Name John Young Ordered 26 January 1972 Acquired 1 May 1978 Construction started 17 February 1975 Draft 8.84 m Builder Ingalls Shipbuilding | Namesake John Young Laid down 17 February 1975 Commissioned 20 May 1978 Launched 6 January 1976 Beam 17 m | |
USS John Young (DD-973), named for Captain John Young USN, was a Spruance-class destroyer of the United States Navy. The ship was built by the Ingalls Shipbuilding Division of Litton Industries at Pascagoula, Mississippi.
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History
In 1987, John Young deployed off the coast of Iran in support of Operation Earnest Will and participated in Operation Nimble Archer. John Young deployed with Battle Group Echo, which included the aircraft carrier Ranger, battleship Missouri, cruisers Long Beach, Bunker Hill, destroyers Leftwich and Hoel, frigates Curts, Harold E. Holt, Robert E. Peary, Schofield and auxiliaries Shasta, Wichita, Kansas City, Hassayampa.
John Young, following appropriate Congressional notification, became one of eight combat ships that began receiving women as crewmembers in 1994.
As part of a reorganization by the Pacific Fleet's surface ships into six core battle groups and eight destroyer squadrons, with the reorganization scheduled to be completed by 1 October 1995, and homeport changes to be completed within the following, year, John Young was reassigned to Destroyer Squadron 23.
On 28 April 1996, Navy and Coast Guard inspectors aboard John Young boarded a merchant ship thus marking the 10,000th such boarding in support of United Nations sanctions against Iraq. As part of a multinational maritime interception force, operating in the Persian Gulf, the team boarded an Indian flagged dhow in the Persian Gulf to make the milestone boarding. The vessel was empty and permitted to proceed.
John Young departed San Diego on 18 November 1997 en route to the Persian Gulf for a six-month deployment as part of the Middle East Force (MEF).
John Young teamed up with a Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) in late March 2001 for a major drug bust at sea. She was last stationed at San Diego, California.
Fate
John Young was decommissioned on 30 September 2002 and stricken 6 November 2002, laid up at Bremerton, Washington NISMF. On 13 April 2004, John Young was sunk during exercise RIMPAC 04 by a Mark 48 torpedo fired by the submarine Pasadena, which broke her in half. Two computer games, U.S.S. John Young 1 and 2, published for the Commodore 64 in 1990 and 1992, were simulations of combat featuring John Young.