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USS Tempest (PC 2)

USS TEMPEST was the second CYCLONE - class patrol coastal boat and the third ship in the Navy to bear the name. From November 2001 on, the CYCLONE-class ships were temporarily operated under US Coast Guard control for homeland defense. On October 1, 2004, the TEMPEST was decommissioned and officially transferred to the US Coast Guard where she was recommissioned as USCGC TEMPEST (WPC 2). Transferred back to the Navy and recommissioned as USS TEMPEST on August 22, 2008, she operated out of Manama, Bahrain, until decommissioned on March 7, 2022, during a ceremony at Naval Support Activity Bahrain after 29 years of U.S. Navy service. On the same date, she was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register. On March 30, 2022, she was transferred via foreign military sale to the Royal Bahrain Naval Force and commissioned as RBNS AL-GURAIRIYAH (hull number PC-70).

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Crew List:

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

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USS TEMPEST History:

The coastal patrol ship USS TEMPEST was ordered from Bollinger Shipyards on August 3, 1990, as part of the CYCLONE-class program to provide fast, shallow-draft platforms in support of naval special warfare and coastal patrol missions. Her keel was laid at Lockport, Louisiana, on September 30, 1991, and she was launched on April 4, 1992, sponsored by Sara Livingston, the wife of marine corps major general James E. Livingston. After fitting out, she was christened on June 20, 1992, and prepared for service with the Atlantic Fleet.

USS TEMPEST was commissioned on August 21, 1993, at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, Virginia, and became the third U.S. Navy ship to bear the name. She was assigned to Special Boat Squadron 2 at Little Creek, reflecting her primary role in supporting naval special warfare units such as SEAL teams and special boat units.

In her early months, she conducted shakedown and training operations off the U.S. East Coast and in nearby waters to integrate her crew with the high-speed, close-coast mission profile of the CYCLONE-class. In October 1993, she visited the Washington Navy Yard, a public appearance that also highlighted the Navy's new class of coastal patrol ships to policymakers and the general public.

The geopolitical crisis that followed the Haitian military's overthrow of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in September 1991 eventually drew USS TEMPEST into her first major operational deployment. As violence and political stalemate continued, the United States and the international community moved toward coercive measures and the possible use of force to restore democratic government. In this context, on May 24, 1994, USS TEMPEST departed Little Creek in company with the lead ship USS CYCLONE (PC 1) for waters off Haiti. For more than three months, the two patrol ships operated off the Haitian coast in support of Operation Support Democracy, enforcing United Nations sanctions and providing a small, highly maneuverable presence close inshore. During this period, TEMPEST worked at times with SEAL Teams 4 and 8 and Special Boat Unit 20, reflecting the class's intended role as a platform for special operations forces. Photographic evidence shows USS TEMPEST operating off Haiti's coast from Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, underscoring her use in close-in patrol and surveillance missions around the island during the standoff.

Following the Haiti deployment, USS TEMPEST returned to Little Creek and resumed her routine pattern of training with special warfare units and conducting exercises along the U.S. East Coast. The detailed day-to-day record of those mid-1990s operations is not publicly available, but she remained under Special Boat Squadron 2 at Little Creek and continued to embody the Navy's concept of a small, fast littoral craft supporting low-intensity conflict and special operations.

A notable deployment in this period took place on September 2, 1998, when USS TEMPEST operated near Guayaquil, Ecuador. According to the Navy's later historical evaluation, she trained with the Ecuadorian Navy and Coast Guard on a variety of maritime skills, and Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton visited the ship and her embarked SEAL detachment during this engagement. This deployment reflected broader U.S. efforts in the late 1990s to deepen security cooperation with regional partners in Latin America and improve counter-narcotics and coastal security capabilities through combined training.

In the years immediately following, USS TEMPEST continued operating from Little Creek as part of the CYCLONE-class contribution to naval special warfare. The class as a whole provided fast, highly maneuverable platforms capable of supporting SEAL insertion and extraction, coastal surveillance, and interdiction missions, with TEMPEST among the units regularly tasked for such roles in the western Atlantic and Caribbean when required.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent focus on homeland security in U.S. coastal waters fundamentally reshaped the employment of the CYCLONE-class. In 2001, USS TEMPEST, together with USS SHAMAL (PC 13) and USS TORNADO (PC 14), was assigned to the U.S. Atlantic Fleet for maritime homeland security operations and homeported at Pascagoula, Mississippi. This move shifted her emphasis from special warfare support toward patrol, surveillance, and escort missions in U.S. coastal approaches, including tasks aligned with Operation Noble Eagle such as monitoring vessel traffic, supporting harbor security, and working alongside the U.S. Coast Guard in protecting ports and critical infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico and along the southeastern seaboard.

In August 2004, the Navy and Coast Guard signed a memorandum of understanding that formalized the loan of several CYCLONE-class ships, including USS TEMPEST, to the Coast Guard while the Navy retained ownership and life-cycle responsibilities. Under this arrangement, the Coast Guard would provide crews, operational funding, and mission tasking, using the ships for search and rescue, maritime interception, and boarding operations, especially focusing on large merchant vessels approaching U.S. ports. As part of this process, USS TEMPEST was decommissioned from the Navy and transferred on September 30, 2004, being reclassified as USCGC TEMPEST (WPC 2) on October 1, 2004.

She initially entered "commission special" status before being formally commissioned as a Coast Guard cutter on December 6, 2005. During her Coast Guard service from late 2004 until August 2008, USCGC TEMPEST was employed in typical patrol-craft roles, including search and rescue, port security, and interception and boarding of merchant vessels, in company with sister cutters USCGC MONSOON (WPC 4), USCGC ZEPHYR (WPC 8), USCGC SHAMAL (WPC 13) and USCGC TORNADO (WPC 14). Publicly available sources do not provide a cruise-by-cruise breakdown of these operations, but they make clear that the ex-CYCLONE-class cutters played an important role in the Coast Guard's expanded maritime security posture in the years after 2001, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico and approaches to major U.S. ports. On August 22, 2008, USCGC TEMPEST was decommissioned from Coast Guard service and returned to Navy control, being recommissioned as USS TEMPEST (PC 2) at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek. Photographs from the inter-service transfer ceremony show USS TEMPEST and USS MONSOON (PC 4) moored together at Little Creek, marking the formal handover back to the Navy's coastal patrol force.

Assigned again to Atlantic Fleet, USS TEMPEST resumed a pattern of local training and short deployments from the Norfolk/Little Creek area. A photograph from January 9, 2009, documents the ship at Norfolk during a visit by the master chief petty officer of the Navy, indicating that she was then operating from the Hampton Roads region. In May 2010, USS TEMPEST, operating together with USS MONSOON, transited the Hudson River for Fleet Week New York 2010. The Navy's historical evaluation notes that on May 6, 2010, the two patrol craft proceeded down the river en route to the event, highlighting the CYCLONE-class to the public alongside larger combatants visiting the city. During Fleet Week, TEMPEST moored in the New York area and hosted visitors, reinforcing the small ships' role as visible symbols of Navy presence in coastal communities.

After returning to her home waters, USS TEMPEST entered a scheduled maintenance period. On September 15, 2011, the Navy awarded East Coast Repair and Fabrication, based in Norfolk, an $8.2-million fixed-price contract for a drydocking phased maintenance availability on the ship. This availability involved docking TEMPEST for hull inspection and preservation, machinery and systems overhauls, and modernization work to extend the useful life of the aging CYCLONE-class. The yard period in 2011 prepared her for the more demanding operational tempo she would soon assume in the Middle East.

By 2013, the Navy decided to forward-deploy most of the CYCLONE-class to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility, centered on Bahrain, to support maritime security in the Persian Gulf and surrounding waters. Local media in Virginia reported in May 2013 that USS TEMPEST, USS SQUALL (PC 7) and USS THUNDERBOLT (PC 12) would leave Little Creek and relocate permanently to Bahrain, with families allowed to accompany their sailors.

The Navy subsequently recorded that USS TEMPEST deployed and shifted homeport to Naval Support Activity Bahrain in 2013, arriving pierside on July 3, 2013, together with her two sisterships. Their arrival increased the number of patrol coastal ships based in Bahrain to eight, reflecting the continuing importance of small craft for escort, interdiction, and close-in patrol missions around critical chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz. The Navy's historical evaluation notes that on July 3, 2013, USS TEMPEST deployed to Bahrain and that by October 7, 2013, she was underway off Bahrain supporting maritime security operations and theater security cooperation tasks in the 5th Fleet region.

These duties included patrols to monitor commercial traffic, presence operations near regional ports, and joint activities with partner navies. On April 8, 2014, USS TEMPEST, assigned to Patrol Coastal Squadron ONE, participated in a maneuvering exercise in the Arabian Sea alongside sister ships USS SQUALL, USS WHIRLWIND (PC 11), USS FIREBOLT (PC 10), USS TYPHOON (PC 5) and USS THUNDERBOLT. This multi-ship evolution demonstrated the squadron's ability to operate as a coordinated force, a useful capability for layered maritime security operations in the region.

Through the mid-2010s, USS TEMPEST remained based in Bahrain as part of the small-craft backbone of U.S. presence in the Gulf. The CYCLONE-class as a whole assumed missions that included guarding offshore oil infrastructure after the 2003 invasion of Iraq and later broader patrol duties throughout the Gulf once Iraq took over defense of its terminals, with TEMPEST participating in this pattern of close-in patrols and escort operations. Her regular tasks included supporting Combined Maritime Forces initiatives such as Combined Task Force 150 and 152, which coordinate multinational efforts to secure shipping lanes and counter illicit trafficking.

A particularly well-documented incident occurred on August 24, 2016, when USS TEMPEST and USS SQUALL were operating in the northern Persian Gulf. According to multiple official accounts, an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Navy fast attack craft approached within about 200 yards of TEMPEST, ignoring bridge-to-bridge radio calls and warning flares. As the situation escalated, the Iranian boat also maneuvered near USS STOUT (DDG 55), creating collision risks. Ultimately, USS SQUALL fired three warning shots from a .50-caliber machine gun, after which the Iranian craft turned away. The episode was one of several in 2016 in which Iranian small boats conducted what U.S. officials described as unsafe and unprofessional maneuvers near American warships, underlining the tense maritime environment in which TEMPEST operated.

In the same general period, USS TEMPEST also took part in operations related to monitoring threats emanating from the conflict in Yemen. A widely published photograph from September 10, 2016, shows guided-missile destroyer USS MASON (DDG 87) conducting formation exercises with USS TEMPEST and USS SQUALL in the southern Red Sea, as U.S. forces positioned assets to monitor and, if necessary, respond to missile threats against shipping and U.S. naval units. These activities formed part of a broader U.S. maritime posture in and around the Bab el-Mandeb strait at a time when Houthi forces in Yemen were assessed as having obtained anti-ship missile capabilities.

USS TEMPEST continued routine patrol and cooperation missions in the Gulf after 2016. On August 14, 2018, she was photographed patrolling the Arabian Gulf in company with the Coast Guard cutter USCGC MONOMOY and the Kuwaiti Navy fast patrol boat KNS AL-GAROH, illustrating her role in combined maritime security operations with regional partners. For overall performance during this period, she received the Battle Effectiveness Award (Battle "E") for 2018, recognizing sustained operational readiness and effectiveness at the unit level.

Throughout 2019 and 2020, USS TEMPEST remained part of the Bahrain-based patrol coastal force. Imagery and releases from U.S. Naval Forces Central Command document her participating in a range of activities, including routine patrols and exercises with partner navies. In February 2020, she took part in Exercise Nautical Defender 20, a combined maritime security exercise in the Arabian Gulf that involved U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, and Gulf Cooperation Council partners, focused on tactics for protecting shipping, conducting visit-board-search-and-seizure operations, and coordinating responses to maritime threats.

On June 25, 2020, a DVIDS photo series shows USS TEMPEST at Naval Support Activity Bahrain as sister ship USS SQUALL gets underway, underscoring her ongoing rotational employment from that base. In 2021, USS TEMPEST played a documented role in multinational counter-narcotics operations under Combined Task Force 150. The Navy's historical evaluation records that in that year, TEMPEST and USS TYPHOON discovered an illegal shipment of heroin worth approximately $4 million while conducting a flag-verification boarding under customary international law.

Operating as part of CTF 150, they intercepted a stateless dhow in the Gulf of Oman on December 27, 2021, seized several hundred kilograms of heroin, and destroyed the drugs at sea in accordance with standard procedures. This interdiction was one of a series of successful narcotics seizures in the region that year, highlighting the contribution of small patrol ships like TEMPEST to disrupting illicit maritime networks.

By early 2022, the Navy was implementing a plan to retire the aging CYCLONE-class patrol coastal ships and transfer several of them to partner navies. USS TEMPEST was decommissioned on March 7, 2022, during a ceremony at Naval Support Activity Bahrain after 29 years of U.S. Navy service. On the same date, she was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register.

Less than a month later, on March 30, 2022, she was transferred via foreign military sale to the Royal Bahrain Naval Force and commissioned as RBNS AL-GURAIRIYAH (hull number PC-70), one of five former CYCLONE-class ships to enter Bahraini service.

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