The Florida Times-Union October 15, 2012
Frigates leave stamp on Navy, Mayport
By William Browning
Navy Cmdr. Joe Thomas stood on the deck of the USS De Wert last week talking about what he called “frigate life.”
“It’s kind of unique and challenging,” Thomas said. “Some of our frigates have a crew of 175. Right now we have a company of 200 sailors.”
He motioned across the Mayport Naval Station basin at a cruiser. He said it carried a crew of about 300.
“Think of all the maintenance requirements, all the tasking that we have to do with 100 less sailors,” Thomas, the commanding officer of USS De Wert, said. “Everything you do on a frigate, you have to be the expert because you only have so many people.”
But frigates, which for many years were mainstays at Mayport, are reaching the end of the line. The Navy is decommissioning them and replacing them with the smaller, slightly faster littoral combat ships.
The eight frigates home-ported at Mayport are scheduled to be gone by 2015. The rest will be gone by 2019.
Thomas said a sailor who spends time on a frigate and moves onto a bigger ship is “so much more capable of fitting into that crew and settling in right away.”
The smaller crew size also leads to a stronger sense of family.
“It’s a very small community,” Damage Controlman 3rd Class Petty Officer Trevor Viguilla said. “Everybody gets to know everybody. You certainly learn to live with people. You tend to know other people’s habits. It’s a rough life, but it’s special. I like it.”
WORKHORSE OF THE NAVY
The Navy commissioned 51 of the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates, like the De Wert, from the late 1970s through the late 1980s. At roughly 450 feet long, they were equipped with three weapons — two guns and a missile launcher (though the launchers were taken off roughly a decade ago) — and could carry two helicopters.
They were made quick and cheap. The Department of Defense estimated that the cost of the ships would be $10.1 billion, an average per ship of $194 million, according to GlobalSecurity.org.
“Our philosophy at that time was to build a small, not expendable, but less expensive to operate, less capable warship,” said Rick Hoffman, a retired Navy captain who commanded two frigates.
They arrived at Mayport in the 1980s. At one point there were 18 here, the highest concentration on the East Coast.
They were designed as convoy and battle-group escorts.
“These frigates functioned very well in that role,” said Earle Yerger, a retired Navy captain. “But they are also capable in multi-missions.”
They do counter-drug operations, combat piracy and can be involved in anti-submarine, anti-surface and anti-air missions. Over time they gained a reputation as the workhorse of the Navy.
“When you just want to put hulls in the water, this is what you need,” Hoffman said. “When you’re doing a Somali pirate chase, you don’t need a 350-man crew on a billion-dollar warship if you can put a smaller ship out there — and more of them.”
They are busy ships, underway a lot of the time and nearly always gone from home port, Yerger said.
Their strengths are their ability to adapt to different missions and their maneuverability.
“I can stop this ship in 600 feet,” Hoffman said. “And I can walk it sideways. It’s like driving a Porsche or Corvette.”
One of their weaknesses is the fact that they are built with a lot of right angles. In other words, they reflect radar well.
They also operate in a more old-school style. For example, a lot of the navigational charting is done on paper, said Chief Petty Officer Steven Smothers, who works in the Combat Informations Center aboard the De Wert.
“It’s conventional,” he said. “We don’t have all the bells and whistles that the destroyers and the cruisers have. So here, when these guys get here, they really learn their jobs. We just don’t have that technology.”
That’s one reason the Navy is moving toward littoral combat ships.
“If you want to modernize a frigate, you’ve got to take that ship and put it in dry-dock for months and months and spend millions of dollars,” Yerger said. “With an LCS, I can take the combat systems package off and put a new modernized one in and be ready to operate within days.”
ANSWERED THE CALL, BUT MOVING AHEAD
Despite the Navy’s oldest class of ships being phased out, the men and women who serve aboard frigates carry their time aboard with honor.
“There is certainly a lot of pride with sailors who are serving on our frigates,” said Bill Austin, public affairs officer at Mayport. “They sort of wear that on their sleeve, like a red badge of courage. In many ways, it is bragging rights.”
Luigi Federici remembers his time aboard the Mayport-based USS Gallery from 1981 to 1984 fondly.
“That was my first ship,” the 50-year-old Jacksonville resident said. “It set the tone for my time in the Navy. I never forgot it.”
Federici retired from the Navy last year and is working on a master’s degree at the University of North Florida. He took his frigate cruise book off the shelf last week and flipped its pages, reminding himself of the ports USS Gallery stopped at during his time aboard.
Italy. Beirut. Turkey. Pakistan. Bermuda. Spain. And others.
“I’ve got friends from those days that I still stay in touch with,” he said.
He has mixed feelings about the frigates being decommissioned.
“It’s tough to see them go,” he said. “They defined Mayport for so many years. It’s not just ships going away, it’s people going away and for so many years they were the lifeblood of the community.”
But he also recognizes the Navy has practical reasons for moving on and leaving frigates behind.
“Things get old. You’ve got to move ahead,” he said. “Those ships, though, they answered the call whenever they could. They’ve got a lot of water beneath the hull.”
PROJECTED NUMBER OF FRIGATES AT MAYPORT
2011: 11
2012: 8
2013: 6
2014: 3
2015: 0
CURRENT FRIGATES AT MAYPORT
USS De Wert
USS Halyburton
USS Klakring
USS Robert G. Bradley
USS Samuel B. Roberts
USS Simpson
USS Taylor
USS Underwood
OLIVER HAZARD PERRY CLASS FRIGATES
First deployed: December 1977
Propulsion: Two gas turbine engines
Length: 450 feet
Displacement: 4,100 tons
Speed: Roughly 31 mph
Crew: 17 officers, 200 enlisted
© Copyright 2012, Morris Publishing, Inc.
