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About the Name "Laboon"

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USS Laboon (DDG 58)

USS LABOON is the eighth ship in the ARLEIGH BURKE class and the first ship in the Navy named after Captain John Francis Laboon.

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Crew List:

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

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About the Ship’s Coat of Arms:

(Click on the Coat of Arms for a larger version)

This ship's coat of arms is highly symbolic of the ship's namesake Captain John Francis Laboon and his heroism, loyalty and devotion to duty.

The shield, in Navy blue and gold, represents the sea, and excellence highlighting Chaplain LABOON's dedicated naval service. The color white signifies integrity and purity of purpose. The quartered shield suggests a cross reflecting the chaplain's mission. The upright trident symbolizes sea prowess and highlights the ship's vertical launch capabilities with the three tines representing Anti-Submarine, Anti-Surface and Anti-Air Warfare. The trident, with its bottom spike pointing to the ocean depths, also represents Chaplain Laboon's service as a submariner both as a line officer and a chaplain.

The foundation of the crest is a life preserver which symbolizes Chaplain Laboon's heroic rescue of the downed fighter pilot. The preserver's straps which are red, reflect courage and sacrifice and denote his service with the Marines in Vietnam. The star commemorates the Chaplain's Silver Star and also represents his five successful submarine combat patrols. The wreath of laurel is emblematic of honor and accomplishment.

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About the Ship's Name, about Captain John Francis Laboon:

USS LABOON honors the distinguished career of captain John Francis "Jake" Laboon, Chaplain Corps, U.S. Navy. Known to most simply as "Father Jake", he devoted his life to service to God, Country and the Navy.

A Football star at the National Championship Lacrosse All American, Laboon graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy as a member of the class of 1944. Assigned to the submarine USS PETO (SS 265) then Lieutenant Junior Grade Laboon won the Silver Star for bravery for diving from his moving submarine to rescue a downed aviator under heavy enemy fire. At the close of World War II, Lieutenant Laboon left the Navy to become a Jesuit priest.

In 1958 Father Laboon returned to the Navy he loved so much as a member of the Chaplain Corps. Over the next 21 years, he served in virtually every branch of the Navy and Marine Corps. His assignments included tours in Alaska, Hawaii, Japan and Vietnam. As Chaplain with the Marines in Vietnam, Father Laboon earned a Legion of Merit with Combat "V". In addition to his heroic service in two wars, Father Laboon became the first chaplain for the Polaris Submarine Program and later became the Senior Catholic Chaplain at the Naval Academy.

The Naval Academy has honored Father Laboon by renaming the Chaplain's Center in his honor. When he retired in 1979, Captain Laboon was the Fleet Chaplain, Atlantic Fleet. When his naval career ended, Father Laboon returned to Annapolis as the house manager for the Jesuit retreat facility, Manresa-on-Severn. His final tour of duty was as pastor of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez Church in Woodstock, Maryland.

When he passed away in 1988, Father Jake left behind countless service members and their families whose lives he had touched with his compassion and understanding. His courage and genuine concern for all his shipmates was then, is now, and will forever remain an extraordinary example for young sailors and marines everywhere.

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USS LABOON History:

USS LABOON was built at Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine. Her keel was laid on March 23, 1992, she was launched on February 20, 1993, and she was commissioned on March 18, 1995. The destroyer is a Flight I ARLEIGH BURKE-class Aegis ship named for CAPT John Francis Laboon, Chaplain Corps, USN. Homeported in Norfolk, Virginia, she entered service under Commander, Naval Surface Force Atlantic.

Following post-commissioning trials and shakedown, LABOON made her first combat contribution during the Iraq crisis of late 1996. In the fall of that year she launched TOMAHAWK land-attack missiles against targets in Iraq, becoming the first ARLEIGH BURKE-class destroyer to engage in combat. The strikes formed part of the U.S. response to Iraqi actions against Kurdish areas after the ceasefire period of the Gulf War.

In early 1998, LABOON deployed to the Mediterranean and participated in NATO exercise "Dynamic Response 98" with the WASP (LHD 1) Amphibious Ready Group, a large allied crisis-response drill intended to validate rapid reinforcement and amphibious operations under NATO command. She then prepared for an extended period with the DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (CVN 69) battle group and in 1999 completed the work-up cycle during the Inter-Deployment Training Cycle (IDTC).

USS LABOON began the decade with a return-to-sea rhythm that took her from Atlantic training straight into a long Mediterranean-Persian Gulf cruise. After a family-day outing on January 19, 2000, she sailed from Norfolk on February 19 with the DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER carrier battle group for what the Navy dubbed the "Millennium Cruise". The formation included, among others, USS ANZIO (CG 68), USS CAPE ST. GEORGE (CG 71), USS MAHAN (DDG 72), USS KAUFFMAN (FFG 59), and USS SAMUEL B. ROBERTS (FFG 58). Across spring and summer the group enforced the no-fly regime over Iraq under Operation Southern Watch, with LABOON shifting between Sixth Fleet waters and Fifth Fleet stations after transiting the Suez Canal. As the deployment wound down she called at Split, Croatia (arriving July 28 for three days), then Gibraltar (August 4-7), before crossing the Atlantic and completing the cruise in August 2000.

The ship spent 2001 largely in Atlantic and European operating areas for post-deployment training and certifications. Photography places her in the North Atlantic on April 21, 2001, a typical waypoint for refresher drills and warfare area checks with Second Fleet. Those events set the baseline for her next forward period as the post-9/11 operational environment took firmer shape.

Through 2002, LABOON's crew prepared for and then executed a combined Mediterranean-Middle East deployment. The ship's official command narrative frames 2002 around being "ready in all respects for a Med/Mideast deployment", and the year's movement track bears that out: a port call at Souda Bay, Crete, on October 19, 2002, marks her Mediterranean operating pattern en route to and from Red Sea and Arabian waters, and the 2003 command history notes she was back from deployment by December 2002. In practical terms this meant presence missions, escorts, and maritime security in the corridors linking the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean as coalition operations against terrorism were expanding.

Back home in early 2003, LABOON shifted into the Inter-Deployment Training Cycle. The 2003 command narrative records the ship "hitting the deck running", knocking out aviation certifications and readiness assessments, while imagery records a spring visit to Philadelphia (March 2003), part of a set of public-outreach and training evolutions that punctuated that year.

In 2004, the destroyer again featured prominently in Navy public events between training periods. On June 30, 2004, she moored at Philadelphia's Penn's Landing to support the city's "Let Freedom Ring" Fourth of July celebration - an Independence Week program that, as the official caption notes, included concerts, fireworks, and a ceremony honoring Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai - before returning to routine Atlantic workups.

The following year kept the focus on warfighting readiness at sea: published imagery places LABOON underway in the Atlantic in April 2005 during a phase of gunnery, engineering, and tactical training typical for a Flight I ARLEIGH BURKE-class destroyer between deployments. The steady cadence of exercises maintained the ship's certifications for air defense, surface warfare, and maritime interdiction - capabilities that would prove central in her NATO tasking that followed.

From 2006 through 2007, LABOON's operational center of gravity shifted decisively to the Mediterranean under NATO. Assigned to Standing NATO Maritime Group Two (SNMG-2), she supported Operation ACTIVE ENDEAVOUR - the Alliance's post-9/11 counter-terrorism and maritime security mission - conducting presence patrols, hails and queries, and cooperative escorts that knit together the Strait of Gibraltar, central Med sea lanes, and the approaches to the Levant. A contemporaneous officer biography places her on this SNMG-2 duty in 2006, aligning with NATO’s description of ACTIVE ENDEAVOUR as a persistent deterrence and security screen across the basin.

Interwoven with the NATO assignment were high-end allied exercises. On April 19, 2007, LABOON moored outboard USS BAINBRIDGE (DDG 96) at HMNB Clyde, Faslane, to take part in Exercise NEPTUNE WARRIOR off Scotland - a Royal Navy-led multi-threat warfighting drill that stressed anti-submarine, air-defense, and joint maritime command-and-control alongside allied frigates, destroyers, submarines, and maritime patrol aircraft. The evolution validated the ship's theater-entry readiness ahead of her next NATO patrol phase.

In the autumn of 2007, LABOON left Norfolk for a six-month Sixth Fleet deployment with SNMG-2, remaining under the ACTIVE ENDEAVOUR umbrella into early 2008. A series of official images from January 9, 2008, shows her arriving in Souda Bay, Crete, where port-operations teams rigged oil-spill containment gear ahead of refueling - a routine but telling detail of the logistics underpinning NATO's constant patrol posture. From this Cretan logistics hub she cycled back to sea for additional security sorties and cooperative training events with allied ships before concluding the rotation and returning stateside later in 2008.

In 2009, USS LABOON executed a seven-month NATO-focused deployment that bridged Mediterranean maritime security and the alliance's first sustained counter-piracy surge off the Horn of Africa. She departed Norfolk on January 29, 2009, for Standing NATO Maritime Group tasking in the Mediterranean, beginning with routine Sixth Fleet patrols and interoperability events alongside allied frigates and destroyers. By the spring, contemporaneous reporting listed her operating in company with HMS CORNWALL (F 99), HS NAVARINON (F 461), ITS LIBECCIO (F 572), and TCG GEDIZ (F 495) as part of SNMG-2. As piracy surged along the Gulf of Aden shipping lanes, NATO shifted forces east: on June 25, 2009, the group sailed through the Suez Canal and on June 29 relieved SNMG-1 to continue Operation Allied Protector, the alliance's counter-piracy mission in the International Recommended Transit Corridor. In early July, LABOON was photographed in the Red Sea running visit, board, search and seizure (VBSS) training and anti-piracy patrol preparations with partner navies from Greece, Italy, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, reflecting the mission set of escorting vulnerable merchant traffic, deterring hijack attempts, and responding to distress calls in coordination with maritime patrol aircraft and shore-based task force staffs. With Allied Protector concluding in mid-August and SNMG-2 transitioning to NATO's follow-on Operation Ocean Shield, LABOON detached and crossed back to the Atlantic, returning to Naval Station Norfolk on August 28, 2009 to close a deployment that had spanned both Sixth Fleet presence operations and Fifth Fleet counter-piracy tasking.

In the early 2010s, LABOON continued Sixth Fleet tasking and periodic maintenance. She departed Norfolk in August 2010, for another Sixth Fleet period and was photographed at Souda Bay in January 2011 during a Mediterranean patrol. On September 12, 2012, amid the Libya crisis that followed the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, the Pentagon placed LABOON on contingency tasking off Libya. After returning stateside, she underwent an extended drydocking selected restricted availability (E-DSRA) at BAE Systems Norfolk Ship Repair under a May 2013 contract intended to modernize and preserve combat systems and hull-mechanical-electrical readiness, with work projected to complete in December 2013. She resumed operations and was photographed in Souda Bay and throughout the Mediterranean in late 2012 and early 2013 as she re-entered Sixth Fleet routines.

Through 2014, LABOON executed Atlantic training and certification events, then in early 2015 completed COMPTUEX with the THEODORE ROOSEVELT (CVN 71) Carrier Strike Group before deploying independently to U.S. Sixth Fleet for ballistic-missile-defense (BMD) duty. She relieved USS COLE (DDG 67) at Rota, Spain, in February 2015 to assume Operation "Sharp Sentry" tasking guarding NATO/European BMD architecture. During the deployment she exercised with allied ships including FORBIN (D 620), TCG YILDIRIM (F 243), and Israeli SA'AR-4 craft KESHET and ROMACH, and participated in the U.S.-Greek-Israeli exercises NOBLE DINA and NOBLE SHIRLEY. On June 21, 2015, she entered the Black Sea for presence operations following Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea, and on June 27-28 she visited Batumi, Georgia, conducting drills with the Georgian Coast Guard. LABOON returned to Norfolk on July 24, 2015, after nearly six months in theater.

In December 2016, LABOON conducted COMPTUEX with the GEORGE H. W. BUSH (CVN 77) Carrier Strike Group and deployed in January 2017 to U.S. Fifth and Sixth Fleets with CSG-2 (GEORGE H. W. BUSH, USS PHILIPPINE SEA (CG 58), USS HUE CITY (CG 66), and USS TRUXTUN (DDG 103)). Over six months she executed maritime security operations, including two months of counter-smuggling and maritime interdiction operations (MIO) that yielded more than $50 million in seized narcotics after more than 30 boardings. The deployment also included transits through major chokepoints to the Middle East, liberty and logistics visits to the Seychelles, Amsterdam, Germany, Greece, and Dubai, and a brief foray north of the Arctic Circle (earning "Blue Nose"). She returned to Norfolk on July 20, 2017.

After post-deployment maintenance, LABOON re-deployed on a back-to-back schedule. She entered U.S. Sixth Fleet on March 1, 2018, and on April 14, 2018, from a firing position in the Red Sea, launched seven TOMAHAWK land-attack missiles as part of the allied strikes on Syrian chemical warfare infrastructure following the Douma chemical attack. The deployment also featured escort tasking, multiple Suez Canal, Bab al-Mandeb, and Strait of Hormuz transits, and port visits that included Rota (bookending the deployment), Djibouti, Duqm (Oman), and Alexandria (Egypt). She returned to Norfolk on July 23, 2018.

Through 2019-2020, the ship executed maintenance, training, and local operations amid evolving COVID-19 protocols. Among public-facing events was a May 19, 2020 official "virtual tour" of the ship produced by Commander, Naval Surface Force Atlantic.

On February 18, 2021, LABOON sailed with the DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER Carrier Strike Group following completion of integrated training. She and USS MAHAN transited the Suez Canal on March 7 to join Fifth Fleet operations and subsequently returned to Sixth Fleet for Black Sea presence in June. In the Black Sea, LABOON conducted a June 17, 2021 passing and communications exercise with Royal Navy and Royal Netherlands Navy units and made a three-day port visit to Constanta, Romania, June 18-20, before concluding Black Sea operations with a southbound strait transit on June 25. LABOON returned to Norfolk on July 16, 2021.

In late 2023, the destroyer deployed again, this time amid the cascading regional fallout from the Israel-Hamas war and the Houthis' campaign against international shipping in the Red Sea. Integrated with the DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER strike group, LABOON moved from the Mediterranean into the southern Red Sea as part of the U.S.-led defensive effort that later included Operation Prosperity Guardian. On December 23, 2023, she shot down four Houthi unmanned aerial vehicles in the Red Sea. On December 26, LABOON and carrier-based F/A-18s from the DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER air wing intercepted a complex, 10-hour, multi-axis Houthi attack that included 12 one-way attack drones, three anti-ship ballistic missiles, and two land-attack cruise missiles. On January 6, 2024, LABOON downed another Houthi drone threatening commercial traffic. These air-defense actions, part of the broader coalition effort to keep Bab al-Mandeb and the Red Sea open to international commerce, continued through the spring of 2024.

LABOON returned to Norfolk on September 1, 2024, after 279 days deployed across the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, Arabian Sea, and Arabian Gulf, where she provided deterrence patrols, escort duties, and air- and missile-defense while operating with the DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER strike group. In November 2024, the Navy awarded BAE Systems a major modernization and maintenance package for LABOON at its Norfolk yard, positioning the destroyer for continued service following the high-tempo 2023-2024 deployment.

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Homeports of USS LABOON:

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USS LABOON Image Gallery:

The photo below was contributed by ENS Geoff Belanger, USN, and shows LABOON as seen from USS MAHAN (DDG 72).

The photos below were taken by me and show the LABOON at Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on November 9, 2008.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the LABOON during her Extended Drydocking Selected Restricted Availability (E-DSRA) at BAE Systems Norfolk Ship Repair at Norfolk, Va. The photos were taken on October 28, 2013.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the LABOON at Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on October 23, 2014.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the LABOON undergoing a Selected Restricted Availability (SRA) at the Marine Hydraulics International Inc. Shipyard at Norfolk, Va., on October 6, 2015.

The photos below were taken by Steven Collingwood and show the LABOON departing Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on December 15, 2015. LABOON is departing for sea trials after a refit period.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the LABOON at Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on October 12, 2016.

The photos below were taken by me and show the USS LABOON arriving at Naval Base Wilhelmshaven, Germany, on July 4, 2017, respectively berthed in the west lock at the Naval Base shortly after the arrival. LABOON is probably support ship for President Trump's visit to the G20 summit in Hamburg. The ship is presently in the sixth month of a deployment that already took her to the Mediterranean and Arabian Sea.

The photos below were taken by me on July 6, 2017, and show the USS LABOON at Naval Base Wilhelmshaven, Germany. The ship is in the sixth month of a deployment that already took her to the Mediterranean and Arabian Sea. The port visit to Wilhelmshaven is LABOON's final stop before heading home to Norfolk, Va. While at Wilhelmshaven, LABOON probably acted as support ship for President Trump's visit to the G20 summit in Hamburg. Special thanks to the German Navy and the PAO of USS LABOON for their generous help in making these photos possible.

			Click here for more Photos.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the USS LABOON at Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on September 21, 2018.

The photo below was taken by Michael Jenning and shows the USS LABOON at Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on December 7, 2019.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the USS LABOON at the Marine Hydraulics Industries (MHI) Ship Repair & Services shipyard at Norfolk, Va., on December 26, 2021. LABOON entered the shipyard on August 17, 2021.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the USS LABOON at Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on September 6, 2022. Note the silver-colored stacks instead of the usual black.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the USS LABOON at Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on October 9, 2023.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show USS LABOON at Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on October 4, 2024.

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