SAN DIEGO
After extensive cleanup and reclamation in the wake of a July inferno, the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard will be decommissioned in San Diego next week before being towed elsewhere to be scrapped, the Navy said in a statement.
Navy officials said in November that while Bonhomme Richard was salvageable, the time and price of repair five to seven years at an estimated $2.5 billion to $3.2 billion were too steep to warrant saving the 22-year-old ship.
The Navy plans to hold a small decommissioning ceremony Wednesday with limited attendance. Then the ship will be towed to a scrapyard, said Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, a Naval Surface Force Pacific spokeswoman.
USNI News
CO: USS Gabrielle Giffords Deployment Showcased LCS’s Flexibility, Naval Strike Missile
March 2, 2021 6:44 PM
Amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA-6) sails alongside Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS-10). US Navy photo.
USS
Gabrielle Giffords’ (LCS-10) recently completed 17-month deployment to the Pacific will refine how the Navy thinks about operating and maintaining the Littoral Combat Ship forward, the ship’s gold crew captain told USNI News.
Armed with the Navy’s latest anti-ship missile,
Giffords deployed from September 2019 until January 2021, making it the second and longest LCS deployment since the Navy put LCS overseas operations on a year-and-a-half pause to work out some programmatic improvements and class-wide overhauls.
Drones/Unmanned | Center for International Maritime Security cimsec.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cimsec.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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The outbreak on the ship led to the death of a sailor, the firing of the Roosevelt’s commanding officer and, indirectly, to the resignation of the Navy’s acting secretary.
About two months after the Theodore Roosevelt left San Diego in January 2020, the ship visited Da Nang, Vietnam. Two weeks after that visit, sailors on board began testing positive for COVID-19. The ship diverted to Guam, where the majority of the crew sequestered at local hotels as the virus spread.
Chief Petty Officer Charles Thacker, 41,
died of the virus in April. More than 1,200 sailors about 25 percent of the crew tested positive over the next few weeks.