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USNS Mississinewa (T-AO 144)

Named after a river in Indiana, the USNS MISSISSINEWA was the second NEOSHO - class fleet oiler and the second ship in the Navy to bear the name. The MISSISSINEWA was transfered to the Military Sealift Command on November 15, 1976. Finally decommissioned in 1991, the MISSISSINEWA was stricken from the Navy list on February 16, 1994, and was subsequently laid-up as part of the James River Reserve Fleet, Fort Eustis, Va. Sold for scrap on September 27, 2006, the MISSISSINEWA was towed to Brownsville, Tx., in February 2007. There, the ship was broken up by International Shipbreaking Limited. Scrapping was completed on February 11, 2008.

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Crew List:

This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard USNS MISSISSINEWA. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.

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Accidents aboard USS / USNS MISSISSINEWA:

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USS / USNS MISSISSINEWA History:

USS MISSISSINEWA was a NEOSHO-class fleet oiler built by New York Shipbuilding Corp. at Camden, New Jersey. Her keel was laid on May 4, 1953; she was launched on June 12, 1954, sponsored by Mrs. Jerauld Wright; and commissioned on January 18, 1955, with Captain M. J. Jensen in command. After shakedown on the U.S. East Coast, she took up duty with the Atlantic Fleet from Newport, Rhode Island, performing underway replenishment training and local logistics evolutions while preparing for extended service with the SIXTH FLEET.

MISSISSINEWA shifted to a forward posture on May 1, 1956, departing Newport for Naples, Italy, which became her home port and logistics base for sustained Mediterranean operations. The timing placed her in theater through the Suez Crisis of late 1956 and into early 1957, when SIXTH FLEET forces stood ready during the Anglo-French-Israeli intervention and its tense aftermath. Contemporary images show the oiler at anchor in the Mediterranean on September 12, 1956 - an indicative snapshot of her presence during that crisis season - before resuming the routine of fueling carriers, cruisers, and destroyers across the inland sea.

In 1957, she received a major capability upgrade: a stern helipad for vertical replenishment, part of a mid-1950s modification program on the early NEOSHO-class ships that expanded rapid transfer options for high-tempo carrier operations. From 1957 into the early 1960s, she rarely returned to the United States except for scheduled overhauls, instead living at sea with SIXTH FLEET task groups and replenishment squadrons.

MISSISSINEWA's Mediterranean service intersected directly with the 1958 Lebanon crisis. In mid-July 1958, as the United States executed OPERATION BLUE BAT to stabilize the Lebanese government, she got underway on short notice to provide continuous logistic support off Beirut, fueling the amphibious and carrier formations that covered the landings and subsequent stand-by period through September. This deployment exemplified the oiler's role as an enabling platform for crisis response under the Eisenhower Doctrine.

Routine Mediterranean cycles in the early 1960s included large NATO serials. On February 3, 1962, MISSISSINEWA was photographed refueling the destroyer USS DYESS (DDR 880) during exercise "BIG GAME", a typical alongside evolution that kept screening forces fueled between serials and port calls. From 1962 to 1964, her responsibilities grew further when she served as flagship for Commander, Service Force, SIXTH FLEET - an assignment that placed senior logistics command afloat while underscoring the policy of keeping the fleet independent of shore bases.

In spring 1964, she supported the nuclear carrier USS ENTERPRISE (CVAN 65) during FAIRGAME II in the Mediterranean, setting a SIXTH FLEET transfer record together: on May 16, 1964, MISSISSINEWA pumped 437,000 gallons of JP-5 per hour to the carrier during a high-tempo replenishment day - evidence of both the oiler's capacity and the demands of nuclear-powered carrier flight operations. Late that summer, she was reassigned back to Newport (September 1964), resuming Atlantic Fleet duty with periodic Mediterranean deployments.

Through the mid- to late-1960s, MISSISSINEWA alternated Western Atlantic work - from Newfoundland waters to the Caribbean - with regular Mediterranean cruises. She participated in NATO evolutions north of the Arctic Circle; documentation places her in northern Norway in August 1966 for alliance exercises on NATO's northern flank, before returning to the western Atlantic. In 1967, she is recorded refueling the carrier USS ESSEX (CVS 9) and a DEALEY-class escort during an ASW-oriented Mediterranean deployment by the carrier group, a typical pairing of a logistics ship with an anti-submarine carrier and screen.

On December 4, 1969, photographs show MISSISSINEWA underway in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, illustrating her late-decade posture on the East Coast. The early 1970s brought the usual mix of upkeep and operations, although on October 31, 1972, sabotage was discovered in a boiler system as the ship was getting underway. The plant was secured before damage occurred, and operations resumed after corrective action - an incident noted in compiled naval accident chronologies.

In fleet service she continued heavy UNREP routines with deployed carriers and escorts. An operating mishap followed on December 15, 1975, off Florida: during an alongside evolution MISSISSINEWA and the carrier USS SARATOGA (CV 60) made minor contact. Both ships were able to continue after assessments and repairs, a reminder of the inherent risks of close-quarters replenishment in sea states and traffic typical of Atlantic workups.

MISSISSINEWA's commissioned Navy career ended the following year. She was decommissioned and transferred to Military Sealift Command on November 15, 1976, redesignated USNS MISSISSINEWA (T-AO 144). She was the first of six NEOSHO-class oilers to move to MSC, inaugurating a final phase of service in which civilian mariners, with a small Navy detachment, continued the same core mission - fueling carriers, surface combatants, and amphibious groups on both scheduled deployments and emergent tasking - primarily in Atlantic and Mediterranean operating areas.

From November 15, 1976 onward, the oiler operated as USNS MISSISSINEWA (T-AO 144) under Military Sealift Command. In 1977-1979, she settled into the Atlantic and Mediterranean logistics rhythm characteristic of MSC's Naval Fleet Auxiliary Force at the end of the Cold War: underway replenishment periods off the U.S. East Coast and in the Caribbean to support workups, followed by Sixth Fleet tasking in the Mediterranean. An official image from the era shows her refueling the destroyer USS FORREST SHERMAN (DD 931) during this early MSC phase, a transfer dated between 1977 and 1982 and representative of her Western Atlantic duties in the Carter-Reagan transition years.

By early 1984 she is documented alongside deploying East Coast units bound for the Mediterranean. On February 23, 1984, the guided-missile frigate USS BOONE (FFG 28) recorded an UNREP with USNS MISSISSINEWA just before the frigate transited the Suez Canal on February 24, placing the oiler in the stream of Sixth Fleet movements linking the Atlantic to the Middle East.

In January 1985 MISSISSINEWA is again visible on the record, this time in the Caribbean amid Cold War surveillance of a Soviet surface action group. When the Soviet force anchored in Cienfuegos, Cuba, the frigate USS JOHN L. HALL (FFG 32) logged an afternoon underway refueling from USNS MISSISSINEWA on January 25, illustrating how MSC oilers underwrote the long, fuel-intensive surveillance and tracking periods that U.S. ships conducted around the Straits of Florida and the northern Caribbean.

A major MSC shipyard period was scheduled the same year. Military Sealift Command awarded Boston Shipyard Corporation an overhaul contract for MISSISSINEWA with a planned 100-day performance. The legal record shows that by August 30, 1985, change orders and financing issues had slowed work. On October 17, 1985 the yard curtailed operations, and on November 15, 1985 MSC terminated the contract - an administrative saga that nevertheless places MISSISSINEWA in a stateside yard cycle in the second half of 1985 before returning to sea under alternative arrangements.

Photographic evidence then fixes her at sea on November 14, 1986, underway during a period when East Coast carriers engaged in high-tempo training and presence operations on both sides of the Atlantic. That image foreshadows a dense Mediterranean year in 1987, when multiple command histories place the oiler with Sixth Fleet groups and amphibious formations.

In the winter of 1987, she tied directly into Sixth Fleet amphibious activity clustered around Sicily. USS SAIPAN (LHA 2) reported "Unrep with USNS MISSISSINEWA (AO 144)" during NATO "National Week" serials at Augusta Bay in late January-early February. The same log records transits of the Strait of Messina and subsequent movements toward Cyprus and Rota, the typical arc of a Med amphibious ready group supported by rotating oilers. On March 1, 1987, USS WHIDBEY ISLAND (LSD 41) also conducted a replenishment at sea with USNS MISSISSINEWA while en route to Naples, confirming the oiler's role that spring in shuttling fuel among amphibious ships moving between exercises and port periods on the central Med littoral.

Her late-1987 footprint extended into the fall escort cycle. USS KLAKRING (FFG 42) recorded an UNREP on November 1, 1987 with USNS RIGEL and USNS MISSISSINEWA and then a liberty call at Saint-Raphael, France on November 12, a pairing that illustrates the choreography of stores ships and oilers topping off escorts as they shuttled between operating areas and southern French anchorages.

Through 1988, MISSISSINEWA continued to span both amphibious and carrier tasking. On April 5, 1988, USS PONCE (LPD 15) departed Benidorm, Spain to rejoin her Marine Amphibious Ready Group and that same day completed an UNREP with USNS MISSISSINEWA. In the carrier track, the year's command report for the newly commissioned USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT (CVN 71) explicitly credits "FUELING AT SEA WITH USNS MISSISSINEWA (863,868 JP-5)" during the ship's intense workup and inspection window in early June - a single evolution whose volume offers a concrete measure of MISSISSINEWA's capacity in the nuclear-carrier era.

MISSISSINEWA's name continues to surface in 1990 across Atlantic and Mediterranean patrols. On August 11, 1990, the frigate USS CARR (FFG 52) conducted a replenishment at sea with USNS MISSISSINEWA. That summer's entries in East Coast ship histories often show short-notice steaming and sustainment as U.S. forces pivoted from peacetime cycles toward contingency readiness.

In 1991, with the Cold War ending and the fleet rebalancing after the Gulf War's initial phase, the oiler remained active in the replenishment pattern for Atlantic and Med units. USNS MISSISSINEWA was placed out of service on July 30, 1991, and towed to the National Defense Reserve Fleet, James River, Virginia. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on February 16, 1994, and - after several years in lay-up - title transferred to the Maritime Administration on May 1, 1999.

Final disposition followed in the mid-2000s. Sold for scrapping in 2006, the former MISSISSINEWA departed the James River fleet on January 30, 2007, and arrived at International Shipbreaking Ltd. in Brownsville, Texas, on February 17, 2007. Dismantlement was completed on February 11, 2008, closing the record of a ship that had spent more than three and a half decades enabling naval operations from the Suez era and Lebanon landings through the nuclear carrier age and the late-Cold-War peak.

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USS / USNS MISSISSINEWA Image Gallery:

The photo below was taken and contributed by Michael Martin and shows the MISSISSINEWA at Esco Marine, Brownsville, Texas, being scrapped. The photo was taken in February 2007.

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