Museum Visit to the Scrapping of USS GreenfishFolks,Several months, many letters, emails and phone calls after the note below was written, the scrapper reneged on his agreement. Even though we had an agreement on the price of the material well above its scrap metal value, he decided to melt everything down. We never received an explanation why. We were obviously very disappointed. We did collect many more pictures that document the boat over the few days of dismantling we observed. It is fascinating to see the internal structures of the boat normally only visible during construction. We plan on updating this page to include many of these photos.
Rich Pekelney
29 May 01, Ver 1.31 A very basic history of Greenfish/Amazonas: She was Electric Boat built and launched in Dec 45. USS Greenfish was commissioned in Jun 46. She was upgraded to a Guppy II in 1948, and a Guppy III in 1961. Decommissioned by US and transferred to Brazil in Dec 1973, she was renamed Amazonas. She was decommissioned by the Brazilians in 1993. The boat served a couple of years as a museum boat in their national naval museum, but was replaced in that role in 1997. For 3 years a group in another Brazilian port was trying to raise money to create a new museum with her as the centerpiece, but this effort failed. The boat was then sold to the scrapper in Feb 2001 and they began dismantling almost immediately. Below is the list of equipment identified 21 and 22 May 2001 that we hope to recover for the museums from Greenfish/Amazonas. N.B. The boat's owner has been scrapping the boat since Feb, we only found them and made contact with them in April. USS Greenfish veteran Harry Nystrom and I were able to arrange a trip in less than two weeks but much of the ship was already gone. Beware when looking at this list that there are a lot of potential problems in removal, packaging and shipping.
Richard Pekelney
Recoverable Equipment List From Greenfish/Amazonas:
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