Mothball

Mothball (pronounced moth-ball or mawth-bawl (US))

(1) A small ball of naphthalene or sometimes of camphor for placing in closets or other storage areas to repel moths from clothing, blankets, etc.

(2) To put into storage or reserve; inactivate.

(3) Inactive; unused; stored away.

(4) A form of drug abuse where users inhale or ingest mothballs.  Users may hallucinate, feel a distorted sense of time and space, or experience rapidly changing emotions.  Side-effects include nausea, vomiting, slurred speech, headache, coordination loss, wheezing, and rashes.

1891: A compound word, (used also as also moth-ball & moth ball) used to describe the naphthalene ball stored among fabrics to keep off moths, the construct being moth + ball.  Moth (nocturnal lepidopterous insect) was from the Middle English motthe, from the Old English moþþe & moððe (mohðe in dialectical Northumbrian) and was a common Germanic word.  Related were the Old Norse motti, the Middle Dutch motte, the Dutch mot, & the German Motte (moth).  It may have been related to the Old English maða (maggot) or from the root of midge.  Until the sixteenth century, the word was used mostly to refer to the larva and usually in reference to devouring woollen fabrics, hence the translation (King James Version 1611) of Matthew 6:20 as “But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.”  Words for the adult moth in the Middle English included the mid-fourteenth century flindre which was cognate with the Dutch vlinder (butterfly).  As a literal description, the phrase "moth-eaten” was attested from the late fourteenth century, the figurative sense noted a few years later.  The related forms in the Romance languages are borrowings from the Germanic.  Ball was from the Middle English bal, ball & balle, from the Old English beall, beal & bealla (“round object, compact spherical body" and also "the spherical or similar object used in a game" dating from circa 1200) or the Old Norse bǫllr (a ball), evidenced by the diminutive bealluc (testicle), all from the Proto-Germanic balluz & ballô (ball), from the primitive Indo-European bholn- (bubble), from bhel (to blow, inflate, swell).  It was cognate with the Old Saxon ball, the Flemish bal, the Dutch bal, the Old High German bal & ballo, the German Ball (ball) & Ballen (bale). 

When used as a simple noun, mothballs are usually referred in the plural, that’s how they’re purchased and used.  A mothball is a small ball of chemical pesticide (typically naphthalene) and deodorant placed in or around clothing and other articles susceptible to damage from mold or moth larvae in order to protect them from this damage, the process being process is “mothballing” or to “mothball”.  In the pre-synthetic fibre era they were more widely used and the advent of modern chemical sprays has seen use diminish further.

Their cheapness and toxicity has seen them used also to repel snakes, squirrels, bats and other rodents, despite many jurisdictions making the use unlawful and a number of studies documenting the health risks to humans and other wildlife.  They’re also often suggests as a way for gardeners to eradicate snails but evidence of efficacy is only anecdotal although it does appear the use may cause at least illness in domestic pets.  As a verb, "mothball" is used metaphorically to mean "to stop work on an idea, plan, or job, but leaving things in such a state that work can later resume.

Mothballing

Mothballed WWII US Navy destroyers, 1947.

When the military, typically after longer conflicts, have too much capital equipment (tanks, ships, aircraft etc) but are, for a variety of reasons, unwilling to re-allocate, sell or consign the surplus to scrap, the storage process is called mothballing.  With airframes or land-vehicles, this involves hermetically sealing the structure and storing them in remote places with low humidity and rainfall (such as the Arizona desert).  For an admiralty, surface and underwater vessels are more of a challenge given they’re usually moored in salt-water.

The Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet, interned at Scapa Flow, 28 November 1918.

Mothballed ships made in the pre-atomic age (pre 1945) are also used to provide low-background steel for use in nuclear medicine experimental physics which demands shielding material which is extremely weakly radioactive (emitting less than present-day background radiation).  Steel manufactured after the first atmospheric nuclear explosions reflect the higher ambient level of radioactivity that fallout has caused.  Some of the capital ships of the Imperial German Navy’s High Seas fleet, scuttled in 1919, were an important source of such steel although, with atmospheric nuclear testing no longer undertaken, background radiation has decreased to near natural levels, so the need for low-background steel in medical machines now not usually needed.  However, for the equipment used in experimental physics where the most extreme sensitivity is required, the pre-1945 steel is still used.

AMARG, March 2015.

The 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (309th AMARG or, in military slang, “the Boneyard”) is a United States Air Force (USAF) aircraft and missile storage and maintenance facility in Tucson, Arizona, part of the Davis–Monthan Air Force Base.  For decades, AMARG, the largest facility of its type on the planet, has stored thousand of airframes in various states of repair, it’ location advantageous because of a low-humidity climate which minimises rust and corrosion and ground that is geologically stable and sufficiently hard so even the heaviest aircraft don’t sink into the soil.

Mothballed Boeing B-52s at AMARG, 1991.

In the 1990s, under the terms of the START I treaty, (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty; a 1991 bilateral treaty between the US & USSR and successor to SALT I & II (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks 1972 & 1979)), 365 of the USAF’s mothballed B-52 Stratofortress bombers stored at the Arizona boneyard were literally chopped into pieces, initially with a 13,000 (4850 kg) pound guillotine supported on a mobile crane.  The big blade was effective but brutish and the team soon switched to Husqvarna diamond-tipped fire-rescue  saws, the added precision less destructive on the surrounding equipment which afforded AMARC the opportunity to cannibalise the airframes for salvageable parts.

Wreckage of disabled B-52s of the US Air Force's (USAF) former Strategic Air Command (SAC) left in situ to permit satellite observation for purpose of verification by Russian Federation (successor-state to the USSR), 1994.

After the destruction was done, the wreckage was left in place for two months.  Under the START I terms which defined the verification process, both sides had sixty days to verify the other side’s conformity with the agreement using satellite over-flys.  Like most agreements between strategic adversaries, SALT & START operated under the principle of "trust but verify", the second element of that included because nobody believed in the first.  

Broadside (9 x 16” guns) from the USS Iowa.

The US Navy's four Iowa-class battleships were mothballed and re-commissioned several times between 1948 and 1991.  Launched between 1942-1944, their last period of active service was 1981-1991 as part of the Reagan Administration’s 600-ship navy policy.  Such was the cultural significance of the big battleships, although they were stricken from the Naval Vessel Register, instead of (as usual) being scrapped, all were donated for use as museum ships, the last in 2004.  They were big ships but not as wide as some of the Super Dreadnoughts (the beam of the Iowas about the same as the last battleship ever launched, the Royal Navy's HMS Vanguard (1946-1960)), the dimension dictated by the need to pass through the Panama Canal.