fla. — Aboard the Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, a massive World War II ship last used by the U.S. Air Force to track missiles and spacecraft, it’s anything but business as usual.
The decommissioned ship is being prepared for sinking Wednesday 7 miles off Key West to become one of the largest man-made reefs.
Explosives attached to the hull beneath water level will be detonated to open it for flooding, which should send it to the sea floor. The 17,000-ton, 523-foot-long ship will be sunk on a sandy bottom in about 140 feet of clear water.
“Don’t go to the bathroom. Don’t go get a beer. It should be under three minutes for the ship to fully deploy onto the bottom,” said Joe Weatherby, project organizer at Reefmakers, a Moorestown, N.J.-based company that specializes in acquiring, preparing and sinking craft to create artificial reefs.
The cost is about $8.6 million, from acquiring the ship to cleaning it. Officials in the Florida Keys expect it to pay dividends, up to $8 million in annual tourism-related revenue, mostly from divers going to look at the underwater spectacle.
