PEARL HARBOR — Hawai'i finally has an aircraft carrier. But it could be sunk in a military exercise.

At 820 feet, the ship is smaller than the full-fledged flattop that U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye, D-Hawai'i, has sought to be based here.

The mini carrier — an amphibious assault ship — comes with no crew, no aircraft and certainly no multimillion-dollar economic impact.

The USS Belleau Wood is the latest and largest addition to the Pearl Harbor ghost fleet, a little-publicized but very visible collection of decommissioned Navy ships that are sold to other countries, mothballed for possible re-use, headed for the scrap pile or designated to become targets in "sink exercises."

Touring the Middle Loch harbor — where 39 ships, barges and various other craft are stored — is a nostalgic and sometimes spooky journey through Navy and maritime history.

"It's kind of eerie. You think back to the times you were on the ship, and you think of all the people, in the passageways and mess deck, talking story," said Luis Gaytan, a marine inspector for the facility who from 1995 to 1997 was aboard the Cushing, a destroyer now in the ghost fleet.

"It's a feeling you can't really explain. If you are on there by yourself, it's an emotional feeling you get."

Gaytan said a sailor was killed on the destroyer by a steam leak.

"There are always stories that if you go on there, sometimes you hear noises. You hear voices that are sometimes left behind," the 'Ewa Beach man said. "It seems like the spirits are down there and haven't gone away."

Walter Leonard, the director of the Navy inactive ship facility, remembers the Navy skipper who visited, twice, over the years to see his former ship, the destroyer USS Hoel.

"He just wanted to come out and see his ship and make sure we were taking care of it," Leonard said.

The ghost fleet, near Pearl City Peninsula, is visible to anyone driving makai on the H-2 Freeway. Waipahu High School is close by.

Leonard said people will call or stop at the front gate to ask about the ships, which are off-limits to the public.

"(They ask) are we part of Pearl Harbor? What are these ships? Are they active ships?" he said.

The Navy facility, which has a fiscal 2006 budget of $3.5 million, is one of three remaining boneyards for decommissioned vessels. Leonard said the others are in Bremerton, Wash., and Philadelphia.

"There used to be a lot more," he said. "There used to be one in Guam, one in Norfolk, Va., and many others. But as our inventory (of ships) has gotten less and less, we've closed a lot of them."

INCREDIBLE HULKS

The Middle Loch facility, which has been renamed four times since Leonard started working there in 1967, is now known as the Inactive Ships On-Site Maintenance Office.

It was created after World War II, when the Navy suddenly had a surplus of drydocks and ships in such places as Pearl Harbor, Guam and the Philippines.

Retired carriers go to Bremerton, which has extra-deep draft, Leonard said. Middle Loch is about 30 feet deep where the Belleau Wood is tied up.

The ship contingent includes a cruiser, two destroyers, a destroyer tender, a combat store ship, an amphibious transport ship, two amphibious cargo ships, a dock landing ship, three tank landing ships, an amphibious assault ship and a Coast Guard cutter.
Additionally, there are smaller service craft and barges.

The Spruance-class destroyer Fletcher, a Pearl Harbor fixture for more than two decades, is tied up with the destroyer Cushing and cruiser Valley Forge.

The House of Representatives passed legislation in December to transfer the Fletcher to Pakistan; the Cushing will set sail for Turkey.

The Coast Guard cutter Yocona started life as the Navy vessel Seize in 1944, in 1945 arrived in Pearl Harbor towing three pontoon bridges, and later that year took fire and returned it on the Yangtze River in China.

The longest stay has been by the YRDH-6, a 151-foot by 35-foot non-self-propelled hull workshop that arrived in 1946, and remains in use as that today.

Ships that might go back into service are sealed and a dehumidification system on board keeps the interior humidity down to about 40 percent.

Outside, a small amount of current is used for cathodic protection to keep down hull deterioration.

Most of the ships are moored in twos and threes by heavy chains connected to hurricane-proof anchors driven into the sea floor.

Maintaining them isn't a lot of work.

"But removing the equipment off them is," Leonard said, "(and so is) rigging them for tow when they go out, accepting them when they come in."

Transformers with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are removed, as are hazardous materials such as mercury, freon and fuel.

Sailors from Pearl Harbor scavenge electronics, parts and even lockers and chairs for other ships.

HAUNTINGLY QUIET

Many of the contracted workers — the number ranges from 70 to 140 depending on workload — are former Navy. Eight civil service employees also work at the facility.

Some workers maintain that it takes time to get used to the dead quiet of a big ship that usually bustles with people and a lot of commotion.

Regarding any ghosts that may reside in the old ships, Joseph Galiki said, "I haven't met one yet."

The 43-year-old Halawa man, a ship maintenance leader who has worked on the inactive ships for 20 years, recently was working on the Belleau Wood, which came into Middle Loch on Nov. 16.

The carrier in 2004 deployed to the Persian Gulf with helicopters and AV-8B Harrier jump jets. More than 60 combat sorties were flown off its flight deck.

In 1992, landing craft and helicopters from the ship delivered trucks, bulldozers, portable toilets, water purification equipment and food to victims of Hurricane Iniki on Kaua'i.

The flight deck now is empty except for an anchor. The island, or superstructure, normally the nerve center of many watchful eyes, is devoid of people, flags and pennants. Once swarming with aircraft, the hangar bay — longer than a football field — is vacant, as is a mess hall with its red metal chairs and formica-topped tables.

The fate of the Belleau Wood, called the Big Dog, could be a sinking. A handful of workers recently were toiling five decks down from the main deck in the forward engine room, cutting out sections of lubrication piping so the system could be pressure-washed to remove even small amounts of oil for environmental reasons.

"It's a lot of piping. The system is huge," said John Viloria, 44, of Kapolei, a ship's maintenance foreman.

Anything that could float away — paper, chairs, cushions, a leftover jacket — also was being removed.

FINAL SALUTES

Rim of the Pacific naval exercises, a multinational effort held biennially off Hawai'i, are expected to take place in late June and July. In 2004, seven nations, 40 ships, 18,000 military personnel and 100 aircraft participated. The destroyer Decatur was among ships sunk during the exercise.

Plans for this year's RimPac are still being formulated, officials said.

Leonard said the Belleau Wood won't go back into service, and either will be scrapped or sunk.

Despite such fate, inactive ships sometimes get a final chance at glory — on the big screen.

For "Tora! Tora! Tora!" a tugboat was positioned behind a mothballed destroyer and in the movie it appeared that steam was coming out of the destroyer's stacks.

In the more recent "Pearl Harbor," diesel fuel was set afire in drums beneath a hatch to make it appear that a ship was on fire, Leonard said.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.