Military Sealift Command News
MSC PAO 03-15
April 23, 2003
For more information, contact:
Sheree Callahan or Trish Larson
(202) 685-5055
Fleet oiler USNS Guadalupe stars in a new role
in a new theater of operations
For years, fleet oiler USNS Guadalupe has had a leading role in the re-supply of the Navy's Seventh Fleet surface ships operating in the Pacific. The 678-foot, civil service-crewed oiler is more than a portable fuel station, she is an amazing performer. Thanks to Guadalupe's skillful crew, she can replenish massive ships at sea while operating side-by-side with them, linked by a fuel hose and a supporting span wire that reaches over 200 feet of ocean.
In just a matter of hours, Guadalupe can pump nearly two million gallons of jet fuel to an aircraft carrier and transfer tons of palletized food, spare parts and other supplies via a connecting high wire. She can simultaneously refuel another ship, too. Helicopters can transfer pallets of supplies from the oiler to surface ships via vertical replenishment.
The spectacular choreography of underway replenishment is all in a day's work for Guadalupe, making it possible for Navy ships to get replenished at sea without any interruption to their seagoing missions.
A dramatic new role emerged for Guadalupe in March when she was directed to the Fifth Fleet theater of operations. For what is believed to be the first time ever, the oiler was used to replenish U.S. Navy submarines at sea. The re-supply operation marked a rare opportunity for Navy's surface and sub-surface communities to interact face to face while at sea.
Submarines normally receive their replenishment supplies while in port. But, the faster tempo of operations demanded something new for Fifth Fleet submarines.
Guadalupe needed to pick up food and other supplies and then drop them off -- literally -- as individual submarines surfaced briefly.
"A couple of the submarines had not received any food deliveries for two months or more," said Capt. Wade Armstrong, Guadalupe master. "They were really grateful for what we could provide."
Guadalupe crew members discovered that replenishing submarines was far more difficult than their usual re-supply mission with surface ships. Vertical replenishment was impossible since submarines have no place for helicopters to land. Connected replenishment was impossible since there was no place to attach a line to transfer pallets of cargo. Standard pallets were too big to fit through the submarines' hatches.
The solution: Each pallet had to be divided into 30- to 40-pound increments, packed in mailbags and transported from the oiler to the submarines via Guadalupe's rigid hull inflatable rescue boats. Five-person teams from the Guadalupe crew made multiple trips between the oiler and the submarines being replenished.
The ingenuity of Guadalupe's crew members helped simplify the delivery. They secured a rope to the top of the submarine's conning tower and attached a hook to the other end of the rope. Bags could then be attached to the hook and hoisted up to the hatch, avoiding the need to pass the bags up a steep ladder.
Capt. Armstrong said that he does not expect many more repeat performances with submarines, but he was pleased with the Guadalupe crew's exceptional performance in a radically new arena.
USNS Guadalupe is one of 14 fleet oilers operated by the Navy's Military Sealift Command, the ocean transportation provider for the Department of Defense.
MSC normally operates about 120 civilian-crewed, noncombatant active ships for a variety of missions around the world. That number expanded to about 210 as additional ships were activated from reduced operating status or chartered for the command's support of U.S. forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
MSC ship missions vary from underway replenishment and other fleet support like that provided by Guadalupe, to the transport and afloat prepositioning of defense cargo, to at-sea data collection for the U.S. military and other U.S. government agencies.
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