USS William V. Pratt (DDG-44)
5800 tons of standard
156.2 meters
15.80 meters
7.6 meters
21 officers, 356 sailors, possibly 19 bar
2 propellers, 2 geared turbines driven; 85,000 hp
34 knots
1 Doppelarmstarter for missiles, ASROC 1 starter, 2 triple torpedo launchers, 1 artillery 127 mm, additionally later eight anti-ship missiles
The USS William V. Pratt ( DLG-13/DDG-44 ) was a destroyer leader and later guided missile destroyer of the United States Navy. The ship belonged to the Farragut class.
History
The Pratt 1956 was given at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in order and there laid the keel of 1958. Launching was on 16 March 1960. Here the ship after the former Chief of Naval Operations William Veazie Pratt was baptized. Godmother was his widow. The commissioning took place in November 1961.
After the tests took place in 1963 the first use. The ship left its home port of Norfolk, Virginia, and participated in the NATO exercise Riptide IV, which took place on the European side of the Atlantic. Up to the first overhaul in 1966, the ship took on more trips in part to the Mediterranean and in the North Atlantic.
April 15, 1966, Pratt moved its home port after Mayport, Florida and moved from July to the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean. A year later, on June 20, 1967, the destroyer moved the first time in the Pacific, where she participated in the Vietnam War. From the United States Naval Base Subic Bay from Operating as was the ship in the Gulf of Tonkin for Combat Search and Rescue. The use of a total of three phases in the Gulf of Tonkin was completed on 16 January 1968, when the Pratt Mayport reached. This was followed by a six-month overhaul at the Charleston Naval Shipyard. In the following four years, followed by four more transfers into the Mediterranean.
In 1972, Pratt was officially decommissioned and modernized in its shipyard. After resolution of the work in October 1973, the recommissioning of the destroyer followed. In addition, she was transferred to Charleston, South Carolina. The first use of the new home port led Pratt to the Mediterranean, where exercises with the carriers USS Independence (CV- 62) and USS Saratoga (CV -60) were carried out.
In 1975 the reclassification, from now on was the Pratt a guided missile destroyer and carried the identification number DDG- 44th After taking place in the summer of UNITAS XVI the ship docked on December 15 for an overhaul in the Charleston Naval Shipyard, where she remained until March 1976. From the autumn of the destroyer then moved as protection for the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CV -42 ) once more into the Mediterranean. The following year, the Pratt lapped the South American continent as part of UNITAS XIX.
1982 operated the Pratt off the coast of Lebanon. 1984 and 1987 was followed by further transfers into the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, 1989, exercises in Norwegian waters. 1990 assisted the destroyer in the United States Coast Guard in the enforcement of U.S. security interests.
In 1991, the Pratt as protection for the Saratoga and the USS John F. Kennedy (CV -67) in Operation Desert Storm in part. Following the Pratt was officially decommissioned in September and canceled thereafter.