The United States Navy maintains a number of its ships as part of a reserve fleet, often called the "Mothball Fleet". While the details of the activity have changed several times, the basics are constant; keep the ships afloat and sufficiently working as to be reactivated quickly in an emergency. In some cases, for instance, at the outset of the Korean War, many ships were successfully reactivated, at a considerable savings in time and money; but the usual fate of ships in the reserve fleet is to become too old and obsolete to be of any use, at which point they are sent for scrapping.

Around 1912, the Atlantic Reserve Fleet and the Pacific Reserve Fleet were established as reserve units, still operating ships, but on a greatly reduced schedule. After World War II, with hundreds of ships no longer needed by a peacetime Navy, each fleet consisted of a number of groups corresponding to storage sites, each adjacent to a shipyard for easier reactivation.

The groups of the Atlantic Fleet were at Boston, Charleston, Florida(?), New London, New York, Norfolk, Philadelphia, and Texas?. The groups of the Pacific Reserve Fleet were at Alameda, Bremerton, Columbia River, Long Beach, Mare Island, San Diego, San Francisco, Stockton, and Tacoma.

As of 2004, the administrative organization is known as the Navy Inactive Fleet, and is headquartered at Portsmouth, Virginia.

Merchant ships held in reserve are managed as part of the separate National Defense Reserve Fleet within MARAD. Several of its sites, such as at Suisun Bay in California, are also used to store regular Navy ships.

External link

• Records of the Reserve Fleet (http://www.history.navy.mil/ar/romeo/reserve.htm)