For Kinkaid sailors, little time to reminisce for she is to be decommissioned

 Since 12-14-02

Navy Times,
16 December 2002 Issue

Of all the ships decommissioning in the coming year, the destroyer Kinkaid faces an extra challenge. The crew must put the ship down, but they’re not breaking up; they’re deploying days after the final ceremony.

The San Diego-based Kinkaid is part of the three-ship Sea Swap experiment. To maximize the amount of time deployed overseas, the Kinkaid sailors will decom their ship in January, then fly out to Australia and sail the destroyer Fletcher for six months, while the Fletcher crew flies home at the end of a six-month deployment.

After another six months, the Kinkaid/Fletcher sailors will be replaced by the crew of the destroyer Oldendorf, who also will decommission their ship and steam the Fletcher for another six months. The Oldendorf crew then will bring the Fletcher home to be decommissioned, meaning they will go through the decom process twice.

 The experiment means the Kinkaid crew must pull all the equipment off their ship, without the benefit of starting an unrelated tour and extra training after the ship is empty.

To keep the Kinkaid sailors trained to sail the Fletcher from Australia, the Navy sent them to various schools to learn how to operate equipment not on the Kinkaid. The Fletcher has a Rolling Airframe Missile launcher, along with various engineering and communications equipment the Kinkaid doesn’t have.

Sailors also trained on other ships, said Cmdr. Kim Parker, Kinkaid’s commanding officer. Once the training was completed, the decom process began Nov. 26. Like other ships, the Kinkaid will give parts to ships that need them. Kinkaid sailors also plan to ship supplies to Australia ahead of time, assuming those supplies won’t fit on the cargo plane that will take the crew to Australia in January.

“It’s really fast,” Parker said. “Every day, stuff’s going off the ship.”He referred to the decom process as the ship’s “15 minutes of fame,” during which other crews are requesting parts for their own ships.

“Other ships are coming over and looking for stuff, and making sure our stuff is better than what they have,” he said. “If it turns out to be better, then they take it.

”Parker said the fleet has placed a premium on making sure the sailors are ready to go on a moment’s notice.

“We’re a full-up round,” he said. “If we had to go today, we could go.”

Submitted,
YNCS Don Harribine, USN(Ret)