OT: What is this ship in the Suisun Bay ghost fleet?

[Praetor]

Hi all, I have a bit of a mystery for you today. I was doing some reading about the National Defense Reserve Fleet, particularly those stored at Suisun Bay near Benicia, California. I knew that we had a great deal of American firepower in mothballs, but seeing the pictures really made it... well, real.

Anyway, as I was looking at pictures of the Suisun Bay fleet, which includes the USS Iowa as she awaits conversion to a museum ship, I discovered an usual vessel which currently sits at the end of the Iowa's row and I have absolutely no idea what it is. I found a few sites which list ships at Suisun Bay, but most are out of date and apparently this ship is a new addition.

Here are several photos, first a beautiful image of the 65 years young Iowa:


An overhead of the Iowa's row from Google:

The ship in question is the one at the upper left, opposite the Iowa. She has a rounded hull, no apparent conning tower, and what appears to be a helicopter landing platform at the top.

Side view, in which you can more clearly see the rounded structure. At one end there appears to be a ramp or hatch attached via some kind of cables, currently in an upright position.:


Two more views that I found, unfortunately not on the hatch side:



My only thought is that she's some kind of mobile dirigible hangar, although I don't know that any such ship ever existed, and news of it is certainly a shock to me. Would diribles even be able to take off horizontally from such a ship as this?

So my question to you, fellow BBSers, do any of you know what kind of ship she is, or possibly even what her name was before she was stricken?

 

[SonicRanger]

http://w3.the-kgb.com/dante/military/hmb1.html

 

[Praetor]

Ohhhh, thanks a million for that link! The mystery has been eating me up all day.

I had no idea that it had anything to do with the Glomar Explorer or Project Jennifer, although I did read Glomar Explorer was briefly docked there before being redeployed as a honest drilling platform.

And fascinating that it was used to house the Sea Shadow too. From what I've read the Sea Shadow is there now, so is she still inside HMB-1?

 

[Mysterion]

That's very interesting stuff.

 

[JNG]

And fascinating that it was used to house the Sea Shadow too. From what I've read the Sea Shadow is there now, so is she still inside HMB-1?

She's there in the row...just really stealthy.

 

[arch101]

Funny, the first thing I thought before scrolling down was "must be some kind of funky Glomar Explorer-esqe hardware or something" I ought to play the numbers today!