Icebreakers: Wind Class

[Brian James]

Improved Wind Class Icebreaker USS Glacier pictured at Scott Base, Antarctica in December 1960....She served in the first through fifteenth Operation Deep Freeze expeditions and was based at Lyttleton, NZ. Glacier was first Icebreaker to make her way through the frozen Bellingshausen Sea, and most of the topography in the area is named for her crew members. When built, Glacier had the largest capacity single armature DC motors ever installed on a ship. Glacier was capable of breaking ice up to 20 feet thick, and of continuous breaking of 4-foot thick ice at 3 knots...Following 29 Antarctic and 10 Arctic deployments, Glacier was decommissioned in 1987. She went under the control of the U.S. Maritime Administration, located in the National Defense Reserve Fleet, Suisun Bay, on the Sacramento River, California. The Glacier Society saved Glacier from the scrapyard in 2000, and planned to convert the her into a hospital or research vessel. However, on February 16th 2012 Glacier was sold for $146,726 to be broken up by ESCO Marine in Brownsville, Texas. Efforts to save the vessel from the breakers continued as she was taken to the former naval base at Mare Island, Vallejo, on April 17th 2012 for cleaning. Nevertheless, she was towed away to Brownsville, arriving on June 19th. A last-minute stay of execution was rejected, and MARAD ordered her scrapping to begin on July 2nd 2012.

[limeybiker]

What I would have given for a draft chit to her, or any of our Arctic Survey ships.

[Brian James]

Wind Class Icebreaker USS Glacier pictured returning from Antarctica, on entry to Port Lyttleton in 1964.