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USS Julius A. Furer (FFG 6)

USS JULIUS A. FURER was the 6^th and final BROOKE - class guided missile frigate and the first ship in the Navy to bear the name. Decommissioned on January 31, 1989, JULIUS A. FURER was leased to Pakistan the same day where she was renamed BADR.

The ship was given back to the US Navy on December 11, 1993 in Singapore and on March 29, 1994, was sold for scrap to Trusha Investments Pte. Ltd., c/o Jacques Peirot, Jr. & Sons, of New York City for $660,600.

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Crew List:

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

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USS JULIUS A. FURER Cruise Books:

• STANAVFORLANT Cruise Book 1974

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About the Ship's Name:

Julius Augustus Furer, naval constructor, inventor, administrator, and author, was born 9 October 1880 at Mosel, Wis. Appointed to the Naval Academy in 1897, he graduated at the head of his class in 1901. After sea duty in INDIANA (BB 1) and torpedo boat SHUBRICK, he acquired a Master of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1905.

In the era of great naval expansion after the Spanish-American War, Furer established a reputation for professional competence in his remarkably expeditious outfitting of the Navy Base at Charleston, S.C., which at that time lacked a physical plant, natural resources, and a skilled shipbuilding labor force.

While serving in the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 1911, he applied new theories of scientific management. His advanced thinking and methods of procurement brought him the added task of purchasing all tools, machinery, and dock facilities for the Navy’s new base for the Pacific Fleet: Pearl Harbor. Furer installed the equipment in 18 months, but delayed his departure when submarine F-4 (SS 23) sank in 50 fathoms off Honolulu. He insisted on salvaging her, and invented a submersible pontoon which raised the boat and enabled her to be moved to drydock. An investigation of her hull revealed a design error which was corrected to avoid similar accidents.

Furer returned to Washington late in 1915 and took charge of the Supply Division, Bureau of Construction and Repair. Against some opposition by advocates of smaller vessels, he proposed the construction of 110-foot submarine chasers to meet the threat of the German U-boat. Furer’s arguments persuaded the Navy’s General Board to order 450 vessels constructed on Furer’s basic design. These contributions to the American war effort earned Furer the Navy Cross.

Following the war, he reported to the staff of the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, and tirelessly devoted his talent to the improvement of damage control, ship design, and crew comfort. From December 1922 to April 1927, he was a member of the U.S. Naval Mission to Brazil.

Furer next was assigned to the Asiatic Station, where he developed extensively the aircraft facilities at Cavite, Philippine Islands.

In 1928, he became Manager of the Industrial Department of the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and supervised the modernization of battleships PENNSYLVANIA (BB 38) and NEW MEXICO (BB 40). Under his management, the yard set records for low costs and speed of construction.

Between July 1935 and December 1937, Furer was Naval Attache at embassies in London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome. His technical advice aided the American delegation to the London Naval Conference in 1936.

A Rear Admiral at the outbreak of World War II, he became the Coordinator of Research and Development, and the senior member of the National Research and Development Board. He coordinated widespread research that speeded development of modern weapons systems for the Navy. These services won Furer the Legion of Merit 30 June 1945.

Julius Furer retired from active service in 1945, but was recalled to duty in the Navy's History Division in 1951. During a second retirement, he wrote the widely acclaimed study, "Administration of the Navy Department in World War II", published in 1960.

Rear Admiral Julius A. Furer died 6 June 1963 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

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USS JULIUS A. FURER History:

USS JULIUS A. FURER was the sixth and final ship of the BROOKE-class guided missile destroyer escorts, a compact Cold War class built to combine antisubmarine warfare, guided missile air defense, and general ocean escort work in a single steam-powered hull. The ship was awarded to Bath Iron Works at Bath, Maine, on May 24, 1963. Her keel was laid on July 12, 1965, she was launched on July 22, 1966, sponsored by Mrs. Julius A. Furer, and she was commissioned at Boston Naval Shipyard, Boston, Massachusetts, on November 11, 1967, as USS JULIUS A. FURER (DEG 6).

At commissioning, USS JULIUS A. FURER entered the fleet as a guided-missile destroyer escort rather than as a frigate, because the Navy's later frigate classification system had not yet been adopted. Her original mission combined antisubmarine escort work with a limited but important guided-missile air-defense capability. Her design included a 5-inch/38-caliber gun, a single-arm Mk 22 launcher for Tartar and later Standard missiles, an ASROC launcher, lightweight antisubmarine torpedo tubes, a bow sonar centered on the SQS-26 system, air-search and surface-search radar, and the fire-control equipment needed for missile, gun, and antisubmarine work. She was powered by two Foster Wheeler boilers driving one geared turbine and one shaft, giving her a designed speed of about 27 knots. Her later LAMPS helicopter capability allowed her to operate an SH-2 helicopter and extended her antisubmarine and surveillance reach beyond the limits of her own hull-mounted sonar.

During September and October 1967, before formal commissioning, the precommissioning crew trained at the Fleet Training Center at Newport, Rhode Island, while a nucleus of officers and enlisted men completed the ship's final acceptance work at Bath. After commissioning at Boston, USS JULIUS A. FURER moved into the normal first-year work-up cycle of a new guided missile escort. Her early movements included ammunition and missile loading at Yorktown, Virginia, and visits or operating periods associated with Norfolk, Virginia; Mayport, Florida; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; San Juan, Puerto Rico; the Virgin Islands; and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Guantanamo period served as shakedown training, testing the ship's engineering plant, weapons organization, damage control readiness, communications, watch teams, sonar procedures, and ability to operate as a coordinated fleet unit. This early work was especially important for a ship whose usefulness depended on integrating steam engineering, missile fire control, sonar, tactical communications, and helicopter-era antisubmarine methods into one escort platform.

After returning from shakedown and post-shakedown work, USS JULIUS A. FURER was assigned in May 1968 to the search for the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS SCORPION (SSN 589), which had failed to return from a Mediterranean deployment. The loss of USS SCORPION was one of the most serious U.S. Navy submarine disasters of the Cold War, and the search involved surface ships, aircraft, and specialized assets over a large Atlantic area. For USS JULIUS A. FURER, still only months into commissioned service, the assignment placed her in a demanding operation requiring precise navigation, disciplined communications, sonar employment, and sustained sea time. After that search duty and further preparation at Newport and other Atlantic Fleet support points, she moved toward her first major overseas deployment.

In 1968, USS JULIUS A. FURER deployed to the Mediterranean for duty with the Sixth Fleet. This first deployment gave the ship an early introduction to one of the U.S. Navy's principal Cold War operating areas. The Sixth Fleet maintained a continuous U.S. presence among NATO allies, monitored Soviet naval activity, supported American policy in the eastern Mediterranean, and operated in a region still shaped by the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and the wider confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. During this cruise, USS JULIUS A. FURER served in several typical escort roles. She acted as plane guard for carriers, operated with hunter-killer forces, and worked with amphibious forces. Her port visits during the deployment included Palma, Spain; Valletta, Malta; Livorno, Italy; Venice, Italy; and Messina, Sicily.

After her first Mediterranean deployment, USS JULIUS A. FURER settled into the Atlantic Fleet routine of a guided missile destroyer escort. Her cycle included home-port upkeep, East Coast operations, Caribbean training, weapons exercises, engineering work, inspections, and preparation for further overseas commitments. She remained an Atlantic Fleet escort, working from the U.S. East Coast and Caribbean training areas while the Navy continued to sustain global commitments in the Mediterranean, North Atlantic, western Pacific, and Vietnam era operating zones.

By the early 1970s, USS JULIUS A. FURER had moved into a more mature operating phase. In 1972, she made another Mediterranean deployment. This work occurred during the final phase of direct U.S. combat involvement in Vietnam and during a period when the Mediterranean remained one of the main areas of contact between U.S., NATO, and Soviet naval forces.

Around 1973, USS JULIUS A. FURER underwent work that gave her LAMPS helicopter capability. By the time of her 1974 NATO deployment, ship material emphasized that the addition of LAMPS gave her a more capable antisubmarine reach than her original shipboard sensors and weapons alone could provide. The LAMPS concept was important for a BROOKE-class escort because an embarked SH-2 helicopter could search, localize, and attack submarine contacts beyond the immediate reach of the hull-mounted sonar and deck-launched weapons. By this period, she was homeported at Charleston, South Carolina, and assigned to Commander Cruiser-Destroyer Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, as a unit of Destroyer Squadron 20.

From January 1974 through June 1974, USS JULIUS A. FURER served with Standing Naval Force Atlantic, NATO's permanent multinational Atlantic squadron. The 1974 force included HMCS YUKON from Canada, FGS AUGSBURG from West Germany, HNLMS ROTTERDAM from the Netherlands, HMS SIRIUS from Great Britain, USS JULIUS A. FURER from the United States, HNOMS NARVIK from Norway, HMCS ANNAPOLIS from Canada, and NRP ALMIRANTE PEREIRA DA SILVA from Portugal. STANAVFORLANT was intended to operate as a standing NATO maritime force in peacetime, demonstrating allied interoperability, readiness, and presence in the North Atlantic. USS JULIUS A. FURER's cruise track during this deployment included Halifax, Newport, San Juan, Roosevelt Roads, Norfolk, Lisbon, Frederikshavn, Oslo, Cherbourg, Greenock, Rotterdam, Den Helder, Aalborg, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and the Azores. The deployment combined port visits, tactical operations, seamanship, communications drills, formation steaming, and the daily practical work of operating within a mixed allied force.

The 1974 STANAVFORLANT deployment also produced one of the most unusual incidents in USS JULIUS A. FURER's career. On June 29, 1974, at 1355, the ship departed Den Helder, Netherlands, bound for Aalborg, Denmark. At about 2100 that evening, her medical staff diagnosed a crewman with suspected appendicitis. USS JULIUS A. FURER reversed course and increased speed in an effort to transfer the sailor for medical treatment. Weather and visibility complicated the planned evacuation by helicopter, and Dutch authorities arranged surface assistance. While maneuvering in connection with the medical evacuation, USS JULIUS A. FURER ran aground at about 0123 on June 30, 1974, on the Haaksgrunden Bank sandbar west of Den Helder. The grounding was complicated by the ship's bow sonar dome, which extended below the keel and was filled with water. The ship tried unsuccessfully to back clear, and Dutch naval and commercial salvage assistance was called in. The Dutch salvage company Wijsmuller dispatched tugs including CYCLOOP, TITAN, WILLEM BARENDSZ, and UTRECHT. After repeated towing efforts, scouring of sand, pumping of the sonar dome, and the effect of rising water, USS JULIUS A. FURER floated free shortly after 0210 on July 1, 1974. She was towed to a safe anchorage, inspected, and found to have only minor propeller-blade damage. Steering and engine tests were satisfactory, and she got underway for Denmark at 0757 on July 1. The incident later led to litigation over the salvage award, but operationally it became a notable interruption in an otherwise normal NATO deployment.

On June 30, 1975, USS JULIUS A. FURER was reclassified from DEG 6 to FFG 6 as part of the Navy-wide surface combatant reclassification. Her basic mission did not change. She remained a small guided missile escort with an antisubmarine emphasis and a secondary air-defense role, but the new designation placed her within the guided missile frigate category used for the later Cold War fleet. By December 1975, she was at Charleston, where photographic evidence places her moored with USS BRUMBY (FF 1044) at Naval Station Charleston. The image belongs to the same period in which the ship was settling fully into Charleston-based service after her earlier Newport- and Boston-associated years.

In 1976, USS JULIUS A. FURER participated in the U.S. Bicentennial naval events. The International Naval Review and Operation Sail 1976 brought U.S. and foreign warships and tall ships to New York Harbor for the July 4 celebration. USS JULIUS A. FURER's participation placed her in a ceremonial and public-diplomacy setting rather than a combat or training role, but it was still part of the Navy's active use of fleet units for representation, alliance contact, and national commemoration. Soon afterward, she returned to the operational cycle. On October 4, 1976, JULIUS A. FURER departed Charleston in company with USS JESSE L. BROWN (FF 1089), USS WILLIAM V. PRATT (DDG 44), and USS VALDEZ (FF 1096) for a Mediterranean deployment. The ships reached Rota, Spain, on October 14, completed turnover briefings, and entered the Mediterranean on October 16. The group's Sixth Fleet duty included operations in the screen of USS FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT (CV 42) and the usual mixture of exercises, port visits, carrier support work, and allied-navy interaction. The deployment lasted into the early part of April 1977.

USS JULIUS A. FURER was back in northern European waters in June and July 1977 as part of the U.S. Navy delegation connected with the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. The U.S. delegation included USS CALIFORNIA (CGN 25), USS CONYNGHAM (DDG 17), USS JULIUS A. FURER, USS BILLFISH (SSN 676), USS MILWAUKEE (AOR 2), USS FRANCIS MARION (LPA 249), and USS JESSE L. BROWN. The Silver Jubilee commemorated the twenty-fifth anniversary of Elizabeth II's reign, and the naval participation combined ceremonial presence, alliance diplomacy, and goodwill visits. The official review took place off Portsmouth, with the royal yacht BRITANNIA serving as the Queen's reviewing platform, while other elements of the U.S. delegation carried out goodwill visits to northern European ports. For USS JULIUS A. FURER, this was a different kind of overseas mission from Sixth Fleet carrier screen work: it centered on alliance visibility, naval diplomacy, and representation during a major British national event.

Later in 1977, USS JULIUS A. FURER began another extended overseas cycle. A cruise book identifies a 1977 West Africa-Indian Ocean cruise, and photographic evidence fixes the ship off Victoria, Seychelles Islands, on January 13, 1978. This places USS JULIUS A. FURER in the western Indian Ocean off East Africa. The late 1970s were a period of increasing U.S. naval interest in the Indian Ocean because of the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis, the strategic value of the Suez route, instability in and around the Horn of Africa, and the importance of sea lanes leading toward the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf approaches.

In 1979, USS JULIUS A. FURER again returned to Mediterranean and wider Middle East-Indian Ocean commitments. A Sixth Fleet chronology notes the ship transiting the Mediterranean under Sixth Fleet operational control while en route to the continental United States. This was a period of rising U.S. naval attention to the Middle East and Indian Ocean. The Iranian Revolution, the fall of the Shah, the seizure of the U.S. Embassy hostages in Tehran in November 1979, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 all increased the strategic importance of naval presence around the eastern Mediterranean, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Gulf of Oman, and Indian Ocean approaches. Public material does not support a precise Persian Gulf itinerary for USS JULIUS A. FURER in 1979, so her role is best described as part of the Atlantic Fleet escort force moving through Mediterranean and Middle East-related operating patterns during that increasingly unstable year.

During the early 1980s, USS JULIUS A. FURER continued to operate from Charleston as an experienced Atlantic Fleet guided missile frigate. In 1982, she deployed again to the Mediterranean. The deployment became tied to the Lebanon crisis, which followed the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and led to U.S. naval involvement in evacuation, presence, and support operations connected with Beirut and the multinational arrangements of that period. USS JULIUS A. FURER had been in the Mediterranean since June 1982, and much of her time was spent operating off the coast of Lebanon. During August 1982, USS JULIUS A. FURER and USS VREELAND (FF 1068) escorted the merchant vessel M/V NEREUS from Beirut to Port Said, Egypt. USS JULIUS A. FURER then returned to Beirut and picked up the West German hospital ship M/V FLORA, which she escorted to Larnaca, Cyprus. These movements connected the ship directly to the maritime support surrounding the evacuation of Palestine Liberation Organization combatants and associated humanitarian and diplomatic traffic from Beirut.

USS JULIUS A. FURER made another major Mediterranean-Indian Ocean deployment in 1984. The deployment belonged to the Cold War operating pattern of the mid-1980s, when U.S. naval forces moved between the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Gulf of Oman, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean in response to Soviet naval activity, the continuing Iran-Iraq War, regional instability, and the need to maintain access near key sea lanes. The ship's presence in this operating cycle is also reflected in records of other U.S. Navy units. USS AINSWORTH (FF 1090)'s history places that ship turning over with USS JULIUS A. FURER in the Port Suez area during 1984, and USS STARK (FFG 31)'s history records that USS STARK was at Mina Qaboos, Muscat, Oman, concurrently with USS JULIUS A. FURER from August 11 to August 13, 1984. These points place USS JULIUS A. FURER in the Red Sea-Gulf of Oman connection during the cruise. For a BROOKE-class frigate, the work emphasized escort duty, surveillance, antisubmarine readiness, communications, and the ability to operate with larger battle group or task force structures across a long and politically sensitive route.

By the mid-1980s, USS JULIUS A. FURER was one of the older guided missile frigates in active Atlantic Fleet service. The BROOKE-class had been designed in the early 1960s and commissioned before the much larger OLIVER HAZARD PERRY-class frigate program reshaped the Navy's frigate force. The BROOKE ships still provided missile, sonar, and helicopter capability, but their steam plants, single-arm missile launchers, compact hulls, and older combat systems belonged to an earlier generation. Crew records and ship materials indicate that USS JULIUS A. FURER spent significant time in maintenance and upkeep during her final years while still remaining part of the Charleston-based surface force.

USS JULIUS A. FURER was decommissioned on January 31, 1989, after more than twenty-one years of U.S. Navy commissioned service. She was leased to Pakistan the same day and entered Pakistani naval service as PNS BADR, hull number D161. The transfer formed part of the wider late-Cold War and immediate post-Cold War use of former U.S. frigates and destroyer escorts by allied and partner navies. Pakistan operated several former U.S. Navy escorts during this period to sustain a surface combatant force. The former USS JULIUS A. FURER remained in Pakistani service until she was returned to U.S. custody on December 11, 1993. She was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on February 2, 1994, and disposed of by Navy title transfer to the Maritime Administration on March 28, 1994. She was sold for scrapping on March 29, 1994.

USS JULIUS A. FURER's documented awards included the Meritorious Unit Commendation, two Navy Expeditionary Medals, the National Defense Service Medal, the Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, and the Coast Guard Special Operations Service Ribbon.

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USS JULIUS A. FURER Image Gallery:

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