USS Fletcher (DD-992)
The Fletcher alongside the New Jersey battleship |
|
Overview | |
---|---|
Order | 15th January 1975 |
Keel laying | April 24, 1978 |
Launch | June 16, 1979 |
1. Period of service | |
Commissioning | July 12, 1980 |
Decommissioning | October 1, 2004 |
Whereabouts | Sunk as a target ship |
Technical specifications | |
displacement |
9100 standard tons |
length |
171.6 meters |
width |
16.8 meters |
Draft |
9.8 meters |
crew |
30 officers, 350 sailors |
drive |
2 propellers, driven by 4 gas turbines; 80,000 wave horsepower |
speed |
33 knots |
Armament |
2 × Mark 45 lightweight guns , 2 x 20 mm Phalanx CIWS , 2 x Harpoon starters , 1 anti-aircraft missile starter, 2 torpedo tubes 324mm, 1 ASROC starter, later replaced by 61-cell VLS |
The USS Fletcher (DD-992) was a destroyer in the United States Navy and belonged to the Spruance class . It was named after Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher .
history
DD-992 was commissioned in 1975 and laid down at Ingalls Shipbuilding in April 1978 . The destroyer was launched in June 1979 and commissioned in 1980. The Fletcher was then stationed in the Pacific.
The Fletcher first moved to the Pacific in 1982, and in 1983 the destroyer was used in a combat group with the USS New Jersey (BB-62) . In the following years the Fletcher relocated several times to the Pacific and partly across the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf . In the mid-1990s it was extensively modernized, above all the weapon systems were brought up to date. In both 1998 and 2000, the ship took part in the RIMPAC maneuver , and in 2000 in the Arabian Shark exercise in the Persian Gulf. In 2002, the destroyer continued to sail alongside the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) as part of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom in the Gulf.
On October 1, 2004, the Fletcher was decommissioned. Sales to Chile and later Pakistan under consideration were never realized. Instead, the Fletcher was chosen as the target for RIMPAC 2008. In July, the destroyer was towed into the waters off Hawaii and torpedoed there on July 16 by the Australian submarine HMAS Waller (SSG 75) . The CBASS version of the Mark 48 heavyweight torpedo was used for the first time .
Web links
- Fletcher in the Naval Vessel Register ( Memento from December 12, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
- Images of Fletcher (Engl.)
- Video of the sinking Fletcher with pathetic music