USS Trippe (FF-1075)

September 19, 1970 - July 30, 1992

4100 ts

133.5 meters

14.25 meters

7.6 meters

17 officers, 228 sailors

1 propeller, 1 gear turbine, two boilers; 35,000 shaft horsepower

27 nodes

4,500 nautical miles at 20 knots

The USS Trippe ( DE/FF-1075 ) was a frigate of the Knox class. She served from 1970 to 1992 in the United States Navy and was the fourth ship by Lieutenant John Trippe (* 1785, † 1810) was named.

History

The keel of the ridge on July 19, 1968 Avondale Shipyards, New Orleans. After the launch on 1 November 1969, she was placed in the Navy on September 19, 1970 in service. After the test drives in the Caribbean and Haiti before she returned to Boston in July 1971 in the yard, where she was a starter for Sea Sparrow missiles. She was the first small warship which was equipped with these weapons. The following months spent Trippe now with the testing of the new system, in June 1972 they crossed the Panama Canal and steamed to Vietnam, where she served as an escort for aircraft carriers and also took part in Küstenbeschießungen. In December 1972, she returned to the U.S. East Coast and had thus completed its first flight around the world.

In 1973 she was overhauled once again and for the inclusion of a LAMPS helicopter ( SH-2 Seasprite ) prepared. From August 1973 to January 1974 she was employed for the first time with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean. Beginning of 1975, the destroyer escort operated again in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East, mid-1975 she was reclassified as part of the reorganization of the ship classifications of Navy frigates. The end of 1975 began a new dockyard period, which lasted until May 1976. From March to July 1977, she was again in the Middle East, used in the summer of 1978 for the second time in the Mediterranean. In 1979 she participated in the UNITAS XX exercise off the South American coast, a trip led them to West Africa.

From January to December 1980, the Trippe Maine was at Bath Iron Works in Bath, equipped with a new towing sonar system, and new electronics systems. The following decade brought four further stays in the Mediterranean as well as the equipment with a Phalanx CIWS with it. The early nineties they operated mostly in the Caribbean, she was decommissioned and leased to Greece on 30 July 1992. As Thrace it was put into service by the Greek Navy in April 1993. 2001, Trippe was officially sold and removed from the ship registers of the Navy.