LAST CRUISE OF LPH-11

On the sunny Friday morning of 2 May 1997 the amphibious assault ship NEW ORLEANS (LPH-11) nudged toward Pier 6 at Naval Station San Diego.  A seasoned 28-year veteran, she was returning from 92 days at sea.   The Iwo Jima-class LPHs were the world’s first to be built from the keel up for the purpose of helicopter assault, a tactic born of our experience in Korea.  But today’s arrival ended the last deployment of an LPH in the Pacific.  Overtaken by advancing technology, the LPH role was now being filled with newer LHAs and LHDs.  Her sisters IWO JIMA, OKINAWA, GUADALCANAL and TRIPOLI had already been retired.  INCHON (LPH-12) had been converted to a mine countermeasures ship, MCS-8.  Only GUAM (LPH-9) in the Atlantic and NEW ORLEANS remained as operational LPHs.

Slated for retirement herself, NEW ORLEANS’ last cruise had not actually been planned.  CAPT Richard C. Perkins received the call after repairs to Japan-based BELLEAU WOOD (LHA-3) forced her last-minute cancellation from upcoming maneuvers.  With only 25-day notice, LPH-11 departed San Diego on February 1^st for Okinawa, where 1500 Marines embarked for Operation Tandem Thrust.  Her three months off Australia were marked by more than just exercises.  Typhoon Justin stalked her in March, bringing monstrous waves that pitched the carrier into 40^o rolls.  During the height of that storm the captain’s gig broke free and smashed a helicopter in the hangar deck, and in medical, an OR table crashed through a bulkhead.

Even on the final leg of her return to San Diego, when rest for this tired warrior seemed imminent, another call went out.  The Panamanian freighter Dexter Eagle, three days out from Mexico bound for the Philippines, sent a distress call when her master, Celso Montano, fell ill with an apparent case of appendicitis.  The freighter’s designated “medical officer” (the engineer) had used the strongest drugs in his med locker, Tylenol and Maalox, without effect.  At the time, NEW ORLEANS was 700 miles distant, but she was vectored by the Coast Guard in Hawaii as the closest vessel with medical capability.  The two ships turned toward each other at flank speed and had closed to within 40 miles the following day.  A CH-46 “Sea Knight” was launched carrying LT Nicholas Kalynych of NEW ORLEANS’ medical staff.  Kalynych was lowered to Dexter Eagle, Mr. Montano was collected, and all were brought back aboard the amphib.  His illness proved to be gallstone pancreatitis, and happily, plans to fly Montano to NMC San Diego were postponed when his medical condition brightened.

A veteran of the Apollo space missions, the 1980 Iranian hostage crisis, and Operations “Desert Shield” and “Desert Storm,” NEW ORLEANS decommissioned 1 October 1997.

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CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Crawley, James W.  “Daring Rescue Marks Vessel’s Farewell Voyage.”  San Diego Union-Tribune, 3 May 1997, p. B-2.

Crawley, James W.  “Warship Returns Home One Final Time.”  San Diego Union-Tribune, 3 May 1997, p. B-2.

Morin, Steve.  “New Orleans Returns from Last Deployment.”  Navy Compass, Vol 3 (41), 9 May 1997, pp. A-1, A-7.

“Navy Aids Ailing Civilian Skipper.”  San Diego Union-Tribune, 30 April 1997, p. B-2.

Oral Histories, USS NEW ORLEANS crewmen, May-June 1997.

Polmar, Norman.  The Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, 16^th ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1997, pp. 157-59.

“USS NEW ORLEANS hosts CNO.”  ComNavSurfPac press release, April 1997.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The first five LPHs were left-over aircraft carriers from WWII (initially called CVHs).  The seven purpose-built Iwo Jima-class followed.  None carried landing craft.  They all bear the names of famous US Marine Corps battles.  The respective final letters in their successor’s hull numbers, LHAs and LHDs, simply identify serial designs.  These ships are all Casualty Receiving and Treatment Ships (CRTS), making it easy to remember which “gator freighters” have hospitals (those with an “H” in their hull number).

In addition to the damage listed above, typhoon Justin cracked the aircraft elevator frame.  Seawater shipped at three gallons/minute on her return voyage.  The damage was not repaired prior to NEW ORLEANS’ decommissioning.  She was stricken from the Naval Vessels Register on 23 October 1998 and expended as a target off Hawaii on 10 July 2010 in a joint SINKEX with warships of Japan, Canada, France, Australia, the United States, and B-52s from 2^nd and 5^th Bomb Wings.

LPH-11 is the fourth US Navy ship of that name.  The first was an 87-gun ship-of-the-line laid down in 1815 but never completed.  The second was a class-of-one protected cruiser purchased in 1898 for the Spanish-American War.  And NEW ORLEANS (CA-32) was a heavy cruiser of WWII.  All three remember the “Crescent City.”  The modern LPH-11 and LHD-18 remember the US Marine Corps battle of New Orleans, the last battle of the War of 1812.

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