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Amphibious ships · from 1994

USS Mount Whitney

Blue Ridge-class amphibious command ship.

History

USS Mount Whitney (LCC/JCC 20) is one of two Blue Ridge-class amphibious command ships of the United States Navy and is the flagship and command ship of the United States Sixth Fleet. USS Mount Whitney also serves as the Afloat Command Platform (ACP) of Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO (STRIKFORNATO). The ship had previously served for years as the COMSTRIKFLTLANT(NATO Designation) / US Second Fleet's command ship. She is one of only a few commissioned ships to be assigned to Military Sealift Command.

Mount Whitney was classified as LCC-20 on 1 January 1969, and her keel was laid down on 8 January by Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Company, Newport News, Virginia.

At the time of her commissioning, Mount Whitney joined her sister ship Blue Ridge as having the distinction of carrying the world's most sophisticated electronics suites. It was said to be some thirty percent larger than that of the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy, which had been the most complex. Mount Whitney was armed with a "main battery" of computers, communications gear, and other electronic facilities to fulfill her mission as a command ship. An extremely refined communications system was also an integral part of the ship's radical new design. Through an automated patch panel and computer-controlled switching matrix, her crew could use any combination of communication equipment desired. The clean topside area is the result of careful design intended to minimize the ship's interference with her own communications system. US Navy long-range communications were heavily reliant on high-frequency radio systems in the 1970s and have evolved to predominantly satellite communications in the 2000s. This is illustrated by the long wire antennas and the directional HF yagi or log-periodic antenna initially installed on Mount Whitney and later removed and replaced with a number of satellite communications antennas.

Text from Wikipedia: USS Mount Whitney, CC BY-SA 4.0, lightly trimmed.

Key dates

  1. 1994
    In 1994, during the FleetEx 2/94 "George Washington" war game exercise, the Argentine Navy, acting as the enemy and using the diesel submarine ARA San Juan, went undetected, penetrated the destroyer defense and "sank" Mount Whitney, which was acting as the command ship during the exercise.
  2. 1994
    Mount Whitney deployed in 1994 to Haiti with Lieutenant General Hugh Shelton, the commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps, in command of the Joint Task Force that conducted Operation Uphold Democracy.
  3. 2002
    On 12 November 2002, Mount Whitney deployed to the Central Command area of responsibility in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.
  4. 2004
    In 2004, Military Sealift Command civilian sailors were integrated into her crew.
  5. 2008
    On 6 November 2008, Mount Whitney was unable to enter the port at Sevastopol.
  6. 2014
    On 31 January 2014, Mount Whitney left her homeport of Gaeta, Italy.
  7. 2015
    On 31 July 2015, a fire broke out aboard Mount Whitney while she was in Viktor Lenac Shipyard, Rijeka, Croatia.
  8. 2016
    On 30 June 2016, Mount Whitney visited Klaipėda, Lithuania, and in October 2016, she visited Souda Bay, Greece.
  9. 2018
    From 25 October to 7 November 2018, she served as the command vessel for the NATO exercise Trident Juncture.

Dates and events quoted from the same Wikipedia article (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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