Looks like there is some activity on getting the Hoga out of Suisun Bay

City leaders look to move WWII tug to Arkansas

By Jake Sandlin - Arkansas Democrat-Gazette via the AP
Posted : Monday Jul 9, 2012 14:30:12 EDT

NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The Hoga, a surviving tugboat from the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, is back on North Little Rock Mayor Patrick Hays’ radar.

Hays said he is prepared to ask the Navy this month to approve a “wet tow,” or towing through ocean waters, to transport the historic tug to the city’s Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum on the Arkansas River’s north shore.

The Navy would first need to agree that the 71-year-old tug is seaworthy enough after planned renovations to the boat that Hays said are necessary to reduce the risk of sinking.

“We’re making steps, and we think they are positive ones,” said Hays, who held a fundraising committee meeting Thursday at his City Hall office. “We’re very hopeful this approach will give the Navy cause to permit that wet tow.”

The Hoga has National Historic Landmark status for its crew’s efforts during and after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It has been at Suisun Bay near San Francisco as part of the Navy’s Inactive Ships Program since 1996. The tug spent nearly 50 years after World War II as a fire boat for Oakland, Calif., under the name City of Oakland.

North Little Rock owns the Hoga, having beat out four other groups, including two in Honolulu, for the right to preserve the tugboat as a museum. The city obtained title to the Hoga from the Navy in July 2005.

Getting the Hoga to North Little Rock, however, has been the obstacle to Hays’ desire for the boat to join the World War II submarine Razorback as the city-owned museum’s main attractions.

Because of the Hoga’s age and structure, the Navy has said, the city would have to lift the Hoga onto a cradle that would sit on a barge for transport to New Orleans. A different tow would take it up the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers.

That requirement has presented the city with the problem of coordinating a big enough crane to lift the 100-foot boat onto a barge with having available a large-enough barge headed toward New Orleans.

“One of the objections the Navy has (to a wet tow) is that the Hoga itself has a single compartment along its bottom that, if some damage did occur, the entire boat would fill up with water,” Hays told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The cost for the cradle barge plan would likely be more than $1 million, Hays said, whereas a wet tow could cut that to $500,000 to $600,000.

A Hoga fundraising committee announced in December that it has raised “$350,000 to $400,000” in pledges and contributions, Hays said. Another $100,000 or more, he added, probably needs to be raised. Also available could be about $180,000 remaining from a City Council appropriation for the Hoga in October 2005.

“We don’t intend to spend any other funding than what’s been allocated or raised,” Hays said.

The city has someone in California, Hays said, who is devising a repair plan and an estimated cost to the city. The cost needs to be about $150,000, Hays said, to be feasible.

Greg Zonner, director of the city’s maritime museum next to the Main Street Bridge, said that would include building walls through the bottom of the boat to create separate compartments. The Hoga, he said, is “one big open area” underneath.

“The plan is to plate over those holes and make it watertight for five different compartments,” Zonner said Friday. “If we can weld a plate across the entryway into each compartment, that would basically solve that problem.”

Hays said he discussed the preliminary plan by phone Thursday afternoon with Capt. Chris Pietras, director of the Navy Inactive Ships Program. Hays said he has a draft of a written request ready if the repair cost isn’t out of reach.

A spokesman for Pietras said in a Friday morning email to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that the Navy is reviewing the city’s request but hasn’t made a decision. The statement added that the Navy is “still negotiating the removal deadline with the city.”

Pietras had asked in a letter to Hays two summers ago whether the city still had a desire to take possession of the Hoga.

“A very significant issue they have is closing down Suisun Bay,” Hays said. “They’d like to have the Hoga off their books by Sept. 30, which is the end of their fiscal year.”

With the Navy’s approval, Hays said, the tug could be moved from Suisun Bay for repairs by early August. The Hoga could then be ready for transit sometime in September at the earliest, he added.

Hays has said that, ideally, the Hoga would be at the maritime museum in time for a Pearl Harbor Day remembrance in December.

Hays has already said that he won’t seek re-election to a seventh term as mayor. His term ends Dec. 31.

Full article... http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/0...g-hoga-070912/

The museum's web site. There is a donate button-link on this page.
Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum

Hoga at Navsource...
http://www.navsource.org/archives/14/08146.htm

MARAD web site on the Hoga
http://www.marad.dot.gov/ships_shipp...story/Hoga.htm

This is alarming for me to see this article as I have been working for several years to get the bureaucracy here to get moving on this Tug..

The Hoga is the last floating US Navy vessel that was at Pearl Harbor as you well know.

She has been tied up to sinking ships in Suisun Bay near me, rotting away, parts being stolen for years.

She is the charge of the Arkansas Maritime Museum ( clinton ), but in the past they couldn't afford to move her there, and Pearl wants her but cant afford the move either.

Last January I contacted the Commander in charge of disposal of the reserve fleets across the country, all he could say was that "The Navy is Not going to cut her up".

She has to move soon as the fleet is being systematically disposed of in one way or another.

We have been working with CALTRANS and the Navy to try to get her awarded to the city of Oakland ( this used to be her name, she was a fire boat here ).

There is a transportation museum being built at the foot of the new bay
bridge, we have been trying to get her out of the water and on an appropriate cradle to be "restored" to a point where she can be maintained in that place.

We have one of the biggest floating cranes in the world here right now building the bridge which could do the lift onto a cradle.

We have several other Woban Class Tugs here to compliment her.

After seeing this article this morning I will point it out to the admin. here to see if we can redouble OUR efforts to keep her here .

I was working with a group called "Friends of Hoga" back in 1994-1995 that was trying to get enough money raised to get her back to Pearl. She had just been returned by the Port of Oakland back to the Navy and was in great shape.

The USS Missouri getting awarded to Pearl pretty much killed the Hoga's chances of going there.

It's a pity that she's been allowed to waste away these last 17 or so years...

It IS a pity, people have been stripping parts for years, there are literally tons of brass and bronze pump parts that are very attractive to the recycling thieves and other parts that are "souvenirs" easily removed.

I can't understand how the Navy to allow this Icon to decay like this.

A few years ago, two other Woban class were uncerimoniously cut up and sent to japan in little peices right in front of us ( Wenonah and Nokomis ) at Bay Ship and Yacht in Alameda after one of them sank at Treasure Island -
The wheels, binnacles and telegraphs still mounted as they were smashed by a big machine.

The same crane that plucked the sunken tug out of the bay is still here and could lift the Hoga onto a permanant cradle at the Transportation museum.

Insane

Such is life Tim, history and nostalgia falls by the wayside, as Congress and other government agencies vote themselves yet more pay raises and benefits---.

Perhaps we should sell THEM to Japan in little pieces---?

What a good idea---.

He He ....

How much for a pound of cheep pork worth over there any way ?

An update, good news....

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/new...os-mare-island

Good news if you live in Arkansas.

Foss made the tow to Mare Island yesterday.

Still not sure yet if they will barge or tow her to her new home.

I am going out in a few days to board and get pics.

There are two other Woban Class Tugs there as well, hope to get pics of them all.

Originally Posted by Tim B.

Good news if you live in Arkansas.

Good news for the Hoga, I should think?

We should think.

Hope for the best.

That's fantastic news! Just think how you'd bill that as a marketer! You have a piece of hardware from each end of the US's direct involvement in the war!

Andy

Can anyone shed light on why she has those two blue lights on the mast?
For being a fireboat? I'd have thought they would be red.

Maybe a Blue Light Special at K-Mart---?

What a good question...

A gent who served on her as a fireboat crewman PM'd me recently, perhaps he can answer this.

Originally Posted by Jerome Morris

Can anyone shed light on why she has those two blue lights on the mast?
For being a fireboat? I'd have thought they would be red.

In the marine industry blue lights are reserved for law enforcement etc. use. Very distinctive.

Flashing RED lights are navigationally significant, thus not available.

"Capt, I see a fast flashing red light ahead"

"Helmsman, turn Left"
"Board of Inquiry: Captain, why did you run your aircraft carrier aground?"