DDG-31 Decatur
USS Decatur, a 2780-ton Forrest Sherman class destroyer built at Quincy, Massachusetts, was commissioned in December 1956. In 1957, she made her shakedown cruise through the Caribbean area, ran special trials, and steamed to northern Europe. Early in 1958 the new destroyer again crossed the Atlantic to begin her first Sixth Fleet tour in the Mediterranean Sea. Decatur made more such deployments during the late 1950s and early 1960s, as well as serving as a spacecraft recovery ship in September 1961 and taking part in Cuban Quarantine operations in November and December 1962. On 6 May 1964, her superstructure was was heavily damaged in a collision with the aircraft carrier Lake Champlain (CVS-39). The unrepaired Decatur was placed "in commission, in reserve" later in the year to await modernization, and was formally decommissioned in June 1965.
During the next two years Decatur was extensively modified at the Boston Naval Shipyard, Massachusetts. She was reclassified as a guided-missile destroyer in September 1966, receiving the new hull number DDG-31, and was recommissioned in April 1967. In September of that year she transferred to the Pacific Fleet, her assignment for the remainder of her commissioned service. Decatur's first Seventh Fleet deployment, in the Western Pacific, took place between July 1968 and February 1969. In this, and her next two Far Eastern tours in 1970 and 1971-72, she engaged in Vietnam War operations and visited southern Pacific nations. Further "WestPac" cruises took place in 1973, 1974-75, 1976-77 and 1978-1979. The last deployment also took her into the Indian Ocean, an area of increasing interest to the U.S. Navy as the Persian Gulf region became unstable.
In 1981 and again in 1982, Decatur steamed across the Pacific for more duty with the Seventh Fleet and, in 1983, in the Persian Gulf. At the end of June 1983, several weeks after returning from her last deployment, she was decommissioned and placed in the Pacific Reserve Fleet. USS Decatur was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in March 1988. Her name was cancelled sometime thereafter. However, the ship had a long career ahead of her as Self Defense Test Ship (SDTS), a role for which she was converted in the late 1980s and early 1990s. From 1994 into 2003 she has been employed along the Pacific Coast, conducting trials of various systems for countering anti-shipping cruise missiles and other threats.
USS Decatur was named in honor of Commodore Stephen Decatur (1779-1820), one of the United States Navy's greatest heros and leaders of the first two decades of the 19th Century.
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