The fate of "Tucumcari" was sealed during salvage operations. Damage to ship was a result of the ship going hard aground due the poor seamanship of the new captain and further damage when an salvage crew pulled the ship off the reef. No damage to the ship took place when the coral behind the ship was partitaly blasted away by members of UDT-21. The damage was so severe that it was deemed uneconomical to repair, and "Tucumcari" was, accordingly, struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 7 November 1973. Subsequently transferred to the Naval Ship and Research Development Center at Annapolis, Maryland, she was used as a test hulk for structural evaluation and fire containment tests into the mid-1970s. She was finally scrapped in 1973.