WW2 US Veteran Is To Be Scuttled

A star of the screen and WW2 Troopship, she's off to Florida Keys for the final curtain.

A 'Ghost Ship' from the US Navy's reserve fleet laid up in the James River is to be sunk as an artificial reef.

The 63 year old vessel, the GENERAL HOYT S. VANDENBERG will be towed to Colonnas Shipyard in Norfolk where she will be stripped of hazardous materials. Once this is completed she will be taken to Florida Keys and scuttled.

WW2 veterans will doubtless shed a tear for their old ship, who started life as the USNS GEN. HARRY TAYLOR as a troopship in 1944. She was launched on the 10th October 1943 by Kaiser Co., Inc., Yard 3, Richmond, Calif. She will be remembered by men who returned on her after the fighting in Europe had ended, making two transatlantic trips with US forces on their way home.

Throughout the fifties she was employed carrying troops and also refugees, ferrying thousands in the Hungarian Relief programme to Australia in 1957.

She transferred to the US Airforce in 1961 and converted as an instrument ship and was given her current name.

In 1996 and 1997 Sea Star Productions filmed the movie Virus for Universal Studios, Directed by John Bruno and starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Sutherland, and the GENERAL HOYT S. VANDENBERG as the ship possessed by an alien life form.

There are about 60 ships in the James River Reserve Fleet, most are earmarked for scrapping.