USS Yorktown (CG-48)

Yorktown 2002 in Caribbean waters
Overview
Order	April 28, 1980
Keel laying	October 19, 1981
Launch	17th January 1983
1. Period of service
Commissioning	4th July 1984
Decommissioning	December 3, 2004
Whereabouts	is dismantled
Technical specifications
displacement	9750 tons
length	173 meters
width	16.80 meters
Draft	10.2 meters
crew	24 officers, 340 sailors
drive	Four gas turbines, two shafts with a total of 80,000 hp
speed	30+ knots
Armament	2 launchers for anti-ship missiles, 2 triple torpedo launchers, 2 guns 127 mm, 2 twin-arm launchers for missiles

The USS Yorktown (CG-48) was a guided missile cruiser of the United States Navy . The ship, which belongs to the Ticonderoga class, was in service from 1984 to 2004. The Yorktown was stationed her entire service time on the Atlantic coast of the United States and in addition to the Atlantic also sailed the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Black Seas and the European Arctic Ocean.

Starting in 1996, technologies for automating and networking many systems in the Smart Ship Project were installed on Yorktown on a trial basis .

technology

More about the technology can be found in the article on the class under Ticonderoga class (cruiser)

As a Ticonderoga-class cruiser , the fully laden ship displaced 9,750 tn.l. Water and was 173 meters long with a width of 16.8 meters. The ship was powered by four gas turbines LM-2500 from General Electric and was able to speeds of 30 knots reach.

The armament consisted of two double-arm launchers Mk 26 for RIM-67 standard Missile-2 anti-aircraft missiles and ASROC missile torpedoes . AGM-84 Harpoon anti -ship missiles could be shot down from two quadruple launchers on the aft platform . In addition, the Yorktown had two 5 " Mark 45 lightweight guns , two Phalanx close-in-weapon systems (missile defense close defense) and two torpedo tubes for torpedoes of the Mark 46 type .

The main mission of the ship was to provide air defense for the aircraft carriers. For this, the Yorktown was able to fall back on the very powerful Aegis combat system, which allows seamless 360 ° surveillance over a range of around 200 nautical miles thanks to four phased array antennas around the ship.

Name and insignia

Insignia of Yorktown

The ship is named after the Battle of Yorktown , in which George Washington defeated the British forces under Lord Charles Cornwallis during the American War of Independence in 1781 . The cruiser is the fifth ship to be named USS Yorktown ; Among other things, the name was used for two aircraft carriers that were used in World War II.

A griffin is depicted on the insignia, intended to express the courage and perseverance of Washington's troops. The cross on the shield is intended to mark the beginning of the telescopic sights for ship artillery, which were first used on board the second Yorktown . The arrowheads refer to the third and fourth Yorktown , both aircraft carriers, and the current Yorktown's missile launch capabilities . The shield is encircled by 19 stars, which represent the 19 Battle Star battle awards from the four previous Yorktowns .

history

Construction and commissioning

Anderson (right) and Warner look at a group of men wearing Colonial Navy of Massachusetts uniforms at the commissioning ceremony

The Yorktown was the second unit of the Ticonderoga class and was commissioned on April 28, 1980. The construction was carried out by Ingalls Shipbuilding . On October 19, 1981, the keel was laid at the Group's shipyard in Pascagoula , Mississippi, and after a construction period of 15 months, it was launched. This was followed by the equipment with weapon systems, test drives and a short lay-time in the shipyard, in which the last weak points that became apparent during the sea tests were eliminated. The cost of building and equipping the ship was over $ 1 billion. Originally, the Yorktown was classified as a destroyer during the planning phase, then, in January 1980, before the contract was awarded, it was reclassified as a guided missile cruiser when the enormous construction costs and the enormous capability of the Aegis combat system became apparent.

The ship was christened by Mary Mathews, a woman from Yorktown , Virginia . The Navy describes Mary and her husband Nick as "prominent residents and philanthropists in the Hampton Roads area " and further as "true friends of the Navy and Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, " which is why they were selected to christen the cruiser. On July 4th, 1984 the cruiser was officially commissioned by the Navy. In addition to Mathews, Virginia Senator John Warner spoke during the ceremony, while Secretary of the Navy John Lehman and Congressman Herbert H. Bateman were also present.

Yorktown's first homeport was Norfolk , Virginia, and its first in command was Captain Carl A. Anderson.

Calls

Black Sea cruises

The first deployment of the Yorktown began in August 1985 and lasted six months by default until April 1986. The ship sailed as part of the carrier battle group around the USS Saratoga (CV-60) during this mission in the Black Sea and off the coast of Libya in the Mediterranean. When Libya declared the Great Syrte its territorial waters, the Navy carried out several operations in those waters to show that the United States did not recognize the claim to the waters. After a Libyan missile battery, which had already attacked Navy aircraft several times, was destroyed by carrier aircraft on March 23, Libya counterattacked and allowed several warships to sail. Later, a Libyan corvette was destroyed by carrier aircraft, and a short time later a Libyan patrol boat drove to Yorktown at high speed. The cruiser sank the boat with two harpoon .

The Yorktown in 1988 shortly before the collision with the Bessawetni , a Soviet frigate Krivak-class frigate

At the beginning of 1987 the Yorktown received its first award, the Top Gun Award of the Atlantic Fleet , which is given for "outstanding skills in operating the artillery on board". From September 1987, the second mission followed, again to the Black Sea, during which Yorktown attracted worldwide attention. At the beginning, the ship took part in exercises in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, in which Germany, France, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey were also involved. Later, the Yorktown moved to the Black Sea, where they wanted to exercise together with the USS Caron (DD-970) the right of peaceful passage through waters that were within the twelve-mile zone of the Soviet Union. This right allows any ship to cross the territorial waters of a foreign state if this is the shortest route out of and into international waters. However, the Soviet Union refused this right at certain points, including here in front of the Crimea . Since the Caron also receiving and analyzing equipment for radar signals on board was provided by the National Security Agency were operated, the Soviet Union sent the incident at the Black Sea in 1988 , two ships, a light frigate Mirka II class and a guided missile frigate Kriwak- class to the American ships push away. There were slight collisions between the Yorktown and the Kriwak Bessawetni and the Caron and the Mirka , but no major damage was caused. In the late summer of 1988, Yorktown was brought to the Metro Machine Company's dry dock in Norfolk for minor overhaul, maintenance and repair work . According to the US Secretary of State in the Defense Department Richard Armitage , the passage was not necessary for operational reasons.

Mediterranean and Caribbean

The Yorktown (front) in Severomorsk

The third and fourth missions took Yorktown to the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, where they took part in Operation Provide Comfort , a relief operation for the Kurds who fled to northern Iraq before the Second Gulf War . 1992 followed for the Yorktown exercises with the navies of Romania and Bulgaria and later BALTOPS 92  - a maneuver in which the Yorktown together with the USS O'Bannon (DD-987) as the first American warship since the Second World War the Russian port of Severomorsk started.

In those years, Yorktown won the Old Crow's Award for Electronic Warfare (1991), the Marjorie Sterrett Battleship Fund Award for Outstanding Readiness (1992) and the Ship Safety Award from the Commander of the Atlantic Fleet (1993).

In 1993 and 1994, voyages in the Caribbean followed before the ship moved back to the Mediterranean in August. From May to June 1993, the Yorktown acted as the flagship for the commander of Task Group 4.1 , when so-called counter-drug operations were carried out, i.e. actions in which drug smugglers are intercepted. In August of that year she took part in Exercise Solid Stance in the North Atlantic before securing the embargo on Haiti in October and November . From April to May 1994 the exercise Agile Provider followed in the Caribbean, in which the Yorktown took over the air defense and at the same time served as the flagship for the commander of the Destroyer Squadron Six .

In August 1994, a trip to the Mediterranean followed. The Yorktown , as the flagship of the commander of the Standing Naval Forces Atlantic , sailed in the Adriatic to enforce the UN embargo on Yugoslavia . The Yorktown took over the air defense for the task force from American and European ships. In 1995 there was finally a trip against drug smuggling in the Caribbean.

The Yorktown as a smart ship

The 2002 Yorktown control console

From the beginning of 1996, the Yorktown was selected as a test ship for the Smart Ship Project . This Navy program was designed to improve connectivity aboard warships to reduce crew numbers and maintenance costs. On the Yorktown 27 were Workstations with the operating system Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 set up and a glass fiber - LAN networks, whereby it could be the crew number decreased by 10%. The bridge watch then only had to be manned by three men (instead of 13 previously). This was accompanied by the change of home port from Norfolk to Pascagoula (Mississippi) in September , since the main area of application of the Yorktown as a smart ship was to be in the Caribbean and South America.

The first tests of the system under operational conditions took place from the beginning of 1997. The Yorktown began operations against drug smuggling and led an exercise with the aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN-73) through which the Navy made sure aboard the Yorktown all requirements regarding the readiness were met. The Yorktown passed the test with good results, according to the Navy.

An incident with the Yorktown on September 21, 1997 became known: Since the software indicated a closed valve as open, a crew member entered a zero directly into the ship's database, which is not actually intended, but was standard during the test phase. In this case, however, this triggered a division by zero , which crashed the entire system and thus also caused the drive to fail. What happened next is unclear. The Navy claims that the crew got the problem under control themselves and that propulsion was restored after 2 hours and 45 minutes. The Government Computer News reported, however, that the ship should have been towed back into port.

Shortly after this failure, the Yorktown ran out for another operation against smugglers. Before starting patrol activities, the cruiser scouted several islands with his helicopter. This should cover the case that the Navy is no longer allowed to use the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for their training in the future.

Beginning in 2000, Yorktown underwent its first regular dry dock overhaul at Mobile , Alabama .

The Yorktown (third from front) in 2004 as part of the battle group led by the Wasp

In 2002 Yorktown took part in the forty-third annual exercise UNITAS with the USS Doyle (FFG-39) . This exercise took place in the Caribbean; In addition to the two ships of the US Navy, units from the navies of Colombia and Mexico took part. During a port visit to Willemstad in the Netherlands Antilles , the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez , came on board for a sightseeing tour during this maneuver .

On February 17, 2004, the Yorktown left her port and met with the combat group for the USS Wasp (LHD-1) . Other combat group members included the USS Shreveport (LPD-12) , USS Whidbey Island (LSD-41) , USS Leyte Gulf (CG-55) , USS McFaul (DDG-74), and USS Connecticut (SSN-22) . The group drove through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea and from there into the Persian Gulf. During this voyage, Yorktown supported the fire- fighting Greek tanker Mt. Everton with fire-fighting work. The main task, however, was to protect Allied warships and the Basra and Khawr Al Amaya oil terminals . On April 24, an attack was repulsed by means of three rubber dinghies with explosives on board. Yorktown fulfilled this order by the end of May and then carried out maneuvers with the navies of Oman, Egypt, Great Britain, France and Jordan. During this voyage, Secretary of the Navy Gordon R. England also visited Yorktown .

Decommissioning

Boatswain's mate Lonnie Ellis carries log book and telescope off board

Immediately after the mission, the ship ran back to the Naval Weapons Station Yorktown , where the weapons were dismounted in preparation for decommissioning . On August 17th, the cruiser finally reached its home port in Pascagoula. On December 3, 2004, the ship was officially decommissioned. The ceremony was attended by, among others, Philip Dur and Michael Mullen, the second and fifth commanders of the ship.

The reason for the early phasing out after only 20 years of service (the normal service life of a cruiser is 30 years) is that the ship was equipped even with two double starters while all units of the class from CG-52 instead, a more modern system Vertical Launching own . In order not to have to maintain maintenance for the Mk. 26 for a few ships , the first five ships of the class were decommissioned in 2004 and 2005. Following the ceremony, the Yorktown was towed to the Inactive Ships Maintenance Facility in Philadelphia , where it was still moored in 2010. A final decision on further use is not yet known. The ship is listed in the Navy shipping register as Knitting, to be disposed of (dt: [deleted from the register, should be disposed of ). In addition to a possible demolition, this does not rule out its use as a museum ship , sale or sinking as a target ship. In February 2008, the Navy announced that Yorktown was also on the list of ships to be dismantled over the next five years.

Web links

Commons : USS Yorktown (CG-48)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Entry in the Naval Vessel Register (English)
• History ( Memento from December 4, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) on the former website of Yorktown (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Yorktown website ( Memento from August 19, 2002 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
2. ↑ from: Terzibaschitsch: Sea power USA. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn, ISBN 3-86047-576-2 , p. 369.
3. ^ Document from Naval Weapons Station Yorktown announces annual scholarship awards . Retrieved March 8, 2013 . 
4. ↑ Jet Observer on January 13, 2011: Operation Attain Document on globalsecurity.org (English)
5. ↑ R. Armitage: asserting US 'report on the Black Sea. Arms Control Today, May 1988, p. 17.
6. ↑ Information about the USS Yorktown ( Memento from February 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) Seminar Uni-Koblenz
7. ↑ "Smart Ship" initiatives successful. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 8, 2008 ; accessed on March 8, 2013 . 
8. ↑ Sunk by Windows NT on wired.com (English)
9. ↑ Software glitches leave Navy Smart Ship dead in the water ( Memento from July 1, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) on gcn.com (English)
10. ↑ Entry in the Naval Vessel Register ( Memento from November 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
11. ↑ Navy sink list includes Forrestal, destroyers . Navy Times

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 9, 2006 .