President Donald Trump’s widely-celebrated deal to end the Mideast war was built in part on the foundations of defensive work by a Bath-built destroyer, the Navy says.
The USS Carney, launched by Bath Iron Works in 1994, left its home port of Mayport, Florida on Monday for its next mission, just its latest job keeping peace in international waters.
The ship helped neutralize the Houthis in the aftermath of Hamas’ murderous rampage on Israel two years ago.
“On Oct. 19, 2023 USS Carney (DDG 64) was involved in the most intense combat engagement by a U.S. Navy warship since World War II,” said Navy spokesman Austin Rooney.
The ship was steaming through the Red Sea on its scheduled deployment to the 5th Fleet area of responsibility at the time.
In other words it was a routine peacekeeping deployment.
But keeping the peace, especially in the Middle East, is always a hair-trigger proposition.
Routine deployment one minute, emergency operations the next. “Suddenly things abruptly changed,” Rooney explained.
The ship’s commander ordered that they engage Houthi rebels with missiles, as well as with the destroyer’s main five-inch gun.
With no scheduled live fire drills that day, Fire Controlman 2nd Class Justin Parker, a radar technician assigned to Carney, recalls that he instantly realized something was wrong.
What a way to begin a day – morning coffee uprooted by fighting foreign terrorists with on-board missiles.
All in a day’s work for a Bath-built ship that’s been tasked to the nines in its short life.
By the end of what became a 10-hour standoff, Carney had shot down 15 drones and four land-attack cruise missiles fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen, marking the most intense combat engagement by a U.S. Navy warship since WWII.
The 505-foot ship, with a navigational range of 5,000 miles, was designed for extended sea missions carrying a crew of 250.
The estimated $2.5 billion Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, launched down the Bath ways July 23, 1994, was the first to be named after Adm. Robert Carney, chief of naval operations during the Eisenhower administration.
As sponsor of the ship, Adm. Carney’s daughter, Betty Taussig, cracked a bottle of champagne over its bow as it rode the ways from Bath Iron Works into the Kennebec River.
Carney was the eighth Arleigh Burke Class destroyer to be launched by Bath Iron Works.
During the launch, 60 groups of four ship builders drove six-foot-long wedges of oak between wooden sliders and the wooden cradle that held the ship in place during its 640-foot descent into the river.
In addition to a multitude of deck guns, the vessel is equipped with a Harpoon anti-ship missile launcher and a 90-cell vertical missile-launcher system.
The technology includes anti-ballistic missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles and torpedoes.
In 2002, the Carney deployed to the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Nine years later, Carney disrupted four piracy attempts, disarming and capturing 30 suspected pirates in support of Operation Ocean Shield in the Gulf of Aden.
In 2016, Carney took part in Operation Odyssey Lightning, against ISIS militants in Libya.
In December 2023, two months after Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians, Carney and civilian-owned ships were attacked in the Red Sea by ballistic missiles and drones launched from Yemen by the Iranian-backed Houthis.
The ship and its proud crew left Mayport this week on its latest mission.
No rest for the weary.
