USS Lafayette (SSBN-616), the lead ship of her class of ballistic missile submarine, was the third ship of the United States Navy to be named to honor Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, a French military hero who fought alongside and significantly aided the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.

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USS Georgia (Battleship # 15) Making 17.707 knots on Run # 9 of her trials, 13 June 1906. Note that her six-inch broadside guns have not yet been installed.

USS Georgia (BB-15) was a United States Navy Virginia-class battleship, the third of five ships of the class. She was built by the Bath Iron Works in Maine, with her keel laid in August 1901 and her launching in October 1904. The completed battleship was commissioned into the fleet in September 1906. The ship was armed with an offensive battery of four 12-inch (305 mm) guns and eight 8-inch (203 mm) guns, and she was capable of a top speed of 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph).

Georgia spent the majority of her career in the Atlantic Fleet. In 1907, she took part in the Jamestown Exposition and suffered an explosion in her aft 8-inch gun turret that killed or wounded 21 men. At the end of the year, she joined the Great White Fleet on its circumnavigation of the globe, which ended in early 1909. Peacetime training followed for the next five years, and in 1914 she cruised in Mexican waters to protect American interests during the Mexican Revolution. In early 1916, the ship was temporarily decommissioned.

When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the ship was tasked with training naval recruits for the expanding wartime fleet. Starting in September 1918, she was used as a convoy escort. Her only casualties during the war were due to disease, the result of poor conditions and severe overcrowding aboard the ship. Georgia was used to transport American soldiers back from France in 1918–1919, and the following year she was transferred to the Pacific Fleet, where she served as the flagship of the 2nd Division, 1st Squadron. The Washington Naval Treaty, signed in 1922, cut short the ship’s career, as it mandated severe draw-downs in naval strength. Georgia was accordingly sold for scrap in November 1923.

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 Vinson, flagship of Carrier Strike Group ONE, is deployed to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Joshua Sapien)

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The Romanian Navy’s first Sandown-class minehunter arrives at the Port of Constanta on 19 December 2023. (Romanian MoD)

The first of two ex-Royal Navy (RN) Sandown-class mine-countermeasure vessels (MCMVs) procured by Romania from the United Kingdom has arrived in country.

Sub-Lieutenant Ion Ghiculescu (M 270), which previously served in the RN as HMS Blyth (M 111), departed the UK on 15 November and completed a 4,500 n miles journey across the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Sea of Marmara, and Black Sea to arrive at the Port of Constanta on 19 December 2023, the Romanian Navy said.

Ahead of its arrival in Romania, the ship’s crew of 40 personnel completed the RN Fleet Operational Sea Training (FOST) between July and November.

Sub-Lieutenant Ion Ghiculescu is one of two ex-RN Sandown-class minehunters acquired under a government-to-government agreement concluded between Romania and the UK. The vessel was decommissioned from RN service in 2021 and officially transferred to the Romanian Navy in September 2023. Ahead of its transfer the ship was refurbished by UK shipbuilder Babcock at its shipyard in Rosyth, Scotland.

The second vessel, HMS Pembroke , will be retired from service in early 2024 and is planned to be transferred to the Romanian Navy in the second quarter of 2024.

The two minehunters will join Romania’s 146th Mine Countermeasures Division.

Ex- Blyth and Pembroke are the latest Sandown-class minehunters to be sold by the UK as it works to progressively decommission the class by 2025. Of an original class of 12, the sale leaves just two remaining vessels in service: HMS Penzance and HMS Bangor .

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Ships attached to a destroyer flotilla with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy sail in formation en route to a training exercise in the East China Sea. (Wei Chenping/Chinese Defense Ministry)

BEIJING — China on Friday said it had appointed a new defense minister after months of uncertainty following the firing of his predecessor for reasons still unexplained.

The official Xinhua News Agency announced former naval commander Dong Jun would serve in the largely ceremonial role, but offered no comment on the reasons for the switch or the current circumstances of previous minister Li Shangfu, who has not been seen or heard from since August.

The uncertainty surrounding the leadership of the world’s largest standing military comes as Washington and its Asian allies are offering stronger resistance to China’s bid to assert itself as the dominant military power in the region.

Dong’s naval background is significant in that China has largely asserted its territorial claims using its massive force of warships, Coast Guard cutters and fishing boats acting as a maritime militia in the South China Sea. The People’s Liberation Army Navy has also expanded its range to the Mediterranean Sea, South Africa and beyond, while adding three aircraft carriers and a plethora of destroyers, nuclear-powered submarines and other latest-generation craft to its fleet.

Along with challenging the Philippines and other nations that hold maritime claims in the South China Sea, China challenges Japan for control of an uninhabited island group in the East China Sea and has engaged in deadly clashes with India along their contested border high in the Himalayan Mountains.

Li’s disappearance came amid what analysts have called a purge of officials in the highly influential military hierarchy, as well as those in the financial and diplomatic sectors, including former Foreign Minister Qin Gang, whose fate also remains unknown.

Speculation over the reason for the removals has ranged from corruption allegations to spying suspicions.

However, they also point to challenges facing the leader of the ruling Communist Party, head of state and supreme military commander Xi Jinping, who has made himself a long-term leader and waged a relentless campaign against all real or perceived threats to his hold on power, even as China’s economy stalls and its foreign relations have become more contentious over its support for Russia and other authoritarian regimes.

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The German “Panzerschiff” (armored ship) Admiral Graf Spee (foreground) with HMS Hood (left) and the battleship HMS Resolution (centre) during King George VI’s Coronation Fleet Review at Spithead, May 1937

HMS Hood (pennant number 51)

Already under construction when the Battle of Jutland occurred in mid-1916, that battle revealed serious flaws in her design despite drastic revisions before she was completed four years later. For this reason, she was the only ship of her class to be completed, as the Admiralty decided it would be better to start with a clean design on succeeding battlecruisers, leading to the never-built G-3 class. Despite the appearance of newer and more modern ships, Hood remained the largest warship in the world for 20 years after her commissioning, and her prestige was reflected in her nickname, “The Mighty Hood”.

Hood was involved in many showing-the-flag exercises between her commissioning in 1920 and the outbreak of war in 1939, including training exercises in the Mediterranean Sea and a circumnavigation of the globe with the Special Service Squadron in 1923 and 1924. She was attached to the Mediterranean Fleet following the outbreak of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935. When the Spanish Civil War broke out the following year, Hood was officially assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet until she had to return to Britain in 1939 for an overhaul. By this time, advances in naval gunnery had reduced Hood‘s usefulness. She was scheduled to undergo a major rebuild in 1941 to correct these issues, but the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 kept the ship in service without the upgrades.

When war with Germany was declared, Hood was operating in the area around Iceland, and she spent the next several months hunting for German commerce raiders and blockade runners between Iceland and the Norwegian Sea. After a brief overhaul of her propulsion system, she sailed as the flagship of Force H, and participated in the destruction of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. Transferred to the Home Fleet shortly afterwards, Hood was dispatched to Scapa Flow, and operated in the area as a convoy escort and later as a defence against a potential German invasion fleet.

In May 1941, Hood and the battleship Prince of Wales were ordered to intercept the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, which were en route to the Atlantic, where they were to attack convoys. On 24 May 1941, early in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Hood was struck by several German shells, exploded, and sank with the loss of all but 3 of her crew of 1,418. Due to her publicly perceived invincibility, the loss affected British morale.

The RN conducted two inquiries into the reasons for the ship’s quick demise. The first, held soon after the ship’s loss, concluded that Hood‘s aft magazine had exploded after one of Bismarck‘s shells penetrated the ship’s armour. A second inquiry was held after complaints that the first board had failed to consider alternative explanations, such as an explosion of the ship’s torpedoes. It was more thorough than the first board but concurred with the first board’s conclusion. Despite the official explanation, some historians continued to believe that the torpedoes caused the ship’s loss, while others proposed an accidental explosion inside one of the ship’s gun turrets that reached down into the magazine. Other historians have concentrated on the cause of the magazine explosion. The discovery of the ship’s wreck in 2001 confirmed the conclusion of both boards, although the exact reason the magazines detonated is likely to remain unknown, since that portion of the ship was obliterated in the explosion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hood#

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Collision with HMAS Melbourne[edit]

At around 0300 on 3 June 1969, Frank E. Evans was operating in darkness in the South China Sea between Vietnam and Spratly Island in a formation with ships of the Royal Navy, Royal Australian Navy, and Royal New Zealand Navy. All ships in the formation were running without lights. The Royal Australian Navy aircraft carrier Melbourne was in the process of going to flying stations and radioed Frank E. Evans, then to port of her, to take up station as the rescue destroyer. This required Frank E. Evans to reduce speed and take up station on Melbourne′s port quarter. The commanding officer of Frank E. Evans was asleep in his quarters, having left instructions to be awakened if there were to be any changes in the formation. Neither the officer of the deck nor the junior officer of the deck notified him when the station change was ordered. The bridge crew also did not contact the combat information center to request clarification of the positions and movements of the surrounding ships.^[10]

The conning officer on Frank E. Evans misunderstood the formation’s base course and believed Frank E. Evans was to starboard of Melbourne. Frank E. Evans therefore turned to starboard, cutting across Melbourne′s bow twice in the process. Melbourne struck Frank E. Evans at a point about 92 feet (28 m) from her bow on her port side and cut her in two at 8°59.2′N 110°47.7′E.^[11] After the collision, Frank E. Evans′s bow drifted off to the port side of Melbourne and sank in less than five minutes, taking 73 of her crew with it. One body was recovered from the water, making a total of 74 dead.^[12] Her stern scraped along the starboard side of Melbourne, and Melbourne′s crew attached lines to it. It remained afloat. Around 60 to 100 men were rescued from the water.

Decommissioning and disposal[edit]

Frank E. Evans was decommissioned at Subic Bay and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 July 1969.^[13][14] The stern section was sunk as a target in Subic Bay on 10 October 1969.

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The US Navy is preparing to offload two of its Independence Class littoral combat ships into the foreign military sale market during the financial year 2024.

The USS Jackson (LCS-6) and USS Montgomery (LCS-8) are part of a significant decommissioning plan laid out in a Report to Congress on the Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2024, prepared by the US Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and released on 30 March this year.

The LCS-6 was commissioned in 2015 and LCS-8 in 2016, making them the oldest-serving vessels in their class. The high-speed trimaran design was originally promoted as a small and multipurpose warship designed to operate in nearshore engagements as a light frigate and patrol vessel.

The report indicates both ships are excess to needs and neither has completed lethality and survivability upgrades.

“A total inventory of 17 Independence Class LCS leaves the Navy with two of those ships as excess to need supporting the wrong mission set (outside mine countermeasures and surface warfare),” the report said.

“These two ships will be replaced with new Independence Class ships that are delivering in the FYDP with more capability.”

The report recommends the decommissioning of a total of 11 ships in FY2024, including three decommissioning after their expected service lives.

These include guided missile cruisers USS Antietam, USS Leyte Gulf, USS Cowpens, USS Shiloh, and USS Vicksburg and the recycling of Los Angeles Class submarine USS San Juan and the dismantling of Island Class dock landing ships USS Germantown, USS Gunston Hall and USS Tortuga.

Other important timing from the report includes the upcoming recycling of aircraft carrier USS Nimitz scheduled in financial year 2026 and recycling of aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in FY2027.

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