MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine Navy to auction decommissioned ships

The ARA Suboficial Castillo sloop has been replaced by the newer French-built OPVs

The Argentine Navy has announced it will auction seven vessels that have already been decommissioned, many of which had been unoperational since 2013, it was reported.

The lot consists of the former tugboats ARA Chulupi, ARA Mocovi, ARA Calchaqui, ARA Chiquillan and ARA Ona, in addition to the sloop ARA Suboficial Castillo and the transport unit ARA Cabo de Hornos.
Bids are accepted through the COMPR.AR site until August 12 at 09.30 am local time, the Navy said.

These vessels were decommissioned by Decree 762/20 signed on September 23, 2020. At the time of determining their decommissioning, it was expressly mentioned that since 2013, in some cases, several ships were in poor condition or just non-operational.

The tugboats had served at the Puerto Belgrano and Mar del Plata Naval Bases. They are to be replaced by units soon to be delivered by the Tandanor shipyard, which has orders for 12 tugboats.

Meanwhile, the ARA Suboficial Castillo is a Cherokee class sloop built in 1944 for the US Navy where she served under the name of USS Takelma (ATF-113) in the Pacific war theater during World War II and through the wars in Korea and Vietnam. It reached the Argentine Navy in 1993. It was assigned to the Maritime Patrol Division, performing maritime control tasks and even participating in summer Antarctic campaigns. She has been replaced by the French-built Bouchard class OPVs. The boat was named after Marine Julio Saturnino Castillo, fallen in the South Atlantic war on June 14, 1982.

The ARA Cabo de Hornos was delivered in 1979 by the shipyard Príncipe, Menghi y Penco. It carried Super Etendard aircraft from France to Argentina between 1981 and 1982, and troops and vehicles to the former Yugoslavia as a part of the international UNPROFOR mission.