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USS O'Callahan (FF 1051)

- formerly DE 1051 -
- decommissioned -


USS O'CALLAHAN was the tenth GARCIA - class frigate and the first ship in the Navy to honor Captain Joseph Timothy O’Callahan. Decommissioned on December 20, 1988, the O'CALLAHAN was given to Pakistan where she was recommissioned as ASLAT. Returned to the US Navy on November 14, 1993, and stricken from the Navy list the same day, the ship was sold for scrapping on March 29, 1994.

General Characteristics:Awarded: March 21, 1963
Keel laid: February 19, 1964
Launched: October 20, 1965
Commissioned: July 13, 1968
Decommissioned: December 20, 1988
Builder: Defoe Shipbuilding, Bay City, Michigan
Propulsion system: 2 Foster-Wheeler boilers; 1 Westinghouse geared turbine; 35,000shp; 1 shaft
Length: 414.4 feet (126.3 meters)
Beam: 44.3 feet (13.5 meters)
Draft: 25.9 feet (7.9 meters)
Displacement: approx. 3,500 tons full load
Speed: 27 knots
Armament: one Mk-16 missile launcher for ASROC missiles, two Mk-30 5-inch/38 caliber guns, Mk-46 torpedoes from two Mk-32 triple tube mounts
Aircraft: one SH-2F (LAMPS I) helicopter
Crew: 16 officers, 231 enlisted


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Crew List:

This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard USS O'CALLAHAN. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.


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USS O'CALLAHAN Cruise Books:


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About the Ship's Name:

Joseph Timothy O’Callahan was born in Roxbury, Mass., on 14 May 1905. After attending Boston College High School, he entered the Society of Jesus at the novitiate of St. Andrew-on-Hudson in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He completed his philosophical studies at Weston College in 1929 and became a member of the physics department at Boston College. He was ordained a priest on 20 June 1934.

After serving as a tertian for a year at St. Robert’s Hall in Connecticut, Fr. O’Callahan studied at Georgetown, taught Cosmology at Weston, and, in 1938, arrived at Holy Cross to teach mathematics and physics. In 1940, he became head of the mathematics department and founded a mathematics library. Soon thereafter, he surprised everyone by applying for a commission as a Navy chaplain. On 7 Aug 1940, he was commissioned a Lieutenant, Junior Grade, in the Navy Chaplain Corps.

After serving at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola Fla., he reported to the USS RANGER. O’Callahan’s great hope was to be assigned to the Philippines. His youngest sister, Alice, a Maryknoll nun, had been imprisoned in a Japanese detention camp there. For three years, the O’Callahan family hadn’t heard a word about her fate. Her brother hoped to discover his sister’s circumstance first-hand.

On 2 March 1945, O’Callahan received orders to report for duty to the USS FRANKLIN, a 27,000 ton Essex Class Aircraft Carrier, part of an armada called Task Force 58. Shortly after dawn the next day, the FRANKLIN steamed out of Pearl Harbor.

On 19 March, at 0707, O’Callahan was having breakfast in the wardroom when out of a cloud bank came a plane, flying 360 miles an hour at a height of 75 feet. The plane dropped a 500-pound bomb on the center of the flight deck, swung around and dropped a second bomb on the aft. The ship exploded into flame. And, according to all reports, in the midst of the chaos and carnage was Fr. O’Callahan. Wounded by shrapnel (which earned him a Purple Heart), O’Callahan stayed at his post for three days and nights, ministering to the dying, putting out fires, tending the wounded, hosing down armed bombs, and jettisoning live ammunition. O’Callahan moved through smoke-filled corridors amidst explosion after explosion, saving lives and performing last rights over the dying.

On 3 April 1945, under her own steam, the USS FRANKLIN arrived back at Pearl Harbor.

On 23 Jan 1946, in Washington, D.C., President Harry Truman presented Father O’Callahan with the Congressional Medal of Honor. That night, Chaplain O’Callahan reported to his new post aboard the carrier USS FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT.

12 Nov 1946, O’Callahan was released from the Navy with the rank of Captain, U.S.N.C.C. He returned to Holy Cross College to teach philosophy, but a future of much-deserved peace and study was not to be. In December of 1949, he suffered the first in a series of strokes.

In 1956, the film Battle Stations, depicting O’Callahan’s heroics aboard the FRANKLIN, was released. Also that year, he published his best-selling memoir, I Was Chaplain on the FRANKLIN.

O’Callahan died on 18 March 1964, the eve of the 19th anniversary of the FRANKLIN’s ordeal.



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