USS John Young

USS John Young (DD-973), named for Captain John Young USN, was a Spruance-class destroyer of the United States Navy. The ship was built by the Ingalls Shipbuilding Division of Litton Industries at Pascagoula, Mississippi.

See also USS Young for similarly named ships.
USS John Young in the Pacific, 1 May 1981 after firing its two 5-inch/54-caliber guns during a gunnery exercise.
History
United States
Name: John Young
Namesake: John Young
Ordered: 26 January 1972
Builder: Ingalls Shipbuilding
Laid down: 17 February 1975
Launched: 6 January 1976
Acquired: 1 May 1978
Commissioned: 20 May 1978
Decommissioned: 30 September 2002
Stricken: 6 November 2002
Motto:
  • Prends La Mer Avec Courage
  • ("Set Sail With Courage")
Fate: Sunk as a target on 13 April 2004
General characteristics
Class and type: Spruance-class destroyer
Displacement: 8,040 (long) tons full load
Length: 529 ft (161 m) waterline; 563 ft (172 m) overall
Beam: 55 ft (16.8 m)
Draft: 29 ft (8.8 m)
Propulsion: 4 × General Electric LM2500 gas turbines, 2 shafts, 80,000 shp (60 MW)
Speed: 32.5 knots (60.2 km/h; 37.4 mph)
Range:
  • 6,000 nautical miles (11,000 km; 6,900 mi) at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph)
  • 3,300 nautical miles (6,100 km; 3,800 mi) at 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph)
Complement: 19 officers, 315 enlisted
Sensors and
processing systems:
Electronic warfare
& decoys:
  • AN/SLQ-32 Electronic Warfare System
  • AN/SLQ-25 Nixie Torpedo Countermeasures
  • Mark 36 SRBOC Decoy Launching System
  • AN/SLQ-49 Inflatable Decoys
Armament:
Aircraft carried: 2 x Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk LAMPS III helicopters.

History

In 1987, John Young deployed off the coast of Iran in support of Operation Earnest Will and participated in Operation Nimble Archer. John Young deployed with Battle Group Echo, which included the aircraft carrier Ranger, battleship Missouri, cruisers Long Beach, Bunker Hill, destroyers Leftwich and Hoel, frigates Curts, Harold E. Holt, Robert E. Peary, Schofield and auxiliaries Shasta, Wichita, Kansas City, Hassayampa.

John Young, following appropriate Congressional notification, became one of eight combat ships that began receiving women as crewmembers in 1994.

As part of a reorganization by the Pacific Fleet's surface ships into six core battle groups and eight destroyer squadrons, with the reorganization scheduled to be completed by 1 October 1995, and homeport changes to be completed within the following, year, John Young was reassigned to Destroyer Squadron 23.

John Young departed San Diego on 9 February 1996 en route to the Persian Gulf for a six-month deployment as part of the Middle East Force (MEF). This deployment was remarkable because a main engineering space was completely gutted and refitted following a major fuel oil leak earlier in the week.

On 28 April 1998, Navy and Coast Guard inspectors aboard John Young boarded a merchant ship thus marking the 10,000th such boarding in support of United Nations sanctions against Iraq. As part of a multinational maritime interception force, operating in the Persian Gulf, the team boarded an Indian flagged dhow in the Persian Gulf to make the milestone boarding. The vessel was empty and permitted to proceed.

John Young departed San Diego on 18 November 1997 en route to the Persian Gulf for a six-month deployment as part of the Middle East Force (MEF).

John Young teamed up with a Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) in late March 2001 for a major drug bust at sea. She was last stationed at San Diego, California.

Fate

John Young was decommissioned on 30 September 2002, and stricken 6 November 2002, laid up at Bremerton, Washington NISMF. On 13 April 2004, John Young was sunk during exercise RIMPAC 04 by a Mark 48 torpedo fired by the submarine Pasadena, which broke her in half.[1]

A video game titled U.S.S. John Young (Battle Stations in North America) was developed by Maitai Entertainment and released in 1990, by Magic Bytes and Innerprise Software, in Europe and North America, respectively.

gollark: Wait, what's *that* breed?
gollark: You people have more codes than I have dragons.
gollark: It should probably just not get sick.
gollark: To be fair, it's not entirely useless, and doesn't really cause a problem.
gollark: Hail the wise TJ09!

See also
  • List of United States Navy destroyers

References
  1. http://www.navsource.org/archives/05/973.htm
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