Blue-water navy
A blue-water navy is a maritime force capable of operating globally across the deep waters of open oceans. While definitions of what constitutes such a force vary, there is a requirement for the ability to exercise sea control at wide ranges; the term "blue-water navy" is a maritime geographical-term in contrast with "brown-water navy" and "green-water navy". The Defense Security Service of the United States has defined the blue-water navy as "a maritime force capable of sustained operation across the deep waters of open oceans. A blue-water navy allows a country to project power far from the home country and includes one or more aircraft carriers. Smaller blue-water navies are able to dispatch fewer vessels abroad for shorter periods of time." In public discourse blue-water capability is identified with the operation of iconic capital ships such as battleships/battlecruisers, aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines. For instance, during the debate in the 1970s whether Australia should replace HMAS Melbourne, a former Chief of Navy claimed that if Australia did not replace her last aircraft carrier, she "would no longer have a blue-water navy".
In the end Australia did not buy a new carrier, but former Parliamentary defence advisor Gary Brown could still claim in 2004 that her navy remained "an effective blue-water force". The Soviet Navy towards the end of the Cold War is another example of a blue-water navy that had minimal carrier aviation, relying instead on submarines, missile-carrying surface ships, long-range bombers based on land. A blue-water navy implies force protection from sub-surface and airborne threats and a sustainable logistic reach, allowing a persistent presence at range. A hallmark of a true blue-water navy is the ability to conduct replenishment at sea, the commissioning of underway replenishment ships is a strong sign of a navy's blue-water ambitions. While a blue-water navy can project sea control power into another nation's littoral, it remains susceptible to threats from less capable forces. Maintenance and logistics at range have high costs, there might be a saturation advantage over a deployed force through the use of land-based air or surface-to-surface missile assets, diesel-electric submarines, or asymmetric tactics such as Fast Inshore Attack Craft.
An example of this vulnerability was the October 2000 USS Cole bombing in Aden. The term'blue-water navy' should not be confused with the capability of an individual ship. For example, vessels of a green-water navy can operate in blue water for short periods of time. A number of nations have extensive maritime assets but lack the capability to maintain the required sustainable logistic reach; some of them join coalition task groups in blue-water deployments such as anti-piracy patrols off Somalia. According to a dictionary definition, blue-water capability refers to an oceangoing fleet able to operate on the high seas far from its nation's homeports; some operate throughout the world. In their 2012 publication, "Sea Power and the Asia-Pacific", professors Geoffrey Till and Patrick C. Bratton outlined what they termed as "concise criteria" with regard to the definitions of brown and blue-water navies. Quote, they go on to say that with such a definition and understanding of naval hierarchy, it is still "ambiguous".
For example, while France and the United States may be considered blue-water navies, he states that the "operational capability and geographic reach of both navies are different." Another definition states that'brown-water' refers to the littoral areas within 100 nautical miles of the coastline.'Green-water' begins from 100 nautical miles out to the next major land formation. While'blue-water' is the ability to project force out to aleast 1,500 nautical miles beyond the coast. Traditionally a distinction used to be made between a coastal brown-water navy operating in the littoral zone to 200 nautical miles and an oceangoing blue-water navy. However, the United States Navy created a new term, green-water navy, to replace the term'brown-water navy' in US Navy parlance. Today, a brown-water navy has become to be known as a predominately riverine force. Despite the above however, there is no agreed definition of the term. There have been many attempts by naval scholars and other authorities to classify world navies, including.
All identify a basic common criteria such as. The table below shows the world naval hierarchy according to the classification system by professors Daniel Todd and Michael Lindberg, their system outlines ten ranks, distinguished by capability. Since it has been used by various other experts to illustrate the subject. According to Todd and Lindberg, a "blue-water navy" is one that can project any sort of power beyond its own territorial waters; however they used the principle of loss of strength gradient and other criteria to distinguish navies by capability under the four "blue-water" ranks. The six ranks of "Non blue-water navies" can be further broken down into "green-water" and "brown-water navies", according to Todd and Lindberg, these are navies only c
USNS Bridge (T-AOE-10)
USNS Bridge, is the fourth ship of the Supply-class of fast combat support ships in the United States Navy. She is the second ship in the Navy named after Horatio Bridge, a Commodore who served during the Civil War. Bridge was commissioned on 5 August 1998. On 29 June 2004, Bridge was formally decommissioned and transferred from the US Navy to Military Sealift Command. Although the transfer to MSC occurred on 29 June 2004, the ceremony took place on 24 June 2004. Bridge no longer carries the weapons systems; as a commissioned warship, Bridge was equipped with two Phalanx CIWS mounts, one NSSM launcher, two Mk. 38 25-mm chain guns, six.50 caliber heavy machine gun mounts, two M60 GPMG mounts, along with various small arms carried by her Navy crew. In March 2011, in company with the carrier Ronald Reagan, was deployed off northeastern Honshu, Japan to assist with relief efforts after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. After multiple inspections for radiation traces due to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, it was determined that it was unlikely the ship was exposed to the radiation leaking from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
Bridge conducted 25 underway replenishment operations, delivering more than 1.8 million gallons of fuel in support of Operation Tomodachi. The ship was decommissioned shortly after. In April 2013, it was announced that MSC will take Bridge, her sister ship Rainier, out of service in 2014 as a cost-saving measure; the ships' gas turbine propulsion make them faster than other Navy supply ships, but make them consume more fuel. As of 2018, Bridge is at NISMF Bremerton. Two of her commanding officers, CAPT Rick Wren and CAPT Carol Pottenger have since gone on to achieve flag rank. Ship web page at navysite.de Official US Navy ship website navsource US Naval vessel register web page
Fast battleship
A fast battleship was a battleship which emphasised speed without – in concept – undue compromise of either armor or armament. Most of the early World War I-era dreadnought battleships were built with low design speeds, so the term "fast battleship" is applied to a design, faster; the extra speed of a fast battleship was required to allow the vessel to carry out additional roles besides taking part in the line of battle, such as escorting aircraft carriers. A fast battleship was distinguished from a battlecruiser in that it would have been expected to be able to engage hostile battleships in sustained combat on at least equal terms; the requirement to deliver increased speed without compromising fighting ability or protection was the principal challenge of fast battleship design. While increasing length-to-beam ratio was the most direct method of attaining a higher speed, this meant a bigger ship, more costly and/or could exceed the naval treaty tonnage limits. Technological advancements such as propulsion improvements and light, high-strength armor plating were required in order to make fast battleships feasible.
Unlike battlecruiser, which became official Royal Navy usage in 1911, the term fast battleship was an informal one. The warships of the Queen Elizabeth class were collectively termed the Fast Division when operating with the Grand Fleet. Otherwise, fast battleships were not distinguished from conventional battleships in official documentation. There is no separate code for fast battleships in the US Navy's hull classification system, all battleships, fast or slow, being rated as "BB". Between the origins of the armoured battleship with the French Gloire and the Royal Navy's Warrior at the start of the 1860s, the genesis of the Royal Navy's Queen Elizabeth class in 1911, a number of battleship classes appeared which set new standards of speed; the Warrior herself, at over 14 knots under steam, was the fastest warship of her day as well as the most powerful. Due to the increasing weight of guns and armour, this speed was not exceeded until Monarch achieved 15 knots under steam; the Italian Italia of 1880 was a radical design, with a speed of 18 knots, heavy guns and no belt armour.
In these late pre-dreadnought designs, the high speed may have been intended to compensate for their lesser staying power, allowing them to evade a more powerful opponent when necessary. From about 1900, interest in the possibility of a major increase in the speed of Royal Navy battleships was provoked by Sir John Fisher, at that time Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. Due to Fisher's pressure, The Senior Officer's War Course of January 1902 was asked to investigate whether a ship with lighter armour and quick-firing medium guns, with a 4-knot advantage in speed, would obtain any tactical advantage over a conventional battleship, it was concluded that "gun power was more important than speed, provided both sides were determined to fight". It was argued that, provided that the fighting was at long range, an attempt by the faster fleet to obtain a concentration of fire by "crossing the T" could be frustrated by a turn-away, leading to the slower fleet "turning inside the circle of the faster fleet at a radius proportional to the difference in speed".
War games conducted by the General Board of the US Navy in 1903 and 1904 came to similar conclusions. Fisher appears to have been unimpressed by these demonstrations, continued to press for radical increases in the speed of battleships, his ideas came to at least partial fruition in the Dreadnought of 1906. Dreadnought was the first major warship powered by turbines, she included a number of other features indicating an increased emphasis on speed: An improved hull form was developed, with increased length-to-beam ratio. The thickness of the main belt was reduced to 11 inches, compared to 12 inches for preceding classes; the belt terminated at the upper deck, the usual "upper belt" being deleted The forecastle was raised, allowing higher sustained speed in heavy seas. In the decade following the construction of the Dreadnought, the Royal Navy's lead in capital ship speed was eroded, as rival navies responded with their own turbine-powered "dreadnoughts". Meanwhile, in the UK, Fisher continued to press for still higher speeds, but the alarming cost of the new battleships and battlecruisers provoked increasing resistance, both within the Admiralty and from the new Liberal Government that took office in 1906.
As a result, a number of significant fast battleship designs failed to achieve fruition. A notable abortive design was the 22,500-ton "X4" design of December 1905; this would have been a true fast battleship by the standards of the time, carrying the same armament and protection as Dreadnought at a speed of 25 knots. In the event, the British lead in dreadnought and battlecruiser construction was deemed to be so great that a further escalation in the size and cost of capital ships could not be justified; the X4 design is described as a "fusion" of the Dreadnought concept with that of th
USS Detroit (AOE-4)
USS Detroit was the fourth and last Sacramento-class fast combat support ship built for the United States Navy. She was laid down on 29 November 1966 by Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Washington, she is the fifth United States Navy ship named after Detroit, the largest city in the state of Michigan, the river of the same name. Detroit served for 35 years operating with the U. S. 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf regions. After her initial shakedown cruise, Detroit departed Bremerton for her first operational home port, Rhode Island, rounding the horn of South America en route. In March 1971, she was involved in a minor collision with a US Navy oiler off the coast of South Carolina. Shortly thereafter, Detroit deployed for six months of extended operations with the 6th Fleet, returning to Newport in December 1971. In April 1972 the Detroit escorted USS Saratoga CV-60 to the southern tip of Africa on her way to support the war in Vietnam. Detroit refueled Saratoga returned to home port.
Detroit made her second deployment with 6th Fleet to the Mediterranean on 1 December 1972, returning to Newport in July of the following year. On 12 December 1973, while the ship was undergoing repairs and upkeep in Newport, Detroit suffered an explosion in her after engine room exhaust stack which caused extensive material damage. A shore establishment realignment led to Detroit's home port shift to Norfolk, Virginia in January 1974. Detroit sailed from Norfolk 14 July 1974, en route to her third Mediterranean deployment in support of 6th Fleet operations. In addition to her normal taskings, she participated in contingency operations related to the Cyprus crisis, completing this task in December 1974 before returning to Norfolk. Detroit sailed for her fourth Mediterranean deployment on 19 August 1975 and completed over 200 replenishments before returning to Norfolk on 28 January 1976. On 13 July 1976, Detroit sailed north to commence her first shipyard overhaul at Bath Iron Works in Maine; the NATO Sea Sparrow missile system and new communications capabilities were added prior to her return to Norfolk in July 1977.
Detroit sailed from Norfolk on her fifth Mediterranean deployment on 4 April 1978, returning on 26 October 1978. She and her CH-46 helicopter detachment conducted 232 underway and vertical replenishments during this deployment, serving in a Task Group led by USS Forrestal. After another five-month Mediterranean deployment in 1979, Detroit returned to Norfolk for a short six-month turn-around in preparation for her seventh Mediterranean deployment, commencing on 14 July 1980. A Suez Canal transit followed National Week exercises, the new routine became the support of U. S. 7th Fleet’s Indian Ocean Battle Group operating in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf. Returning through the Suez, Detroit proceeded to service 6th Fleet units prior to visiting Lisbon, Portugal, in late November. Detroit returned to Norfolk on 11 December 1980. On 10 June 1981 Detroit ran aground when she veered from the dredged channel and ran aground in shallow water in Hampton Roads while the ship was entering port, she was refloated four days after fuel and weapons were removed.
There was no apparent damage to ship or injuries to the crew, but the commanding officer was relieved of command for the incident. Detroit departed Norfolk on 25 June 1981 for her eighth Mediterranean deployment, she serviced 6th Fleet and NATO units and participated in the missile exercises in the Gulf of Sidra, when two Libyan aircraft were shot down by F-14 Tomcats from USS Nimitz. Detroit returned to Norfolk on 8 November 1981. In January 1982, Detroit began her second shipyard overhaul at Norfolk Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company’s Berkeley Yard in Chesapeake, Virginia; the focus of this overhaul was on the crew's living quarters. Her defensive capability was upgraded by the addition of two 20 mm Phalanx CIWS Mark 15 guns. Detroit left the yard in January 1983. On 20 October 1983, Detroit departed for deployment with the 6th Fleet. While in the Mediterranean, Detroit was the principal combat logistics force ship supporting U. S. and Allied units of the Multi-National Peacekeeping Force, in Beirut, Lebanon.
Throughout the height of the crisis, Detroit provided logistical support to two carrier battle groups, the New Jersey battle group and the deployed Marine Amphibious Ready Group. On 9 January 1984 Detroit suffered a fuel fire in her forced-draft blower while moored at Souda Bay, Crete; some crew members were treated for smoke inhalation. When she returned to Norfolk on 2 May 1984, Detroit had completed 301 replenishments, a new ship’s record. In February 1985, Detroit completed an extensive three-month repair availability. From July through October 1985, she participated in fleet exercises in the Caribbean Sea, as well as in "Ocean Safari 85" operating above the Arctic Circle in Norway's Vestfjord. During these operations, Detroit encountered a severe storm consisting of extreme cold and heavy seas; as a result, Detroit suffered the loss of a large section of main deck railing, several deck fixtures and the ship’s solid brass bell. Detroit put in for repairs in Scotland before continuing operations.
In August 1985, Detroit completed the first Operational Propulsion Plant Examination given to an AOE by the Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet Propulsion Examination Board. In March 1986, Detroit departed Norfolk for her tenth deployment with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean, she supported three carrier operations off the coast of Libya in March and April 1986. In September 1986, she returned to Norfolk. Beginning in the fall of 1986 the Detroit was once again sent in for an overhaul following her deployment. Starting in
Gun turret
A gun turret is a location from which weapons can be fired that affords protection and some cone of fire. A modern gun turret is a weapon mount that houses the crew or mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon and at the same time lets the weapon be aimed and fired in some degree of azimuth and elevation. Rotating gun turrets protect its crew as they rotate; when this meaning of the word "turret" started being used at the beginning of the 1860s, turrets were cylindrical. Barbettes were an alternative to turrets. In the 1890s, armoured hoods were added to barbettes. By the early 20th Century, these hoods were known as turrets. Modern warships have gun-mountings described as turrets, though the "protection" on them is limited to protection from the weather. Rotating turrets can be mounted on a fortified building or structure such as a coastal blockhouse, be part of a land battery, be mounted on a combat vehicle, a naval ship, or a military aircraft, they may be armed with one or more machine guns, automatic cannons, large-calibre guns, or missile launchers.
They may be manned or remotely controlled and are most protected to some degree, if not armoured. The protection provided by the turret may be against battle damage, the weather conditions, general environment in which the weapon or its crew will be operating; the name derives from the pre-existing noun turret, from the French "touret", diminutive of the word "tower", meaning a self-contained protective position, situated on top of a fortification or defensive wall as opposed to rising directly from the ground, in which case it constitutes a tower. A small turret, or sub-turret set on top of a larger one, is called a cupola; the term cupola is used for a rotating turret that carries a sighting device rather than weaponry, such as that used by a tank commander. Before the development of large-calibre, long-range guns in the mid-19th century, the classic battleship design used rows of gunport-mounted guns on each side of the ship mounted in casemates. Firepower was provided by a large number of guns, each of which could traverse only in a limited arc.
Due to stability issues, fewer large guns can be carried high on a ship, but as this set casemates low and thus near the waterline they were vulnerable to flooding restricted their use to calm seas. Additionally casemate mounts had to be recessed into the side of a vessel to afford a wide arc of fire, such recesses presented shot traps, compromising the integrity of armour plating. Rotating turrets were weapon mounts designed to protect the crew and mechanism of the artillery piece and with the capability of being aimed and fired over a broad arc between a three-quarter circle up to and including a full 360 degrees; these presented the opportunity to concentrate firepower in fewer, better-sited positions by eliminating redundancy, in other words combining the firepower of those guns unable to engage an enemy because they sited on the wrong beam into a more powerful, more versatile unified battery. Designs for a rotating gun turret date back to the late 18th century. In the mid 19th century, during the Crimean War, Captain Cowper Phipps Coles constructed a raft with guns protected by a'cupola' and used the raft, named the Lady Nancy, to shell the Russian town of Taganrog in the Black Sea.
The Lady Nancy "proved a great success" and Coles patenting his rotating turret design after the war. The British Admiralty ordered a prototype of Coles's patented design in 1859, installed in the ironclad floating battery, HMS Trusty, for trials in 1861, becoming the first warship to be fitted with a revolving gun turret. Coles's aim was to create a ship with the greatest possible all round arc of fire, as low in the water as possible to minimise the target; the Admiralty accepted the principle of the turret gun as a useful innovation, incorporated it into other new designs. Coles submitted a design for a ship having ten domed turrets each housing two large guns; the design was rejected as impractical, although the Admiralty remained interested in turret ships and instructed its own designers to create better designs. Coles enlisted the support of Prince Albert, who wrote to the first Lord of the Admiralty, the Duke of Somerset, supporting the construction of a turret ship. In January 1862, the Admiralty agreed to construct a ship, HMS Prince Albert which had four turrets and a low freeboard, intended only for coastal defence.
While Coles designed the turrets, the ship was the responsibility of Chief Constructor Isaac Watts. Another ship using Coles' turret designs, HMS Royal Sovereign, was completed in August 1864, its existing broadside guns were replaced with four turrets on a flat deck and the ship was fitted with 5.5 inches of armour in a belt around the waterline. Early ships like the Royal Sovereign had little sea-keeping qualities being limited to coastal waters. Sir Edward James Reed, went on to design and build HMS Monarch, the first seagoing warship to carry her guns in turrets. Laid down in 1866 and completed in June 1869, it carried two turrets, although the inclusion of a forecastle and poop prevented the turret guns firing fore and aft; the gun turret was independently invented by the Swedish inventor John Ericsson in America, while technologically inferior to Coles's version. Ericsson designed USS Monitor in 1861, its most prominent feature being a large cylindrical gun turret mounted amidships above the low-freeboard upper hull called the "raft".
This extended well past the sides of the lower
Pre-dreadnought battleship
Pre-dreadnought battleships were sea-going battleships built between the mid- to late 1880s and 1905, before the launch of HMS Dreadnought. Pre-dreadnoughts replaced the ironclad battleships of the 1880s. Built from steel, protected by hardened steel armour, pre-dreadnought battleships carried a main battery of heavy guns in barbettes supported by one or more secondary batteries of lighter weapons, they were powered by coal-fuelled triple-expansion steam engines. In contrast to the chaotic development of ironclad warships in preceding decades, the 1890s saw navies worldwide start to build battleships to a common design as dozens of ships followed the design of the British Majestic class; the similarity in appearance of battleships in the 1890s was underlined by the increasing number of ships being built. New naval powers such as Germany, the United States, – to a lesser extent – Italy and Austria-Hungary, began to establish themselves with fleets of pre-dreadnoughts, while the navies of Britain and Russia expanded to meet these new threats.
The decisive clash of pre-dreadnought fleets was between the Imperial Russian Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Battle of Tsushima on 27 May 1905. These battleships were abruptly made obsolete by the arrival of HMS Dreadnought in 1906. Dreadnought followed the trend in battleship design to heavier, longer-ranged guns by adopting an "all-big-gun" armament scheme of ten 12-inch guns, her innovative steam turbine engines made her faster. The existing pre-dreadnoughts were decisively outclassed, new and more powerful battleships were from on known as dreadnoughts while the ships, laid down before were designated pre-dreadnoughts; the pre-dreadnought developed from the ironclad battleship. The first ironclads – the French Gloire and HMS Warrior – looked much like sailing frigates, with three tall masts and broadside batteries, when they were commissioned at the start of the 1860s. Only eight years HMVS Cerberus, the first breastwork monitor, was launched. After a further three years followed HMS Devastation, a turreted ironclad which more resembled a pre-dreadnought than previous and contemporary turretless ironclads.
Each ship carried four heavy guns in two turrets fore and aft. Devastation was the first ocean-worthy breastwork monitor, built to attack enemy coasts and harbours. Navies worldwide continued to build masted, turretless battleships which had sufficient freeboard and were seaworthy enough to fight on the high seas; the distinction between coast-assault battleship and cruising battleship became blurred with the Admiral class, ordered in 1880. These ships reflected developments in ironclad design, being protected by iron-and-steel compound armour rather than wrought iron. Equipped with breech-loading guns of between 12-inch and 16 ¼-inch calibre, the Admirals continued the trend of ironclad warships towards gigantic weapons; the guns were mounted in open barbettes to save weight. Some historians see these ships as a vital step towards pre-dreadnoughts; the subsequent Royal Sovereign class of 1889 retained barbettes but were uniformly armed with 13.5-inch guns. Just as the Royal Sovereigns had a higher freeboard, making them unequivocally capable of the high-seas battleship role.
The pre-dreadnought design reached maturity in 1895 with the Majestic class. These ships were built and armoured of steel, their guns were mounted in enclosed barbettes referred to as turrets, they adopted a 12-inch main gun, due to advances in casting and propellant, was lighter and more powerful than the previous guns of larger calibre. The Majestics provided the model for battleship building in the Royal Navy and many other navies for years to come. Pre-dreadnoughts carried guns of several different calibres, for different roles in ship-to-ship combat; the main armament was four heavy guns, mounted in two centre-line turrets fore and aft. Few pre-dreadnoughts deviated from this arrangement; these guns were slow-firing, of limited accuracy. The most common calibre for the main armament was 12-inch, although some ships used smaller guns because they could attain higher rates of fire. Japan, importing most of its guns from Britain, used 12-inch guns; the United States used both 12-inch and 13-inch guns for most of the 1890s until the Maine class, laid down in 1899, after which the 12-inch gun was universal.
The Russians used both 10-inch as their main armament. The first German pre-dreadnought class used an 11-inch gun but decreased to a 9.4-inch gun for the two following classes and returned to 11-inch guns with the Braunschweig class. While the calibre of the main battery remained quite constant, the performance of the guns improved as longer barrels were introduced; the introduction of slow
USS Seattle (AOE-3)
The second USS Seattle, a Sacramento-class fast combat support ship, was laid down on 1 October 1965, at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Washington. After fitting out, Seattle departed Puget Sound Naval Shipyard on 24 September 1969, en route to Norfolk. Seattle visited Long Beach, San Diego, the Panama Canal, New Orleans, arriving at Norfolk, her designated home port, on 22 November. Seattle left home port on 2 January 1970, for shakedown training. On 13 January, Seattle took attack carrier, alongside for refueling, she departed again on 19 January for more exercises and a visit to Port-au-Prince, before returning to Guantanamo on 26 January. Following additional exercises and battle problems, Seattle steamed for Mayport and thence proceeded to Norfolk, arriving on 12 February. On 26 February, Seattle was struck by a yard tug, puncturing a tank, spilling black oil for two hours; the oil was skimmed off the water, no adverse reaction resulted from the mishap. Seattle departed Norfolk on 27 August for her first overseas deployment.
She entered her first European port, Portugal, on 6 September. On 8 September, she anchored off Spain. Passing through the Straits of Gibraltar the next day, Seattle loaded cargo onto Concord and proceeded to the eastern Mediterranean Sea via Augusta, Sicily; the Jordanian Crisis had brought matters close to a boil, Seattle served as the primary logistic support ship for Saratoga and her escorts. Toward the end of the month, Seattle was one of 12 ships reviewed by president Richard Nixon. Seattle continued her support of Saratoga in the eastern Mediterranean until 20 October, when she arrived in Athens, Greece. Leaving Athens on 29 October, Seattle replenished ships until 9 November, when she pulled into Augusta, for another one-day fuel lift, she proceeded to Taranto, the Italian Navy's largest base, arriving on 12 November. Seattle continued replenishment of 6th Fleet ships, she spent from 25 November to 1 December in Naples. From 8 to 14 December, she was anchored in Spain. Seattle got underway on 6 January 1971, for operations in the vicinity of southeast Sicily.
On 17 January, she anchored in Naples. She operated in the Ionian Sea, the Algiers-Provencal Basin, off Barcelona until 20 February, when she got underway for operations en route to Norfolk, arriving on 1 March. On 10 August, Seattle departed for Puerto Rico, she operated around Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Haiti before returning to Norfolk on 11 October. On 1 December, Seattle steamed out of Craney Island, for a six-month deployment to the Mediterranean; the fast combat support ship arrived at Rota, Spain, on 9 December, got underway on the following day for Augusta, arriving on 16 December. On 19 December, she was en route to Naples. On 28 December, Seattle ended her stay in Naples and was underway to Barcelona, arriving on New Year's Eve. At the completion of a seven-month Mediterranean cruise, Seattle returned to Norfolk on 29 June 1972, she operated out of Norfolk for four months departed, on 24 October, for an unscheduled deployment to the U. S. 6th Fleet. She participated in "Bystander" operations in the western Mediterranean and in exercise "National Week XIV" before returning to Norfolk on 19 December.
Seattle spent the remainder of 1972 at Norfolk and the first six months of 1973 in operations from that port. In June, she began another voyage to the "middle sea." This tour of duty lasted with Seattle arriving in Norfolk on 1 December. Missing is the history in 1973 of the USS Seattle AOE-3 in helping resupply the Aircraft Carriers used to resupply the aircraft being flown to Israel. "Stepping Stones" The AOE-3 would steam at high speed 27 knots to resupply the US Navy Carrier Groups in the Western Mediterranean Sea, the middle, Eastern groups. The Russians would get in the way requiring us to change course, one day, the Russian was in the way and he had to move seeing the black smoke coming from our stack. After refueling and rearming the 3 different groups, we would sail to Augusta Bay, Sicily and be refueled by one of the old slow US Navy Tankers and the 27 knots to the West and East to resupply the Carriers again. We repeated this round robin refuel and rearm for several hours as the planes flying in from Lajes could not make it all the way to Israel.
"Stepping Stones" During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Washington used the Lajes airbase as a stepping stone in mounting an arms airlift to Israel. Lisbon was hit by the Arab oil embargo. Http://www.csmonitor.com/1983/0214/021445.html http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0798/twersky1.asp http://www.jewishmag.com/167mag/kissinger-nixon-war-watergate/kissinger-nixon-war-watergate.htm On the first 48 hrs. after the assault on Kuwait by Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein, the Seattle received immediate orders to be deployed from its new Homeport changed from Naval Station Norfolk to Naval Weapons Station Earle, New Jersey to incorporate and provide support with the fleets sent underway at first to exert military pressure to political negotiations but when the government of Saddam entrenched, to provide continued cover during Operation Desert Shield. During the course of operations, the Seattle would take a crucial and important part, while no substantial bases and ports existed
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