USS Cole (DDG-67)
| USS Cole (DDG 67) underway | |
| Career | 
|
|---|---|
| Ordered: | 16 January 1991 |
| Laid down: | 28 February 1994 |
| Launched: | 10 February 1995 |
| Commissioned: | 8 June 1996 |
| Decommissioned: | |
| Status: | Template:Ship fate box active in service |
| Struck: | |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 8,315 tons (8,448 t) |
| Length: | 505 ft (153.9 m) |
| Beam: | 66 ft (20.1 m) |
| Draught: | 31 ft (9.4 m) |
| Propulsion: | 4 × General Electric LM2500-30 gas turbines, 2 shafts, 100,000 shp (75 MW) |
| Speed: | 30+ knots (56+ km/h) |
| Range: | |
| Complement: | 337 officers and enlisted |
| Armament: | 1 × 29 cell, 1 × 61 cell Mk 41 vertical launch systems, 90 × RIM-67 SM-2, BGM-109 Tomahawk or RUM-139 VL-Asroc, missiles 1 × 5/54 in (127/54 mm), 2 × 25 mm, 4 × 12.7 mm guns, 2 × Phalanx CIWS 2 × Mk 46 triple torpedo tubes |
| Aircraft: | 1 SH-60 Sea Hawk helicopter can be refueled and rearmed. Flight IIA DDG-79 and following can embark helicopters |
| Motto: | Gloria Merces Virtutis "Glory is the Reward of Valor" |
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- See USS Cole for other ships of this name.
The second USS Cole (DDG 67) is an Arleigh Burke class Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyer homeported in NS Norfolk, Virginia. The Cole is named in honor of Marine Sergeant Darrell S. Cole, a machine gunner killed in action on Iwo Jima on 19 February 1945.
She was built by Ingalls Shipbuilding and delivered to the Navy on 11 March 1996.
Bombing
On 12 October 2000, under Commander Kirk Lippold, the Cole was attacked from a small boat by suicide bombers, while it was harbored in the Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen sailors were killed and 39 were injured. The U.S. government offered a reward of up to US$5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of those persons who committed or aided in the attack on Cole. On 4 November 2002, Ali Qaed Sinan al-Harthi, who is believed to have planned the attack, was killed by the CIA using an AGM-114 Hellfire missile launched from an MQ-1 Predator unmanned drone.
Cole was returned to the United States aboard the Norwegian semi-submersible heavy-lift MV Blue Marlin owned by Offshore Heavy Transport of Oslo, Norway. The ship was off-loaded 13 December 2000, from Blue Marlin in a pre-dredged deep-water facility at the Pascagoula, Mississippi, shipyard of Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, Ingalls Operations. After 14 months of repair, Cole departed on 19 April 2002, and returned to its homeport of Norfolk, Virginia. Cole left Norfolk on 29 November 2003 on the destroyer's first overseas deployment since it was bombed in the year 2000.
Al-Qaeda, a terrorist group, probably targeted Cole because an earlier attempt to attack USS The Sullivans on January 3, 2000 had failed. This was one of the 2000 millennium attack plots.
History
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- 10 years of history go here
The Cole deployed to the Middle East on 8 June 2006 for the first time since the bombing.
On 21 August, 2006, Associated Press reported that the Cole's Commanding Officer at the time of the bombing, Commander Kirk Lippold was denied promotion to the rank of Captain.[1]
External links
- Official website of USS Cole
- USS Cole webpage
- navsource.org: USS Cole
- USS Cole Association
- Official Department of Defense FOIA files on the USS Cole [2] [3] [4]
- USS Cole Redeploys
- Maritimequest USS Cole DDG-67 Photo Gallery
