USS Puget Sound (AD 38)

- decommissioned -

USS PUGET SOUND was the second SAMUEL GOMPERS - class destroyer tender. Initially equipped with one single 5"/38 dual purpose gun mount, this gun was later removed from the ship. Unlike her sister ship SAMUEL GOMPERS, the PUGET SOUND was equipped with a hangar.

Decommissioned on January 27, 1996, but not stricken from the Navy list yet, the PUGET SOUND was subsequently held in reserve at the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility, Philadelphia, PA. Stricken from the Navy list on December 13, 2007, the ship was sold for scrapping to ESCO Marine, Brownsville, Tx., one month later.

General Characteristics:	Awarded: December 29, 1964
	Keel laid: February 15, 1965
	Launched: September 16, 1966
	Commissioned: April 27, 1968
	Decommissioned: January 27, 1996
	Builder: Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Wash.
	Propulsion system: Two boilers, steam turbines, one shaft, 20,000 shaft horsepower
	Propellers: one
	Length: 643 feet (196 meters)
	Beam: 85 feet (25.9 meters)
	Draft: 27 feet (8.2 meters)
	Displacement: approx. 20,500 tons full load
	Speed: 20 knots
	Aircraft: Hangar and Flight Deck, a helo was normally not embarked aboard
	Armament: none
	Crew: 106 officers and 1,314 enlisted

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Crew List:

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

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USS PUGET SOUND Cruise Books:

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USS PUGET SOUND History:

USS PUGET SOUND, the second ship of the SAMUEL GOMPERS-class of destroyer tenders, was launched at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, on 16 September 1966. Her sponsor was Mrs. Gale W. McGee, wife of U.S. Senator Gale W. McGee of Wyoming. Designed as a large mobile repair and logistics facility, PUGET SOUND was intended to provide destroyers, frigates, cruisers and other fleet units with maintenance capabilities that otherwise required access to a naval shipyard or shore-based industrial complex. Unlike her sister USS SAMUEL GOMPERS (AD 37), PUGET SOUND was also fitted with aviation facilities that later proved particularly useful during her years as a command ship.

PUGET SOUND was commissioned at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard on 27 April 1968, with Captain R. B. Jacobs in command. Outfitting, machinery tests and builders' trials occupied the following months. On 17 August 1968, she departed the Pacific Northwest for transfer to the Atlantic Fleet. The voyage took her south along the Pacific coast, with calls at San Francisco, California, and Acapulco, Mexico, before she continued through the Panama Canal into the Caribbean. From 6 September to 4 October she conducted shakedown training at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where her crew practiced both the normal operation of the ship and the specialized procedures required of a fleet tender. She subsequently visited the Virgin Islands and Mayport, Florida, between 6 and 13 October and completed final acceptance trials before proceeding north. On 16 October 1968, PUGET SOUND arrived at Newport, Rhode Island, which became her first Atlantic Fleet homeport.

From 15 November to 13 December 1968, PUGET SOUND underwent her post-shakedown availability at Boston Naval Shipyard. After returning to Newport, she began the work for which she had been constructed, providing repair, supply and technical assistance to ships of the Atlantic Fleet. She also served as flagship for Commander Cruiser-Destroyer Force, Atlantic, giving her an administrative and command function in addition to her industrial role. Throughout 1969 and into 1970, much of her activity centered on Newport and the U.S. East Coast, interrupted by training periods and voyages required to maintain the readiness of the ship and her large crew. Her work rarely attracted the public attention associated with combatants, but a tender could simultaneously have several destroyers or frigates secured alongside while hundreds of repairs, inspections and equipment overhauls were performed. A voyage to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1970 was among her operations away from Newport during this period.

PUGET SOUND continued Atlantic Fleet support during 1971 and the first part of 1972. One of the most unusual assignments of her early career came in 1972 with Operation PEGASUS, an initiative connected with the Navy's effort to increase the number of ships maintained forward in the Mediterranean. Six destroyers of Destroyer Squadron 12 were to operate from the Athens area in Greece rather than repeatedly rotate between the United States and the Sixth Fleet. Moving the ships alone was comparatively straightforward; moving the families and possessions of the sailors assigned to them required a separate logistical effort. PUGET SOUND was employed to transport approximately 681 dependents, together with household possessions, automobiles, pets and other material, from the United States to the Athens-Piraeus area of Greece. The operation demonstrated the unusual transport capacity available aboard a vessel whose normal purpose was industrial support.

After completing the PEGASUS mission, PUGET SOUND resumed tender duties. During 1973, she underwent a period of work at Boston Naval Shipyard. Her operating pattern subsequently shifted increasingly toward Norfolk, Virginia, which replaced Newport as her principal East Coast base during the middle part of the decade. Guantanamo Bay and other Caribbean operating areas continued to be used for training and readiness work, while Norfolk provided access to the large concentration of Atlantic Fleet surface ships that constituted the tender's principal customers.

The Mediterranean became increasingly important in PUGET SOUND's schedule during the second half of the 1970s. She made a Mediterranean deployment in 1976, supporting Sixth Fleet combatants while moving between established naval support points and commercial ports. Such cruises combined scheduled tender availabilities with the movement of spare parts, technical personnel and stores, allowing destroyers and frigates to remain forward rather than return to the United States for many categories of maintenance. PUGET SOUND deployed to the Mediterranean again in 1978. Ports and anchorages associated with that cruise included Rota, Spain; Valencia; Palma de Mallorca; Barcelona; Marseille, France; Naples and Gaeta, Italy, together with a stop in the Azores during the transatlantic movement. Calls in Italy and France also enabled extensive crew travel ashore, including visits to Rome, Florence, Pisa and Pompeii, although these were excursions rather than ports at which the ship herself berthed.

By the end of the decade the Navy was preparing PUGET SOUND for a substantially different assignment. During modifications in 1979, her original single 5-inch/38-caliber gun was removed. As a noncombatant auxiliary, she was also among the types of seagoing ships affected by the Navy's expansion of sea-duty opportunities for women following the changes in personnel policy of the late 1970s. More importantly for her immediate future, additional spaces and communications facilities were installed to enable the ship to accommodate a major fleet command staff.

Following these modifications, PUGET SOUND returned to the Mediterranean and in May 1980 assumed duty as flagship of the United States Sixth Fleet, succeeding USS ALBANY (CG 10). Gaeta, Italy, became the center of her operations. The change transformed the destroyer tender into both a repair ship and a floating headquarters. The Commander Sixth Fleet and his staff operated from spaces aboard PUGET SOUND, while the ship continued to perform maintenance and logistics functions for other vessels. Her communications facilities connected the embarked staff with U.S. and NATO headquarters, aircraft carriers, surface action groups, submarines and shore establishments throughout the Mediterranean. Her flight deck and hangar facilitated helicopter movements of personnel, mail, parts and documents between the flagship and other Sixth Fleet units.

The timing of the assignment placed PUGET SOUND at the administrative center of Sixth Fleet activity during a particularly active phase of the late Cold War. The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the Iranian hostage crisis, instability in the Middle East and deteriorating relations between the United States and Libya all contributed to a sustained U.S. naval presence in and around the Mediterranean. PUGET SOUND normally operated from Gaeta but periodically shifted to other Mediterranean ports when operational requirements, maintenance commitments or diplomatic considerations required it. Her role did not normally place her in the forward tactical formations involved in a crisis; rather, she provided the command platform from which the Sixth Fleet commander could direct widely dispersed forces.

On 5 June 1981, PUGET SOUND was at Gaeta for a Sixth Fleet change-of-command ceremony as Vice Admiral William H. Rowden succeeded Vice Admiral William N. Small. The ceremony included the traditional gun salute and illustrated the extent to which the tender had become identified with the Sixth Fleet headquarters. On 1 December, PUGET SOUND was at Trieste, Italy, with USS MOINESTER (FF 1097) and USS COONTZ (DDG 40), one example of the repeated movements that took the flagship away from Gaeta while still allowing it to perform tender work.

The Sixth Fleet faced a series of crises in 1981 and 1982. Tension with Libya culminated in the Gulf of Sidra confrontation of August 1981, when U.S. carrier aircraft shot down two Libyan Su-22 fighters. PUGET SOUND's significance in such episodes was principally as the fleet command-and-control platform. The following year, attention shifted increasingly toward Lebanon as the Israeli invasion of June 1982, the fighting around Beirut and the establishment of the Multinational Force drew substantial U.S. naval forces to the eastern Mediterranean.

PUGET SOUND continued to alternate between command functions and direct maintenance support. In early April 1982, she was at Malaga, Spain, where USS JESSE L. BROWN (FF 1089) underwent an intermediate maintenance availability after entering the Mediterranean. Vice Admiral Rowden visited JESSE L. BROWN while the frigate was alongside the tender before departing aboard USS FORREST SHERMAN (DD 931). On 19 September 1982, PUGET SOUND was at Barcelona with USS SYLVANIA (AFS 2) secured outboard.

The Lebanon crisis intensified in 1983. PUGET SOUND operated in the eastern Mediterranean and was present off Beirut while U.S. forces were supporting the Multinational Force ashore. USS CONNOLE (FF 1056) and USS LA MOURE COUNTY (LST 1194) were among the ships photographed alongside or in company with the tender during operations in the Beirut area. These activities took place during a period in which naval gunfire support, carrier aviation and amphibious forces were being employed in response to the rapidly deteriorating security situation ashore. The bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut on 23 October 1983 and the continuing exchange of fire around the city made the eastern Mediterranean one of the most demanding areas of Sixth Fleet activity. PUGET SOUND's function remained the provision of command facilities, repairs, supplies and technical support to the ships sustaining those operations.

Elsewhere in the Mediterranean during 1983, PUGET SOUND continued a schedule that included Gaeta, Trieste and waters off Greece. At one point off Athens, she was part of a closely nested group that included USS VIRGINIA (CGN 38), USS McCANDLESS (FF 1084) and USS SOUTH CAROLINA (CGN 37). She also received fuel underway from USNS TRUCKEE (T-AO 147), allowing her to remain operational without depending exclusively on port facilities, and USS THORN (DD 988) was among the destroyers tended at Gaeta. During this general period, the ship's own diving personnel demonstrated the self-sufficiency expected of a tender when an eight-man dive team carried out the underwater replacement of PUGET SOUND's approximately 38,000-pound propeller, avoiding the need to place the large ship in dry dock for the job.

Operations connected with Lebanon continued into 1984. PUGET SOUND remained the Sixth Fleet command platform while carrier, amphibious and surface forces responded to events in the eastern Mediterranean. In April 1984, she visited Malaga, where her stay coincided with the city's Holy Week period. Gaeta nevertheless remained the principal base for the embarked fleet staff and the location most closely associated with the ship during these years. A constant flow of helicopters, boats, visiting officers, fleet messages, spare parts and ships coming alongside made her very different from a conventional shore-based headquarters.

By 1985, the Navy had decided that the Sixth Fleet command function should again be separated from the destroyer-tender mission. PUGET SOUND's service as Sixth Fleet flagship ended in August 1985 after more than five years in the role. During the period beginning in 1980, she had also provided maintenance services to more than 400 ships in the Mediterranean, illustrating that her assumption of the flagship role had not displaced her original purpose. USS YELLOWSTONE (AD 41) deployed to the Mediterranean in the autumn of 1985 to take over the principal forward tender responsibilities at Gaeta, while USS CORONADO (AGF 11) relieved PUGET SOUND as the Sixth Fleet command ship in October. PUGET SOUND then returned to the Atlantic Fleet and Norfolk, ending the most distinctive phase of her career.

Back in the United States, she resumed a more conventional destroyer-tender schedule: repair periods in port, local operations and deployments in support of fleet units. A Mediterranean cruise during 1986-1987 again placed PUGET SOUND in the familiar environment of the Sixth Fleet, but now as a mobile maintenance platform rather than its headquarters. Marseille was among the Mediterranean locations at which she operated during this period. The strategic environment remained unsettled. U.S.-Libyan relations had deteriorated into direct military confrontation in 1986, while Soviet naval forces continued to operate throughout the Mediterranean. PUGET SOUND's contribution consisted chiefly of allowing U.S. surface ships to obtain extensive repairs and upkeep without withdrawing from the theater.

In 1988, PUGET SOUND also operated in the North Atlantic during the period of NATO exercise TEAMWORK 88, part of the alliance's continuing emphasis on reinforcement and maritime operations in the Norwegian Sea and North Atlantic approaches. Her subsequent employment shifted much farther east. During 1989, she undertook an Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf deployment at a time when the long Iran-Iraq War had recently ended but substantial U.S. naval forces remained in the region. The final phase of Operation PRIME CHANCE and the aftermath of Operation EARNEST WILL still shaped U.S. naval activity in the Gulf. PUGET SOUND operated as a forward repair facility and was present in the Bahrain area, including Sitrah anchorage, where combatants came alongside for tender availabilities. USS CROMMELIN (FFG 37) was among the ships receiving maintenance support from PUGET SOUND there. Her movements during this broader deployment also reflected the increasingly global employment of Atlantic Fleet auxiliaries, with the Mediterranean, Suez route, Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf forming a connected operating area.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 brought the U.S. Navy back to the Middle East on a much larger scale. Although PUGET SOUND was not part of the initial August 1990 deployment that established Operation DESERT SHIELD, she was subsequently ordered to the theater as the coalition prepared and then conducted Operation DESERT STORM. On 30 January 1991 she departed Norfolk for the Persian Gulf, only thirteen days after the air campaign against Iraq had begun. The large concentration of cruisers, destroyers, frigates, amphibious ships and auxiliaries operating far from U.S. repair facilities created a substantial demand for the type of maintenance capabilities carried by a destroyer tender.

PUGET SOUND supported naval forces in both the Red Sea and Persian Gulf regions during the final weeks of the war and the postwar period. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, was one of the important locations from which she provided maintenance. In early March 1991, USS THOMAS S. GATES (CG 51) underwent an intermediate maintenance availability with PUGET SOUND at Jeddah. The cease-fire at the end of February did not immediately remove the requirement for naval support: coalition ships remained deployed while mines were cleared, damaged infrastructure was assessed, sanctions continued and forces were gradually redeployed from the region. PUGET SOUND therefore remained overseas well after the end of major combat.

On 28 June 1991 PUGET SOUND returned to Norfolk after almost five months away. Her arrival coincided with the return of major units associated with the USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT (CVN 71) battle group and marked the end of one of the most operationally significant deployments of her later career.

Following post-deployment maintenance and the resumption of Atlantic Fleet support duties, PUGET SOUND prepared for another major Mediterranean deployment. By 16 October 1992, she was underway in the Atlantic en route to the Mediterranean as part of the broader deployment associated with the USS JOHN F. KENNEDY (CV 67) battle group. The geopolitical setting had changed markedly from her Sixth Fleet flagship years. The Soviet Union had ceased to exist in December 1991, but instability in the former Yugoslavia had already created a new series of military and humanitarian problems on NATO's southern flank. U.S. and allied ships were increasingly employed in the Adriatic in connection with United Nations sanctions and the developing international response to the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

PUGET SOUND moved between Mediterranean support locations during the winter of 1992-1993, conducting maintenance availabilities for ships that were themselves frequently rotating into the Adriatic. Toulon, France, was one of these locations. USS LEYTE GULF (CG 55) completed a maintenance period with PUGET SOUND there before departing on 4 January 1993. The tender later operated at Augusta Bay, Sicily, another convenient location for supporting units moving between the central and eastern Mediterranean. On 22 February, USS GETTYSBURG (CG 64) moored alongside PUGET SOUND at Augusta Bay for an eleven-day upkeep period after operations in the Adriatic.

The deployment extended into 1993, the year in which PUGET SOUND reached the twenty-fifth anniversary of her commissioning on 27 April. By then, the changing composition of the Navy was becoming increasingly evident. Numerous older Cold War destroyers and frigates that had formed the core of her customer base were being decommissioned, while newer ships required different maintenance arrangements and the Navy was reducing shore establishments and auxiliaries as part of the post-Cold War drawdown.

PUGET SOUND nevertheless remained active. In 1994, she made another Mediterranean deployment, again providing mobile repair and logistics support to Sixth Fleet units. The regional environment was dominated by the continuing conflict in the former Yugoslavia and by NATO and United Nations maritime and air operations associated with sanctions and protection of humanitarian activities. For PUGET SOUND the practical work remained much as it had been throughout her career: ships came alongside for machinery repairs, electronics work, inspections, fabrication, spare parts and other services that could be completed much more rapidly with a fully equipped tender nearby.

During 1995, PUGET SOUND continued Atlantic Fleet support while preparations for her retirement progressed. USS PUGET SOUND was decommissioned on 27 January 1996 after nearly twenty-eight years of commissioned service. After decommissioning, PUGET SOUND was placed in the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she remained in reserve for more than a decade. She was formally stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 13 December 2007. On 11 January 2008, the Navy awarded a disposal contract to ESCO Marine of Brownsville, Texas, for dismantling the former tender. PUGET SOUND was subsequently transferred to Brownsville for scrapping.

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