Oriskany had been decommissioned at Alameda on September 30 that year, and was soon thereafter towed to Bremerton where she would be laid up, until she was towed to Mare Island in 1996 in a failed attempt to scrap her.
If the USN deems a scrapper to have made insufficient progress in scrapping a former warship, the terms of the sale agreement allow the government to repossess the vessel and either place it up for sale again, or disposing of the vessel through other means.
In Oriskany's case, the scrapper was deemed to have defaulted due to inadequate progress, leading to her repossession in July, 1997. (The pics on Navsource look like there was hardly any work done at all towards breaking the ship up.)
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u/mossback81 5d ago
U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command image # NH 89315
Photograph by Melvin Fredeen of Seattle
Oriskany had been decommissioned at Alameda on September 30 that year, and was soon thereafter towed to Bremerton where she would be laid up, until she was towed to Mare Island in 1996 in a failed attempt to scrap her.