Dunno source, via http://www.fas.org
Dunno source, via http://www.diseno-art.com
Sea Shadow
IMO Pennant Mark : IX-529
Build : 1985 on Lockheed Martin’s Redwood City Facility, California in the USA, nr ??
You are not really supposed to see this ship, she is supposed to be highly secret! And besides being for selective eyes only, which she clearly isn’t anymore, she is stealthy!! Yeah, she is supposed to be invisible, for RADAR that is……anyway: she was build in 1985 to test stealth technology and a load of other things, all highly secret & hush-hush of course. In 1993 she was pushed out of the closet and the public got a first peek at her. Now she is redundant and awaiting her faith, probably being donated to a Maritime Museum off some kind.
Dunno source, via http://www.diseno-art.com
Btw: she is a SWATH, Small Water Plane Area Twin Hull: below the water are submerged twin hulls, each with a propeller and that makes her remarkably stable in rough seas.
Dunno source, via http://www.fas.org
Apparantly she was the inspiration to the villains stealthy ship in the James Bond movie “Tomorrow never dies”.
I think they should have kept her secret, would have saved the world of this ugly monster.
And don’t you agree that are more than a few similarities to one of the old monsters of the “seas”: iron-clad CSS Virginia??
Image by Andy Simmons, via http://www.ans-graphics.com
And this is one of her descendants:
USS Freedom
Pennant nr : LCS-1
Picture from Reuters Pictures, via http://www.daylife.com
Thanx to Christina (Bowsprite) for the tip.
Wanna read more about the monster: here on gCaptain or do a Google.
