{"id":55412,"date":"2015-09-30T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T17:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=55412"},"modified":"2015-09-30T12:39:23","modified_gmt":"2015-09-30T17:39:23","slug":"combat-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=55412","title":{"rendered":"Combat Record"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the guided missile frigate\u00a0USS Simpson\u00a0<\/em>was decommissioned.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Simpson\u00a0<\/em>is\u00a0an\u00a0Oliver Hazard Perry-<\/em>class guided missile frigate, commissioned thirty years ago last week, at the height of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

She was designed as a (relatively) low-cost, high-performance anti-submarine escort, intended to guard convoys against Soviet submarines and aircraft.<\/p>\n

But as the Cold War wound down and the Middle East heated up, she found herself in the Persian Gulf on her first overseas deployment. \u00a0As the Iran-Iraq war slogged on, she was part of the multinational effort to escort oil tankers through the Persian Gulf, in response to another ship –\u00a0Simpon’s\u00a0<\/em>sister ship, the\u00a0Samuel Roberts<\/em> – hitting an Iranian mine in international waters.<\/p>\n

There, \u00a0on April 18 1988,\u00a0Simpson\u00a0<\/em>and two other US ships attacked an Iranian intelligence station aboard an oil platform. \u00a0The Iranian missile boat\u00a0Joshan<\/em> – a French-built fast attack craft armed with US-built Harpoon missiles\u00a0– launched a\u00a0Harpoon at\u00a0the US force. \u00a0The missile was shot down or decoyed away from the task force.<\/p>\n

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A “Combattante II” class missile boat – in this case, the Greek “Plotarchis Vlachavas”, a sister of “Joshan”.<\/p><\/div>\n

Simpson\u00a0<\/em>then returned fire with four “Standard” antiaircraft missiles, hitting\u00a0Joshan\u00a0<\/em>in the superstructure. \u00a0The task force finished the Iranian ship off with gunfire. \u00a0\u00a0Simpson\u00a0<\/em>shared credit as one of the very few US vessels since World War 2 to actually sink an enemy ship in combat.<\/p>\n

Simpson\u00a0<\/em>went on to a long career; it rescued the crew of a burning naptha tanker two years later; it served in Desert Storm, as well as\u00a0several deployments on humanitarian and counter-piracy missions off the coast of Somalia.<\/p>\n

But beyond that, it’s not an especially notable ship, and its decommissioning isn’t big news; it’s one of many, as the\u00a0Obama Administration mothballs\u00a0the Navy at an alarming rate.<\/p>\n

But the notable thing about the decommissioning of\u00a0Simpson<\/em> is that with its departure from active service, the US Navy now has exactly one vessel in commission (that is to say, an active, commissioned vessel in the Navy, as opposed to a museum ship or a decommissioned vessel in the reserve “mothball fleet”) that has ever sunk an enemy ship in action.<\/p>\n

This one:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The\u00a0USS Constitution<\/em>, commissioned in 1797, and which racked up quite a record in the undeclared war with France in 1806, the War of 1812, and the actions against the Barbary Pirates, and still a commissioned US Navy warship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the guided missile frigate\u00a0USS Simpson\u00a0was decommissioned. The\u00a0Simpson\u00a0is\u00a0an\u00a0Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigate, commissioned thirty years ago last week, at the height of the Cold War. She was designed as a (relatively) low-cost, high-performance anti-submarine escort, intended to guard convoys against Soviet submarines and aircraft. But as the Cold War wound down and the Middle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55412"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55422,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55412\/revisions\/55422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}