Continuity Fleet

[Brickmuppet]

Long ago in my college library I stumbled across an oblique reference to a cold war concept called the "Continuity Fleet". It involved a large number of attack transports that was intended to be kept at sea, with blue and gold crews apparently, bouncing around in the southern ocean.

The vessels were to have construction equipment, food, medical supplies, water purification equipment, and (I assume) certain vital bits of infrastructure like transformers or the like.

The idea was that after a nuclear war (or hellacious natural disaster I suppose) the continuity fleet would sail north and help rebuild the U.S.

Does anyone know anything about this, or if it was given any thought beyond the most vague concept and were specific ship designs proposed?

I'm particularly curious what the Civil Defense Corps (or whoever was contemplating this) thought would be necessary to rebuild the U.S. after armageddon.

 

[Dilandu]

I heard about this concept too. YouROKer mentioned it once.

 

[Hood]

There are some brief mentions here about the designs proposed in the USNI Proceedings article, published in 1984. I presume this is the concept you are talking about?
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/ship-profiles.3714/#post-39080 and https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/ship-profiles.3714/#post-417295

 

[Brickmuppet]

OK, yes I'm pretty sure that's what I had in mind, although this was considerably later than I had imagined it was proposed. (I assumed it had to be late '50s / early'60s).

This was not the article itself, but was in a magazine and was referencing it. It must have a Proceedings letter commenting on the article itself.

So it was a proposal and not a formal study and certainly no actual requirements for ships or their cargo were issued then (though the author was a naval architect, so the ship that has made the rounds was probably a reasonable one for the purpose).

Thanks!