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USS Platte (AO 186)

USS PLATTE was the fifth ship in the CIMARRON-class of five fleet oilers and the second ship in the Navy named after the river in Nebraska. After decommissioning, the ship was laid up on the James River at Fort Eustis, Va. Sold for scrapping on September 25, 2014, the ship left Virginia under tow to Southern Recycling at Amelia, La., on November 4, 2014. USS PLATTE was last homeported in Norfolk, Va.

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Crew List:

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

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Accidents aboard USS PLATTE:

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USS PLATTE History:

USS PLATTE was ordered as the fifth and final unit of the modern CIMARRON-class fast fleet oilers for Atlantic Fleet logistics, built by Avondale Shipyards in New Orleans after the contract award on April 11, 1978. Her keel was laid on February 2, 1981; she was launched on January 30, 1982 in a ceremony at Avondale, and began builder's trials soon after - an official aerial photograph shows her already at speed in the Gulf of Mexico on January 17, 1983. Commissioned on April 16, 1983, she shifted to the East Coast to join the underway replenishment force based from Norfolk. These early months set the pattern that would define her career: high-tempo "ships alongside" refueling and cargo transfers during carrier workups and fleet exercises from the Virginia Capes into the wider Atlantic.

Through 1983 and 1984, PLATTE repeatedly cycled between pier work, local operations, and multi-ship underway replenishments in the Atlantic. A Department of Defense image taken in October 1984 captures her at sea with the characteristic dual-CONREP rigs that allowed simultaneous port- and starboard-side fuel deliveries - evidence of the class's emphasis on rapid, alongside support to keep battle groups moving.

By the mid-1980s, she was a familiar participant in large multinational evolutions that tested NATO's reinforcement plans for the North Atlantic and Northern Europe. During the alliance's major exercise NORTHERN WEDDING in late summer 1986, PLATTE spent extended periods in heavy weather refueling allied escorts and U.S. units on the move between the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea. One sequence photographed on September 1, 1986, shows PLATTE transferring fuel to the West German destroyer FGS HESSEN (D 184), a vignette that illustrates the oiler's routine but essential role in knitting a dispersed allied formation together at sea.

In 1988 and early 1989, PLATTE supported Atlantic Fleet pre-deployment training and exercises and provided logistics to ships returning from the Mediterranean. On April 19, 1989, while participating in the large FleetEx 3-89 formation about 500 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida, she collided with the frigate USS TRIPPE (FF 1075). Contemporary reports noted a roughly 25-foot gash in PLATTE's hull and one minor injury. Both ships disengaged and proceeded under their own control for inspection and repair. The incident drew limited attention beyond the exercise itself because it occurred the same day as the fatal turret explosion aboard USS IOWA (BB 61) in a different operating area.

As tensions escalated in the Persian Gulf after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, PLATTE deployed from the East Coast to join the logistics bridge that sustained U.S. and coalition naval forces during Operation Desert Shield and, from January 1991, Operation Desert Storm. She spent the first half of 1991 conducting repeated replenishments in the North Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf, supporting carrier battle groups and escorts enforcing sea control and strike operations. She returned to Norfolk on June 28, 1991 - an arrival documented by official photography of her crew manning the rails after months of high-tempo fuel deliveries in wartime conditions.

After that long combat deployment, PLATTE entered the most significant modernization of her service life: "jumboization" at Avondale in 1992. Beginning in February 1992, and completing in December, the yard cut the ship and inserted a roughly 35.7-meter (117-foot) mid-body section to increase cargo capacity and add improved cargo handling, additional auxiliary power, and new internal arrangements. She emerged that winter as the last of the five CIMARRON-class ships to be lengthened, returning to the Atlantic Fleet with substantially greater fuel and stores throughput and more efficient replenishment stations.

From 1993 into the second half of the decade, PLATTE's tempo reflected the post-Cold War Navy's constant Mediterranean, North Atlantic, and Caribbean presence. Fresh from her yard period, she resumed underway replenishments for carrier and surface action groups in workups off the U.S. East Coast and then forward under Commander, Sixth Fleet. Navy photographic collections record a booklet of images from exercises in the Black Sea in this period - evidence of her participation in evolving NATO engagement with partners around the littoral as regional security relationships shifted after the Soviet collapse. In 1994, she is also documented in Puerto Rico at Naval Station Roosevelt Roads. A contemporaneous photo taken by a crew member notes that PLATTE got underway after an onboard electrical switchboard fire to clear the pier for fellow oiler USS MONONGAHELA (AO 178).

The same mid-1990s stretch saw PLATTE repeatedly cross the Atlantic to sustain routine Sixth Fleet patrols, exercises with NATO and partner navies in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and ad hoc tasking in the Caribbean and western Atlantic. Her days followed a practiced cadence: rendezvous with a carrier or cruiser-destroyer screen, rig for simultaneous port and starboard fueling, stream spanwires to pass fuel, aviation lubricants, and packaged stores, then break away to steam overnight to the next pre-planned point. While these individual transfers rarely drew headlines, they underpinned operations ranging from presence missions in the Adriatic to maritime interdiction, and their cumulative effect was measured in thousands of barrels moved and days of on-station endurance added to front-line ships.

As the Navy downsized and rebalanced in the later 1990s, PLATTE continued to alternate underway periods with maintenance availabilities in Tidewater Virginia. She decommissioned on June 30, 1999, at Norfolk and was towed to the James River Reserve Fleet near Fort Eustis on July 14, 1999, where she lay in long-term storage under Maritime Administration custody.

Disposal decisions followed in the 2000s. Title transferred to the Maritime Administration on November 29, 2001; after foreign military sales interest lapsed, she was sold for recycling on September 25, 2014. Withdrawn from the reserve fleet on November 4, 2014, PLATTE departed Virginia under tow and was scrapped by Southern Recycling thereafter, closing the career of a ship that had spent sixteen years fueling the U.S. Navy's operations from the North Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and back.

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USS PLATTE Image Gallery:

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