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Commissioned as a FORREST SHERMAN - class destroyer, the USS DECATUR entered the Boston Naval Shipyard, Mass., in the mid-1960s for conversion to a guided missile destroyer. During the conversion, the DECATUR had 90% of her superstructure replaced and received the Tartar surface-to-air missile system and the ASROC antisubmarine rocket system. In addition, her engineering equipment was completely overhauled, and she received a lot of additional electronic gear.

USS DECATUR was decommissioned on June 30, 1983. Stricken from the Navy list in March 1988, the DECATUR was subsequently converted to a Self-Defense Test Ship. In this role the DECATUR served from 1994 to 2003 and conducted trials of various systems for countering anti-shipping cruise missiles and other threats. The DECATUR was sunk as a target on July 21, 2004, during RIMPAC 2004.

Crew List:

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

Date

Where

Events

August 29, 1959

Naples, Italy

The USS DECATUR suffers an engine room fire while docked in Naples, Italy. The fire is extinguished after two hours during which the ammunition stores are flooded as a precautionary measure.

September 27, 1963

Newport, RI.

The USS BARRY (DD 933) accidently discharges a torpedo into the deck house of the USS DECATUR moored alongside. There are no injuries or significant damage.

May 6, 1964

150 miles east of Cape Henry, Va.

The USS LAKE CHAMPLAIN (CVS 39) and USS DECATUR collide in the Atlantic. The DECATUR sustains heavy damage to its superstructure - both masts are lost over the side and the bridge and both stacks are crushed, remarkably injuring only one sailor, but there are no personnel injuries.

History of USS DECATUR:

USS DECATUR (DD 936) entered service as a FORREST SHERMAN-class destroyer on December 7, 1956, and spent the late 1950s and early 1960s on Atlantic and Mediterranean duties, including spacecraft-recovery work in September 1961 and participation in the Cuban Quarantine in November-December 1962. Her Cold War routine was broken by a serious accident on May 6, 1964, when she suffered heavy topside damage in a collision with the carrier USS LAKE CHAMPLAIN (CVS 39), an event that led directly to a complete modernization and a change in mission.

Beginning in 1965-1966, the ship underwent a two-year conversion at Boston Naval Shipyard. On September 15, 1966, she was reclassified as a guided-missile destroyer with the new hull number DDG 31, and in April 1967, she was recommissioned as USS DECATUR (DDG 31). In September 1967, she transferred to the Pacific Fleet, basing on the U.S. West Coast for deployments with Seventh Fleet.

In 1968, she made her first Western Pacific deployment as a missile destroyer, sailing to the combat theater from July 1968 to February 1969. In these months she joined the routine of Vietnam War operations under Seventh Fleet control - air-defense screen stations, picket duty, and presence patrols - before returning to San Diego in early 1969 for post-deployment maintenance.

The year 1970 placed DECATUR back on Far East service. She completed another WESTPAC tour through 1970, again supporting Vietnam operations and visiting allied ports across the theater in the standard rotation for Pacific Fleet destroyers, then returned to the Southern California operating areas for upkeep and training late that year.

From 1971 into early 1972, she executed a further Seventh Fleet deployment that included Vietnam War tasking. This tour closed the combat phase of the ship's career, after which she resumed stateside workups and local operations pending the next WESTPAC.

In 1973, DECATUR deployed again to WESTPAC during the post-Paris-Accords transition, performing presence operations with Seventh Fleet and maintaining air-defense and sea-control readiness as the regional balance shifted from combat to deterrence. She returned to the West Coast late in the year.

Through 1974 and 1975, she completed another WESTPAC. The end of the Vietnam War did not diminish the demand for capable missile destroyers. DECATUR spent these years alternating between Pearl Harbor and Southern California training cycles and forward presence with Seventh Fleet, a rhythm characteristic of Pacific destroyers in the mid-1970s.

In 1976, before heading west again, the ship took part in a large Third Fleet war-at-sea and amphibious readiness event off Southern California. On August 7, 1976, she laid at anchor off Coronado during Operation "VARSITY KNIGHT", a period caught in official photography and representative of her pre-deployment integration with carrier and amphibious groups. She then commenced another WESTPAC/1976-1977 patrol cycle with Seventh Fleet.

In 1978, the destroyer departed yet again for WESTPAC, extending into 1979 and reflecting a growing U.S. focus on the Indian Ocean amid instability around the Persian Gulf. During this cruise she ventured into the Indian Ocean and, in February 1979, made a brief visit to Bahrain before returning across the Pacific and mooring in San Diego on April 8, 1979. The deployment captured the Navy's widening posture from the Western Pacific into Indian Ocean waters as great-power and regional crises intensified.

In 1980, DECATUR remained in the Pacific Fleet training and work-up pattern that prepared destroyers for rapid redeployment to either WESTPAC or Indian Ocean commitments, as the Iranian hostage crisis and Red Sea tensions kept surface forces at a high state of readiness. Contemporary fleet summaries note continuing Indian Ocean presence by U.S. units during this period.

The year 1981 saw another WESTPAC for DECATUR, recorded in deployment rosters for that January. She operated in company with Seventh Fleet groups in the Western Pacific, executing air-defense screen, anti-submarine training, and maritime security tasks typical of the destroyer role.

In 1982, she crossed the Pacific once more. Her final deployment began on October 30, 1982, with a complex "War at Sea" exercise in the Sea of Japan, followed by a Hong Kong visit and then extended operations that carried her into the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf as the U.S. increased its steady presence in Southwest Asian waters. Through early 1983, DECATUR remained associated with Persian Gulf tasking before returning stateside. On June 30, 1983, she was decommissioned at Naval Station San Diego and placed in reserve, closing nearly twenty-seven years of commissioned service across two distinct configurations.

Stricken from the Navy list on March 16, 1988, the ship was earmarked not for scrapping but for conversion into the Self Defense Test Ship (SDTS), a remotely operable trials platform used to test ship self-defense weapons against realistic anti-ship missile and air threats. The conversion took several years. Initial operational capability was achieved in October 1994, and the ship thereafter carried the experimental designation "E-31" while based out of Port Hueneme, California.

From 1995 through 1999, SDTS (ex-DECATUR) ran repeated at-sea events in which threat drones, targets and profiles were flown against her while decoy barges trailed astern, allowing engineers to evaluate combat-system performance without risking a crew. The installed suite evolved to include the MK 57 NATO SEA SPARROW system, the MK 23 target-acquisition system, PHALANX CIWS, ROLLING AIRFRAME MISSILE, and the AN/SLQ-32(V)3 electronic-support suite. The platform's remote control and unmanned operating concept made it unique in the fleet.

In 2000, the ship entered a new phase as a primary at-sea testbed for the EVOLVED SEA SPARROW MISSILE (ESSM). The program's first at-sea firing from SDTS took place in April 2000, initiating a multi-shot series that continued through 2001 and into 2002 to validate kinematics, guidance and integration with legacy launchers. To support the series, the site of the former forward 5-inch mount was reconfigured to carry a dual-pack ESSM launcher, and imagery from June 16, 2003 shows that arrangement in place pierside at Port Hueneme.

Throughout 2001-2003, the ship also supported additional short-range self-defense events - RAM and NATO SEA SPARROW engagements and PHALANX trials - often launched from the Pacific Missile Test Range and conducted without a crew aboard. A Navy diagram from this period succinctly outlines the SDTS combat-system fit and control links, illustrating how ex-DECATUR functioned as a full-scale, remotely controlled combatant for live-fire scenarios.

In 2004, the Navy replaced SDTS (ex-DECATUR) with the former USS PAUL F. FOSTER (DD 964). The decommissioned DECATUR was then expended in a fleet training SINKEX during RIMPAC on July 22, 2004, off Hawaii. Her SDTS role - formalized through the late 1990s and early 2000s - had stretched the usefulness of a Cold War destroyer into the missile-age test and evaluation regime, and her retirement closed a fifty-year arc that began at Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1954.

About the Destroyer's Name, about Commodore Stephen Decatur:

Born in Maryland and raised in Philadelphia, Decatur showed evidence of the bold and courageous man he would become: he was known to dive from the tips of jib booms and, at the age of 14, defended his mother against a drunken ruffian. Commissioned a midshipman in 1798, within a year he was promoted to acting lieutenant of the UNITED STATES.

Praised for a decisive style of leadership during the encounter with the PHILADELPHIA, Decatur became the most striking figure of the Tripolitan Wars. He subsequently received the commission of captain, commanding the CONSTITUTION and later the CONGRESS. Responsibility for the gunboat flotilla in the Chesapeake, management of the Norfolk Navy Yard, and command of all U.S. Naval forces on the Southeast coast followed. He also presided over various courts of inquiry for naval affairs.

During the War of 1812, Decatur fought and defeated the MACEDONIAN, the second of his three famous frigate encounters. Other notable encounters include the battle between the PRESIDENT and a British blockade of New York harbor, where Decatur was able to destroy the enemy frigate ENDYMION. The PRESIDENT was later captured and Decatur wounded, but the victory over ENDYMION earned him high praise.

In 1815, Decatur commanded a nine-ship squadron headed for Algiers to settle conflicts which had persisted since 1812. Decatur's abilities as a negotiator were recognized after he secured a treaty with the Algerians and extracted compensation from the Tripolitans. During celebration of the truce with the North African States, Decatur declared his famous line: "Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country right or wrong."

From November 1815 until his death, Decatur served on the Board of Navy Commissioners. Successful Naval leaders of Decatur's time were rewarded financially for their exploits; Decatur invested his ample prize money in the Washington, D.C. area, building Decatur House which still stands today in Lafayette Square.

Decatur's death was predictably both heroic and tragic. As Navy Commissioner, he opposed the reinstatement of Captain John Barron whom he had suspended from service much earlier while serving on an inquiry board. Barron responded with a challenge to duel with the much younger Decatur. Ever the honorable warrior, Decatur allowed only a short distance of eight paces out of respect for Barron's faulty eyesight and claimed he would not fire to kill. At the first exchange, Barron was shot in the thigh, Decatur received a fatal shot. All of Washington turned out to mourn the hero who remains today a prominent figure in U.S. Naval history.

General Characteristics:	Keel laid: September 13, 1954
	Launched: December 15, 1955
	Commissioned: December 7, 1956
	Decommissioned: June 30, 1983
	Builder: Bethlehem Steel, Quincy, Mass.
	Propulsion system: four-1200 lb. boilers; two steam turbines; two shafts
	Propellers: two
	Length: 418.3 feet (127.5 meters)
	Beam: 45,3 feet (13.8 meters)
	Draft: 22 feet (6.7 meters)
	Displacement: approx. 4,150 tons full load
	Speed: 32+ knots
	Aircraft: none
	Armament: one Mk-42 5-inch/54 caliber guns, Mk-32 ASW torpedo tubes (two triple mounts), one Mk-16 ASROC missile launcher, one Mk-13 Mod.1 missile launcher for Standard MR missiles
	Crew: 25 officers, 339 enlisted

Photos of the decommissioned DECATUR as Self-Defense Test Ship

USS Decatur (DDG 31)