A Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility (NISMF) is a facility owned by the U.S. Navy as a holding facility for decommissioned naval vessels, pending determination of their final fate. All ships in these facilities are inactive, but some are still on the Naval Vessel Register, while others have been stricken from that Register.
The ships that have been stricken from the NVR are disposed of by one of several means, including foreign military sale transfer, ship donation as a museum or memorial, domestic dismantling and recycling, artificial reefing, or use as a target vessel. Others are retention assets for possible future reactivation, which have been laid up for long-term preservation and are maintained with minimal maintenance (humidity control, corrosion control, flood/fire watch) should they need to be recalled to active duty.
There are NISMFs in Philadelphia, PA, Pearl Harbor, HI and Bremerton, WA, operated by the Naval Sea Systems Command's Inactive Ships Management Office (INACTSHIPOFF) in Portsmouth, Virginia.
In addition, parts of Norfolk Naval Shipyard and Puget Sound Naval Shipyard are designated for the storage of inactive nuclear powered vessels.
Inactive ship facilities in Suisun Bay, James River and Beaumont, Texas are owned and operated by the Maritime Administration under the Department of Transportation.
Famous quotes containing the words naval, ship, maintenance and/or facility:
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941Ma date that will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“Small pity for him!—He sailed away
From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay,—”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.”
—George Grosz (1893–1959)
“Virtue rejects facility to be her companion.... She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)