Los Angeles-class quick assault submarine USS Jacksonville (SSN 699) held a decommissioning ceremony at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Upkeep Facility in Bremerton, Nov. 16, 2021. The ceremony highlighted the ship’s 40 years of service, its many crews, and their legacy. Jacksonville was the one boat to bear the title of the Florida metropolis, and it represented its namesake with honor. The ship and her crew accomplished Alternate Inactivation Assemble, a first-in-kind course of that enabled a complete crew’s price of personnel to return to the fleet and pioneered procedures, insurance policies, and metrics applicable to the plant and ship circumstances of a unit in an inactivation schedule. The crew completed defueling in six days and had the shortest time from docking to decommissioning of any submarine, 127 days complete.
“As we shut the chapter of this magnificent warship, you will need to do not forget that with out the crew, a Naval vessel is only a hulk of metal,” mentioned Wiest. “It’s the crews that served aboard her that introduced her to life, and saved her alive to do her obligation. The foundations of the Silent Service forestall particular discussions of her accomplishments, and that’s correctly. Jacksonville was a steely-eyed killer of the deep due to the lads who served aboard her. And that, my fellow People, is how she must be remembered.”
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“There are two particular crews within the lifetime of a submarine: the commissioning crew and the decommissioning crew,” mentioned Cmdr. James Wiest, commanding officer of Jacksonville. “We because the decommissioning crew have been tasked with gracefully, nobly, and respectfully retiring this warship and honoring the 1,700 plus Sailors who served in her during the last 40 years.”
Los Angeles-class submarines are the spine of the submarine power. The mission and capabilities of those submarines embrace undersea warfare, floor warfare, strike warfare, mining operations, particular operations forces supply, reconnaissance, service battle group help, escort, intelligence assortment and sustaining security of the seas. Throughout Jacksonville’s service it utilized these capabilities to finish two world circumnavigations and 13 deployments. Jacksonville additionally obtained three Battle “E” awards, 5 Navy Unit Commendations, and one Meritorious Unit Commendation. The keel was laid by the Electrical Boat Division of Normal Dynamics in Groton, Conn., Feb. 21, 1976. The boat was launched Nov. 18, 1978, and commissioned Might 16, 1981.
