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USNS Ponchatoula (T-AO 148)

USNS PONCHATOULA was the sixth and last ship in the NEOSHO - class of fleet oilers. The ship transfered to the Military Sealift Command on September 5, 1980. Decommissioned and stricken from the Navy list on August 31, 1992, Argentine was offered to purchase the PONCHATOULA but the South American country declined. At the moment, the PONCHATOULA is berthed at the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, Benicia, Calif., awaiting final disposal.

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Crew List:

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

• Click here to view the list.

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• Click here to see which USNS PONCHATOULA memorabilia are currently for sale on ebay.

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USS / USNS PONCHATOULA Cruise Books:

• WestPac 1977 Cruise Book

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History of USS / USNS PONCHATOULA:

USS PONCHATOULA was laid down at New York Shipbuilding in Camden, New Jersey, on March 1, 1954, launched on July 9, 1955, and commissioned on January 12, 1956. After fitting out at Philadelphia she sailed for the Pacific, arriving at Long Beach, California, on March 10, 1956, to complete shakedown and local training. In her first Western Pacific deployment later that year, PONCHATOULA rendered notable assistance to the Panamanian freighter SS VENUS on the fringes of Typhoon Ivy: she took the merchantman in tow on September 26, 1956, turned the tow over two days later, and continued on to Sasebo to join the Seventh Fleet, a practical demonstration of the oiler's endurance and towing gear in heavy-weather conditions typical of the Northwest Pacific sea lanes.

In early 1958, she shifted home port to Pearl Harbor, from which she would cycle regularly to WESTPAC through the Cold War years. In the late summer and autumn of 1958, she supported Seventh Fleet carrier and surface forces during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, when the shelling of the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu by the People's Republic of China raised the risk of escalation and required sustained U.S. naval presence in the Philippine Sea and East China Sea.

By 1961, PONCHATOULA was a routine player in fast-carrier logistics. On September 21, 1961, she was photographed fueling the attack carrier USS RANGER (CVA 61) and the guided-missile frigate USS COONTZ (DLG-9) simultaneously - a textbook two-station UNREP that illustrated how the NEOSHO-class combined speed and capacity to keep high-tempo task groups on station. The image came amid a period of intensive training and deployments as the U.S. Navy refined modern underway replenishment doctrine in the Pacific.

In 1962, PONCHATOULA supported Joint Task Force 8 during Operation DOMINIC I, the large U.S. atmospheric nuclear test series conducted from April through the end of the year at and around Christmas Island (Kiritimati) and Johnston Atoll. The oiler's role was to move petroleum, oil, and lubricants to the operating areas that serviced test aircraft, ships, and instrumentation platforms during a period of heightened superpower tension. That autumn, on October 3, 1962, she joined the Navy's Pacific recovery force for Project Mercury's "Sigma 7" mission, for which Pacific Fleet carriers and escorts were arrayed across splashdown windows. The deployment married her logistics tasking with aerospace-support duties that would recur across the decade. She repeated Mercury support in May 1963 for "Faith 7", the final Mercury mission, when the Navy again staged a large maritime recovery effort spanning both oceans.

As U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia deepened after the Gulf of Tonkin incidents in August 1964, PONCHATOULA shifted to combat logistics. From October 1964, she deployed to the South China Sea to refuel Seventh Fleet ships conducting coastal patrols, air operations, and shore bombardments off Vietnam. Over successive cruises she recorded an exceptional operational tempo: in the 1965-1966 period she brought 503 ships alongside and conducted 484 underway replenishments, transferring on the order of fifty million gallons of fuel and additional aviation fuel and cargo. During one 24-hour stretch in November she executed twenty UNREPs and a consolidation with another oiler, a benchmark for Pacific Fleet logistics at the time. After a late-1965 interruption to support NASA recovery contingencies, she returned to Vietnam service and, by April 1966, steamed back to Hawaii having set the Pacific Fleet record for ships serviced.

Operations continued without letup. On January 25, 1965, PONCHATOULA was photographed alongside USS YORKTOWN (CVS 10) with a destroyer on her starboard side, one of many multi-ship evolutions that defined her Vietnam-era workups and deployments. From November 1967 to June 1968, she again served WESTPAC, pumping more than seventy-four million gallons of fuel through her hoses - evidence of the sustained air and surface combat operations of that period. In October 1968, she returned to space-support duty, assigned to the recovery force for APOLLO 7 (October 11-22), and then, by December 8, 1968, she was back in the Philippines to sail for "Yankee Station" in the Gulf of Tonkin on December 15, resuming replenishment of carriers and escorts. Through these Vietnam tours, PONCHATOULA earned twelve battle stars for sustained direct support to fleet combatants. She returned home in July 1969 and spent 1970 largely in Hawaiian waters for operations and upkeep.

Two notable engineering incidents bracketed the early 1970s. On February 13, 1970, north of Hawaii, she and the dock landing ship USS POINT DEFIANCE (LSD 31) sustained minor damage in a collision during fueling operations, with three sailors injured - an illustration of the hazards inherent in close-quarters work at sea. A few weeks later, on March 26, 1970, she was photographed underway off Oahu during post-incident operations. Later in the decade, while in port at Pearl Harbor on November 2, 1976, a serious explosion in her No. 2 boiler blew out a side and the aft boiler wall. Repairs followed to restore her to service. The 1970s also saw forward maintenance: an NHHC image places PONCHATOULA in drydock with USS RICHLAND (AFDM 8) at Guam during that period.

During multinational exercise RIMPAC 75 she refueled USS KITTY HAWK (CV 63) on April 7, 1975, with allied ships - among them a Canadian frigate and the replenishment ship HMCS PROVIDER - visible in the background, reflecting the expanding coalition nature of Pacific naval logistics in the final months of U.S. operations in Southeast Asia. As U.S. presence widened toward the Indian Ocean late in the decade, PONCHATOULA's operating areas grew accordingly.

On September 5, 1980, she was decommissioned from commissioned status and transferred the same day to the Military Sealift Command as USNS PONCHATOULA (T-AO 148), thereafter crewed primarily by civilian mariners with a small Naval detachment. Based largely out of Subic Bay during the 1980s, she continued the core mission - oiling carriers, cruisers, and destroyers on routine WESTPAC, Indian Ocean, and Persian Gulf patrols - within the broader context of Cold War stability operations and the post-1979 shift of U.S. attention to Southwest Asian sea lines.

In 1990-1991, she served with the Seventh Fleet across the build-up for and prosecution of Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM, supporting carrier battle groups and surface action units moving into and out of the Arabian Gulf as the coalition assembled and then executed combat operations against Iraq beginning January 17, 1991. In the summer that followed, as Mount Pinatubo's eruptions devastated Luzon and forced the evacuation of U.S. bases, she took part in the larger naval presence associated with Operation FIERY VIGIL, the emergency air- and sealift of dependents and personnel from Clark Air Base and Subic Bay in June-July 1991.

On August 7, 1991, during an underway replenishment in the Central Pacific while transiting back toward Pearl Harbor, the guided-missile cruiser USS CHANCELLORSVILLE (CG 62) suffered a steering casualty, heeled to port, and collided with PONCHATOULA - striking at the bridge and then scraping down the starboard side - badly buckling upper deck plating and damaging the cruiser's bow and sonar dome. After repairs and continued operations, PONCHATOULA was photographed again on December 3, 1991, underway in the Philippine Sea and coming alongside USS BLUE RIDGE (LCC 19), flagstaff of Seventh Fleet, demonstrating a rapid return to tasking after the collision.

Administrative close-out followed swiftly. PONCHATOULA was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on August 31, 1992, inactivated in the early months of that year, and remained in Navy custody until transfer to the Maritime Administration on May 1, 1999, for lay-up at the Suisun Bay National Defense Reserve Fleet near Benicia, California. There she lay through the 2000s, a familiar silhouette among the "mothball fleet" north of San Francisco Bay. In spring 2014, she was prepared for disposal: after contract action with International Shipbreaking (Brownsville, Texas), she entered drydock at Mare Island on May 15 for hull cleaning and environmental certification before tow. On June 5, 2014, a tug took PONCHATOULA out of San Francisco Bay for the Panama Canal-free route to the Gulf of Mexico. She arrived on the Texas coast in July and was dismantled at Brownsville thereafter, closing nearly six decades from commissioning to final cutting.

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Accidents aboard USS / USNS PONCHATOULA:

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USS / USNS PONCHATOULA Image Gallery:

The photo below was taken by me and shows the PONCHATOULA laid-up at Suisun Bay, Calif., on March 27, 2010.

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