RV Flip

The research vessel RV Flip (Floating Instrument Platform) is the only vessel in the world capable of shifting from horizontal to vertical position in the middle of the ocean. You can find a video of the process here

At 108 meters long and weighing 700 tons, RV Flip is, strictly speaking, not a ship at all, but a research platform that can be deployed for oceanographic research. Designed by scientists at Scripps’s Marine Physical Laboratory, FLIP was operated by Scripps Oceanography for the U.S. Navy.

Engineers designed it to be able to move to a vertical position with 90 degrees straight, so that the front of the ship at the top is 17 meters high (i.e. a 5-storey building high) while at the bottom is submerged 91 meters long, i.e. that most of the ship is submerged underwater. Which helps the ship’s stability and resistance to waves, the transformation process takes about 30 minutes, in which the seawater is pumped into huge tanks in the back of the ship, which makes it sink into the water to become the ship in a vertical position, and this ship is considered one of the most important ships in the field of scientific research of seas and oceans.

When in service, Flip was normally docked with Scripps’s fleet in San Diego Bay. It could be towed to out to sea in its horizontal position and then “flipped” 90 degrees so that 300 feet of its length are under water. This turns FLIP into a “spar buoy,” a tall, thin, weighty structure designed to be uniquely stable and resistant to wave motion. When Flip..flips…everything inside flips with it, including bunks. That’s incredible.

FLIP was built in 1962 to help study long-range sound propagation for submarine warfare, but the platform has since supported research in geophysics, meteorology, physical oceanography, and other scientific fields. Its unique appearance and method of deployment made it a worldwide curiosity and the subject of many documentaries.

Flip was retired in 2017, but plans to scrap her have been…scrapped. She was purchased by DEEP in 2024 and plans are to overhaul and modernise her.