USS San Antonio (LPD-17)
The San Antonio in Gdynia (Poland) |
|
Overview | |
---|---|
Order | December 17, 1996 |
Keel laying | December 9, 2000 |
Launch | July 12, 2003 |
1. Period of service | |
Commissioning | January 14, 2006 |
Technical specifications | |
displacement |
fully loaded 24,900 ts |
length |
208.05 m |
width |
31.9 m |
Draft |
7.0 m |
crew |
28 officers, 332 men, up to 800 Marines |
drive |
2 propellers, four diesel engines; 41,000 wave horsepower |
speed |
22+ knots |
Armament |
2 guns 30 mm, 2 launchers for anti-aircraft missiles |
The USS San Antonio (LPD-17) is an amphibious transport dock of the United States Navy and is the lead ship of the San Antonio-class . It is named after the city of San Antonio , Texas .
history
LPD-17 was commissioned in late 1996 and laid down four years later at Avondale Shipyard . After around two and a half years, the ship was launched, US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison was the godmother, and former US President George HW Bush spoke at the ceremony. Indeed, the ship was far from being completed. Corrosion attacked the fuselage right from the start, and the wiring was poorly crafted. Ultimately, the San Antonio had to be towed to Ingalls Shipbuilding in 2004 to be completed there. The ship was not finally handed over to the US Navy until mid-2005, but was still not operational.
The crew boarded the ship three days before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. However, since the ship was not certified for the high seas, she had to ride the storm off Pascagoula , with slight damage. The ship was put into service in early 2006.
Since use was still excluded, the ship was docked in Norfolk in 2006 and overtaken there. It was not until the end of August 2008 that the San Antonio was to be used for the first time alongside the USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7) . A few days before casting off, however, a defect occurred at the main gate, which delayed the San Antonio's journey by a week. During its first mission, the San Antonio had to be overhauled for four weeks in Bahrain for 1.4 million US dollars in November after lubricating oil lines leaked on the way. Problems of this kind have been occurring since 2005.
In December 2009 the San Antonio went to the Earl Industries Shipyard, in Portsmouth, Virginia. The overhaul should take four to five months and cost around $ 5 million. However, after serious problems with the drive system were found, the layover time was extended to at least eleven months, the costs rose to 39 million dollars (as of October 2010), but will continue to rise until the end of the work. In September 2010, the ship was towed to Naval Station Norfolk , where repairs were completed in mid-2011. This means that the San Antonio missed her second mission, originally planned for 2011. In their place, the USS Mesa Verde (LPD-19) will accompany the USS Bataan (LHD-5) . New test drives took place in June 2011 and went well. But already in July problems with the diesel engines appeared again, which are to be fixed in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The San Antonio is scheduled to begin training in August 2011 and will then be relocated in 2012.
In November 2016, the San Antonio was involved in Operation Odyssey Lightning to support the fight against targets of the terrorist militia Islamic State (IS) in Libya .
Web links
- Official Homepage (Engl.)
- Report on San Antonio in the Navy Times (English).