USS Recruit (TDE-1) (San Diego)

USS Recruit
Gearing Drive
San Diego, CA 92101

USS Recruit (TDE-1), a landlocked "dummy" training ship.
She was built to scale, exactly one-third the size of a destroyer escort, and commissioned 27 July 1949, the Recruit served for 18 years as the only landlocked commissioned ship in the Navy.
"Sailing" on a sea of concrete at the Naval Training Center in San Diego, California, she trained over 50,000 new recruits yearly in the fundamentals of shipboard drills and procedures with the use of standard deck and bridge gear found on all vessels, including lifelines, accommodation ladder, signal halyards, searchlights, engine order telegraph, and helm, but not engines or screws.

She was "decommissioned" in March 1967 but, continued in her training role until the base closure in 1997.
Now the Recruit can be veiwed up close by the public as a historical landmark in a park setting, across from a strip mall of course. ~phiz 10/14/2007