Friday, February 25, 2000
Portune wants USS Cincinnati submarine to resurface here
BY ROBERT ANGLEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnati Councilman Todd Portune wants a submarine to decorate the city's riverfront.
On Thursday, he asked City Council to support bringing the decommissioned USS Cincinnati to the city and turning it into a museum and memorial.
“There will not be a capital cost to the city,” Mr. Portune said. “Here is our opportunity to bring excitement to our Cincinnati riverfront.”
However, a Mason resident who is head of the U.S. Navy League, said moving the submarine here could cost millions.
Don Misura, a Mason resident and national director of the U.S. Navy League, headed a 1995 effort to bring it here and turn it into a museum. But Thursday he said it would be too expensive.
“They gave me an estimate of $10 million” in 1995, he said, adding that the boat was cut in half to remove the nuclear reactor and would now have to be “dragged by its nose through the Panama Canal” to bring it here.
Mr. Misura said the interior had been stripped for parts; and in a tour four years ago, he found it “with nothing inside.”
Mr. Portune said the submarine could be put on display as a memorial to veterans and a floating museum similar to ones in Pittsburgh and Baltimore.
“It's acquisitioning something very, very beneficial,” Mr. Portune said.
Launched Feb. 19, 1977, the Cincinnati, a nuclear-pow ered sub, was commissioned into the Navy June 10, 1978. Built by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co., the Cincinnati was the Navy's sixth nuclear-powered, fast-attack submarine. It cost $168 million.
The Cincinnati was decommissioned Dec. 8, 1994, a victim of defense cuts at the end of the Cold War.
Mr. Misura said the Cincin nati is at a shipyard in Puget Sound, Wash.
The Department of Navy allows decommissioned ships and boats to be transferred to cities and nonprofit agencies if proof of financing for transportation, refurbishing and operations for at least five years can be provided.
Council voted unanimously for city staff to make an application to the Navy for the sub.
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