John Currin
15 years in Royal New Zealand Navy
USS Indiana (BB-1) was the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships of the time.
Authorized in 1890 and commissioned five years later, she was a small battleship, though with heavy armor and ordnance. The ship also pioneered the use of an intermediate battery. She was designed for coastal defense[6] and as a result, her decks were not safe from high waves on the open ocean.
Indiana served in the Spanish–American War (1898) as part of the North Atlantic Squadron. She took part in both the blockade of Santiago de Cuba and the battle of Santiago de Cuba, which occurred when the Spanish fleet attempted to break through the blockade. Although unable to join the chase of the escaping Spanish cruisers, she was partly responsible for the destruction of the Spanish destroyers Plutón and Furor. After the war she quickly became obsolete—despite several modernizations—and spent most of her time in commission as a training ship or in the reserve fleet, with her last commission during World War I as a training ship for gun crews. She was decommissioned for the third and final time in January 1919 and was shortly after reclassified Coast Battleship Number 1 so that the name Indiana could be reused. She was sunk in shallow water as a target in aerial bombing tests in 1920 and her hull was sold for scrap in 1924.
USNS Patuxent (T-AO-201) is a Henry J. Kaiser-class underway replenishment oiler operated by the Military Sealift Command to support ships of the United States Navy.
USNS PATUXENT – 2012
Patuxent, the fifteenth ship of the Henry J. Kaiser class, was laid down at Avondale Shipyard, Inc., at New Orleans, Louisiana, on 16 October 1991 and launched on 23 July 1994. She was the first of three ships in the class of eighteen—the other two being USNS Laramie (T-AO-203) and USNS Rappahannock (T-AO-204)—to be built with a double hull required by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. Hull separation is 6 feet (1.8 m) at the sides and 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m) at the bottom, reducing her liquid cargo capacity by about 21,000 barrels (3,300 m3) from that of the 15 single-hull ships in the class.
Patuxent entered non-commissioned U.S. Navy service under the control of the Military Sealift Command with a primarily civilian crew on 21 June 1995. She serves in the United States Atlantic Fleet..
USS Pine Island (AV-12), a Currituck-class seaplane tender, is the only ship of the United States Navy to hold this name. The ship was named after Pine Island Sound (off the coast of Lee County, Florida).
Pine Island was laid down on 16 November 1942 at the Los Angeles Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, San Pedro, California; launched on 26 February 1944, sponsored by Mrs. Knefler McGinnis; and commissioned on 26 April 1945, Commander Henry Titus Hodgskin in command.
World War II
Departing California on 16 June 1945, Pine Island steamed to Okinawa. There she tended seaplanes engaged in air-sea rescue operations during the final phases of World War II. At the end of the war, she entered Tokyo Bay and contributed seaplane flight operations to the occupation of Japan in 1945. Following occupation duty in Japan, she conducted seaplane flight operations in the Whangpoo River near Shanghai, China. She left the Pacific in 1946, and steamed via the Suez Canal to Norfolk, Virginia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Pine_Island_(AV-12)
USS Boston (CA-69/CAG-1), a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser and later a Boston-class guided missile cruiser, was the sixth ship of the United States Navy to be named for the U.S. city of Boston, Massachusetts.
Boston was launched 26 August 1942 by Bethlehem Steel Company’s, Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts; sponsored by Mrs. Helen Noonan Tobin, wife of the Mayor of Boston, Maurice J. Tobin; and commissioned 30 June 1943, Captain J. H. Carson in command
Recommissioned as guided missile cruiser[edit]
_fires_a_SAM-N-7_Terrier_missile,_in_August_1956_(NH_98281).jpg)
Boston (along with Canberra and Chicago) was not recommissioned for service during the Korean War as were 10 others of her class, but was earmarked for conversion to carry guided missiles and reclassified CAG-1 on 4 January 1952. In February 1952 she was towed from Bremerton, Washington, to Philadelphia for conversion to a guided missile heavy cruiser by New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden, New Jersey. During conversion her aft 8-inch turret was replaced with Terrier Surface-to-air missile launchers and she was modernized. Boston was recommissioned 1 November 1955 as the lead ship of her class and operated along the east coast and in the Caribbean conducting missile evaluations and participating in fleet exercises until departing for the Mediterranean 23 November 1956. She returned in May 1957.
After making a Midshipmen‘s cruise to South America, taking part in NATO exercises in the North Atlantic, and receiving an overhaul, Boston made her second Sixth Fleet tour during June–September 1958. This cruise included participation in the Lebanon crisis. During the next eight years, she frequently operated in the Mediterranean, often in the role of flagship, taking part in exercises off Northern Europe, the Caribbean and off the US East Coast. Boston served as flagship for the recovery effort of the Palomares Incident from February through April 1966
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Boston_(CA-69)
USS Bon Homme Richard (CV/CVA-31) was one of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers completed during or shortly after World War II for the United States Navy. She was the second US Navy ship to bear the name, the first one being named for John Paul Jones’s famous Revolutionary War frigate by the same name.
Jones had named that ship, usually rendered in more correct French as Bonhomme Richard, to honor Benjamin Franklin, the American Commissioner at Paris, whose Poor Richard’s Almanac had been published in France under the title Les Maximes du Bonhomme Richard.
Bon Homme Richard was commissioned in November 1944, and served in the final campaigns of the Pacific Theater of Operations, earning one battle star. Decommissioned shortly after the end of the war, she was recommissioned in 1951 for the Korean War. In her second career she operated exclusively in the Pacific, playing a prominent role in the Korean War, for which she earned five battle stars, and the Vietnam War. She was modernized and recommissioned in 1955. She was decommissioned in 1971, and scrapped in 1992.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bon_Homme_Richard_(CV-31)
USS Bon Homme Richard – Korea 1951(CV/CVA-31) was one of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers completed during or shortly after World War II for the United States Navy.
She was the second US Navy ship to bear the name, the first one being named for John Paul Jones’s famous Revolutionary War frigate by the same name. Jones had named that ship, usually rendered in more correct French as Bonhomme Richard, to honor Benjamin Franklin, the American Commissioner at Paris, whose Poor Richard’s Almanac had been published in France under the title Les Maximes du Bonhomme Richard.
USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76)
