He suggested that age played a role in the ship’s breakage. “The problem is, we have an 80-year-old ship that was meant to serve about 25 years, and she served us honorably,” he said. ‘Was she meant to be a museum ship? That was never in the plan. We make it the plan because of what it symbolizes.”
Mayor Byron W. Brown, who also spoke at the press conference, said Buffalo was “deeply concerned about the condition” of the ship. “This is an important part of our US naval heritage,” he said.
The Sullivans, which was commissioned in 1943, is one of four surviving Fletcher-class destroyers left in the world, according to the park. The ship is 376 feet long and was crewed by 310 sailors.
Named after five brothers who died in the Battle of Guadalcanal, the destroyer left Pearl Harbor in 1944 and served in the Pacific for the remainder of World War II. According to the US Navy, The Sullivans bombed airfields on Iwo Jima, defended against Japanese air raids, searched for submarines, rescued American sailors and Japanese merchant seamen, and supported the invasion of Okinawa.
The ship also saw action during the Korean War, supporting carriers in their attack on North Korean supply lines. The ship received nine Battle Stars for its service in World War II and two for the Korean War, according to the Navy.
The ship was the first Navy ship to be named after more than one person, the park said. It was decommissioned in 1965 and donated to Buffalo in 1977, where it has been a landmark for decades.
In 2018, the ship began sinking due to a crack in the hull, according to a local news station, WKBW-TV. The park ran a fundraiser to pay for the repairs and had raised $1 million by the end of 2021.