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USS Stout (DDG 55)

USS STOUT is the sixth ARLEIGH BURKE class guided missile destroyer and the first U.S. Navy ship named in honor of Rear Admiral Herald F. Stout, U.S. Navy (1903-1987), who was awarded two Navy Crosses for heroism while in command of the destroyer USS CLAXTON (DD 571) during World War Two.

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Crew List:

This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard USS STOUT. 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 USS STOUT memorabilia are currently for sale on ebay.

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USS STOUT Cruise Books:

• Maiden Cruise Book 1994-95
• Mediterranean and Arabian Sea Cruise Book 1998-99
• Mediterranean and Arabian Sea Cruise Book 2007
• Mediterranean Cruise Book 2013-14

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About the ship's Coat of Arms:

(Click on the coat of arms for a larger version)

The Shield:

The battle-axe is adapted from the Stout family's coat of arms. Its upright position underscores Stout's massive firepower and high survivability while the double axe head, facing both ways, alludes to the all-encompassing offensive and defensive power of the integrated AEGIS combat system. The star highlights Admiral Stout's many awards, as well as reference to the Silver Star. With resolute courage and daring aggressiveness, Admiral Stout, as Commanding Officer of the destroyer USS CLAXTON, aided his task force in sinking five heavily armed, enemy warships to establish our beachhead on Bougainvillea Island. This Naval battle is symbolized by the wedge piercing the field of the shield; the wedge representing Admiral Stout and United States Naval force disabling and destroying a surface force of superior fire power, signified by the field.

The Crest:

The cross suggests the Navy Cross, one of many decorations awarded to Admiral Stout; and exemplifies the strong devotion to God and Country that characterized Admiral Stout's Naval career and now reminds us that no STOUT sailor stands alone. It is inflamed to recall the fierce bombardment of the naval battle in the Solomon Islands. The lion, a symbol of courage, strength and tactical hunting skills, commemorates Rear Admiral Stout and the men and officers who served under his leadership.

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USS STOUT History:

USS STOUT commissioned on August 13, 1994, at Naval Station Norfolk and spent the mid-1990s in work-ups and shakedown periods that led to her first extended deployment. On January 23, 1996, she sailed from Norfolk with the GEORGE WASHINGTON (CVN 73) Battle Group for the Mediterranean and Arabian Gulf, a cruise framed by NATO peacekeeping off former Yugoslavia and UN Iraq sanctions enforcement. During this maiden deployment the destroyer operated with GEORGE WASHINGTON and escorts including USS MONTEREY (CG 61) and USS UNDERWOOD (FFG 36). By mid-year the battle group returned stateside on July 23. Contemporary documentation from the carrier's and squadron histories places STOUT alongside the carrier for replenishments and group transits, while typical liberty ports on that Med run included well-trodden stops such as Barcelona and other Western/Eastern Mediterranean hubs.

Through 1997, STOUT remained in the Norfolk operating areas, working up air-defense and strike warfare certifications and sailing intermittently with GEORGE WASHINGTON battle group components as the carrier cycled through post-deployment maintenance and training. Early 1998 closed out with a change in tempo as the destroyer entered another long deployment across the Med and into the Indian Ocean and Arabian Gulf. That 1998-1999 cruise threaded the standard liberty and logistics pattern - Med ports, Suez transit, Red Sea fuel and stores, and Arabian Gulf operations supporting Southern Watch tasking - before returning to the Atlantic in spring 1999.

By 2000, STOUT was back on the Western Atlantic and Canadian Maritimes circuit. On July 5, 2000, she sailed in company with sister-ship USS GONZALEZ (DDG 66) for Halifax, Nova Scotia - an at-sea pairing the Navy recorded as a combined warfare training and port-visit evolution timed with Halifax's busy summer harbor season.

In 2001, STOUT deployed with elements of the ENTERPRISE (CVN 65) Battle Group into the Mediterranean and adjacent waters during an already tense international climate. That spring movement placed the destroyer in the Med as part of the broader ENTERPRISE deployment cycle: while ENTERPRISE histories focus on the carrier's larger air operations and exercises, the surface screen (including STOUT) delivered the routine air-defense umbrella, Tomahawk tasking readiness, and strait transits associated with Mediterranean and Middle East postures through mid-year.

In 2002, STOUT returned to the Western Hemisphere for extensive group operations with GEORGE WASHINGTON in the North Atlantic and Caribbean. A notable, precisely dated vignette comes from May 8, 2002, when STOUT conducted a towing exercise (TOWEX) with cruiser USS MONTEREY in the Caribbean - a small but concrete snapshot of the ship's seamanship and training ledger that year.

The 2003 timeline is dominated by the run-up to and opening phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. STOUT sailed to the Mediterranean and, according to Navy historical summaries of the destroyer's deployment, launched roughly fifty Tomahawk Land-Attack Missiles in the opening nights of the war in March 2003, striking Iraqi regime targets alongside other Tomahawk shooters in the Eastern Med. She returned to Norfolk on June 18, 2003, after the six-month tour. Those dates and figures sit alongside widely documented Eastern Med TLAM launches by cruisers and destroyers on March 19-23, 2003, that began the coalition's air-and-missile campaign.

The ship spent 2004 and 2005 largely in inter-deployment training cycles and regional operations. In 2006, she again paired with components of the GEORGE WASHINGTON Strike Group. A Defense Imagery photo released later places STOUT with GEORGE WASHINGTON for an anti-submarine warfare serial during the "Partnership of the Americas" period in late April-early May 2006, an effort that strung together multinational activities with Latin American and Caribbean partners.

In 2007, STOUT deployed with the ENTERPRISE Carrier Strike Group to the Fifth Fleet and Indian Ocean. Beyond the standard operations boxes and port calls, one specific and unusual event stands out: on September 26, 2007, while operating under Combined Task Force 150, STOUT responded to Tanzanian-flagged passenger ferry SPICE ISLAND in international waters off Somalia after the ferry reported it had run out of fuel and needed help while transiting from Oman to Tanzania. STOUT provided fuel, food and water and helped the crew get the vessel back under its own power. The sequence - recorded by DVIDS photography and captions - nicely illustrates the constant seamanship and maritime-security assistance side of a destroyer's deployment portfolio in pirate-prone waters in that era.

In April 2008, the destroyer failed an INSURV (Board of Inspection and Survey) material readiness examination and was deemed "unfit for sustained combat operations", a high-visibility event that triggered an aggressive remediation and training arc across the surface force. Congressional and Navy audit records of the period consistently cite STOUT (and cruiser CHOSIN (CG 65)) as the 2008 outliers - a spur to process and maintenance changes - and subsequent Navy testimony tracked the corrective actions applied fleet-wide afterward.

By 2009, STOUT was back on station. In mid-July she entered the Black Sea for a sequence of capacity-building port visits and exercises with partners around the basin: she called Batumi, Georgia, on July 13; departed Poti on July 20; reached Constanta, Romania, on July 22; and subsequently visited Varna, Bulgaria, before returning to the Med and ultimately home in September. The trip was framed by the post-2008 Russo-Georgian war security context - NATO and U.S. engagement with Black Sea partners was a prominent Sixth Fleet theme - so STOUT's presence and schedule fit the geopolitical priorities of that summer precisely.

The next cycle pivoted back to the North Atlantic. In October 2010, STOUT participated in JOINT WARRIOR off the UK and made a Netherlands port call earlier in the month, followed by a UK visit later that October, before returning home to prepare for another deployment. On December 15, 2010, she departed Norfolk again, headed for Sixth Fleet on ballistic-missile defense/Maritime Security Operations tasking.

Almost immediately, 2011 brought combat operations. On March 19, 2011, STOUT launched Tomahawk missiles as part of Joint Task Force/Operation ODYSSEY DAWN, the international response that enforced UN Security Council Resolution 1973 over Libya. Navy histories list STOUT among the Tomahawk shooters alongside USS BARRY (DDG 52), submarines USS PROVIDENCE (SSN 719) and USS SCRANTON (SSN 756), and USS FLORIDA (SSGN 728). The destroyer continued routine port calls in the Eastern Med during this period, with a strike-phase operational profile that tracks exactly with the multi-day TLAM campaign.

After post-Libya stand-down and stateside maintenance in 2012, STOUT returned to Sixth Fleet at the end of 2013 for a long Eastern Med presence as Syria's civil war and chemical-weapons diplomacy put the Levant under sustained maritime surveillance. She moored in Limassol, Cyprus, for a port visit on December 24, 2013, and in early January 2014 operated in the central/eastern Med with gunnery events documented on January 17. Later that month she made a port call in Haifa, Israel, underscoring the pattern of close cooperation with key regional partners during that deployment.

In March 2014, STOUT's crew figured in an unusual maritime interdiction follow-on. After U.S. Navy SEALs operating from USS ROOSEVELT (DDG 80) boarded and secured the rogue crude-oil tanker MORNING GLORY in international waters southeast of Cyprus on March 16, a 25-sailor detachment from STOUT embarked the tanker to supervise and escort her safely back toward Libya. Public statements by DoD and multiple contemporaneous press accounts attribute that escort and supervision role specifically to STOUT in the days that followed the boarding.

The next full deployment cycle for STOUT was with the DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (CVN 69) Carrier Strike Group in 2016. In the run-up she completed high-speed small-boat defense drills on March 28, 2016. She took part in ARGONAUT, a multinational search-and-rescue exercise hosted by Cyprus, then moored at Limassol on June 1 for a three-day port call. By late summer, she was in Fifth Fleet: photos place STOUT alongside at Naval Support Activity Bahrain on August 27 and breaking away from USNS ARCTIC (T-AOE 8) after a replenishment at sea in the Arabian Gulf on September 9. Throughout the fall, she cycled between the Med and Gulf with the DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER CSG, including further Sixth Fleet periods into late October before returning to Norfolk in November.

Between deployments, STOUT remained active in theater security cooperation. A simple but clear entry on June 12, 2019, has her in Nassau, Bahamas, for a scheduled port visit - one of the many short Western Atlantic stops that sustain the Navy's steady presence and outreach in the region.

Her 2020 history became one of the best-known chapters in the modern destroyer force. Deploying with the DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER CSG just as COVID-19 upended port-call policies worldwide, STOUT stayed continuously underway for a record-setting stretch in Fifth Fleet before finally mooring in Rota, Spain, on October 3, 2020. Navy releases document a U.S. Navy record of 215 consecutive days at sea, enabled by 36 replenishments-at-sea and a complete absence of foreign port calls during the height of pandemic restrictions. She returned to Norfolk on October 12, 2020.

From late 2020 into 2021, STOUT entered a major docking selected restricted availability (DSRA) at BAE Systems' Norfolk yard to reset the hull, tanks and machinery and to install updated electronic and electrical systems - work awarded in November 2020 and overseen by MARMC through dry-dock milestones in June 2021. That yard period, following the punishing 2020 deployment, restored the destroyer for the next set of fleet tasks.

In 2022, the destroyer's calendar was dominated by depot-level work in Norfolk. The Navy's Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center documented STOUT preparing to enter dry dock at BAE Systems Norfolk for a Docking Selected Restricted Availability, a package of hull, tank and mechanical work together with upgrades to electronic and electrical systems. Ship-spotter photography shows the destroyer pier-side at the BAE yard on September 6, 2022, confirming the availability was in full swing late in the year.

In 2023, STOUT emerged from the heavy maintenance rhythm back into the usual pier-side preparations, trials, and basic phase training around Norfolk. On July 21, 2023, the ship held a change of command ceremony on board at Naval Station Norfolk. The relief followed a June 5 announcement that the previous commanding officer had been removed for loss of confidence - an internal leadership action that did not change the ship's material recovery path or training schedule. Imagery from October 9 places STOUT back at Naval Base Norfolk as she continued the work-up ladder ahead of rejoining a carrier team.

By spring 2024, STOUT was operating at sea with Carrier Strike Group Eight as part of a Group Sail led by USS HARRY S. TRUMAN (CVN 75). On April 29, 2024, while off North Carolina, the crew launched a RHIB to render medical aid to a mariner aboard the merchant vessel GRANDE PORTOGALLO and coordinated a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter medevac - an episode the Navy highlighted the next day. The event sits amid a string of at-sea readiness evolutions that month as the ship refined boat operations, seamanship and embarked-helicopter procedures prior to deployment.

STOUT deployed with the HARRY S. TRUMAN Carrier Strike Group (CSG-8) in late September 2024, sailing from Norfolk for Sixth Fleet on September 25. The strike group's core U.S. surface screen comprised USS GETTYSBURG (CG 64) and destroyers USS STOUT and USS JASON DUNHAM (DDG 109) under DESRON 28, with Carrier Air Wing ONE embarked in HARRY S. TRUMAN. After a High North phase in October-November, the formation transited south: on November 25 the group passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean with allied escorts ITS CARABINIERE (F 593) and ESPS MENDEZ NUNEZ (F 104), a movement recorded in Navy imagery. Before, STOUT made a logistics port call at Brest, France, on November 12 and, as part of an expeditionary logistics demonstration led by Naval Expeditionary Combat Command and CTF-68, completed a rare vertical-launching-system (VLS) reload in Brest later in November - a first-of-kind reload for a U.S. destroyer at that French base that underscored NATO's maturing rearm/refuel network. On December 13, the ship conducted a replenishment at sea with French oiler BRF JACQUES CHEVALLIER (A 725) in the Mediterranean as the strike group continued Sixth Fleet operations.

In early 2025, the strike group split its time between Sixth and Fifth Fleets as regional tasking demanded. STOUT's own track shows her in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in February, with dated imagery of replenishments at sea on February 2-3 and a continuing stream of flight-deck operations through March. While HARRY S. TRUMAN and JASON DUNHAM conducted a working port visit and then an emergent repair period at Souda Bay, Crete in February, STOUT remained on station supporting maritime security tasking. A Navy feature on February 24 described the destroyer working directly with Combined Maritime Forces' CTF-153 in the Red Sea/Bab al-Mandeb/Gulf of Aden corridor, conducting boarding-skills refreshers and patrols as the multinational task force refocused on its core counter-smuggling and anti-piracy mission while other U.S. and partner forces handled Red Sea air and missile defense.

The deployment closed on June 1, 2025, when the HARRY S. TRUMAN CSG returned to Hampton Roads. Navy releases and video place STOUT mooring at Naval Station Norfolk the same day at the end of an eight-month cruise spanning the North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Arabian waters with U.S. and NATO partners. Through the summer, local coverage noted the destroyer entering the normal post-deployment maintenance window back in Norfolk.

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Homeports of USS STOUT:

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USS STOUT Image Gallery:

The photo below was taken by Karl-Heinz Ahles and shows USS STOUT at Norfolk, Va, on May 11, 1999.

The photos below were taken by me and show the USS STOUT at Naval Base Norfolk, Va, on November 9, 2008.

The photos below were taken by me and show the USS STOUT passing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel on her way to Naval Base Norfolk, Va, on October 28, 2010. The STOUT is returning home after participating in exercise Joint Warrior held off Great Britain earlier in October. The last photo shows the STOUT moored at Naval Base Norfolk on October 29.

The photos below were taken by me and show the USS STOUT at Naval Base Norfolk, Va, on May 6, 2012.

The photo below was taken by Michael Jenning and shows the USS STOUT at Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, Va, on May 8, 2014.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the USS STOUT at Naval Base Norfolk, Va, on April 29, 2015.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the USS STOUT at Naval Base Norfolk, Va, on October 6, 2015.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the USS STOUT at Naval Base Norfolk, Va, on October 4, 2017.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the USS STOUT at Naval Base Norfolk, Va, on September 21, 2018.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the USS STOUT at the BAE Systems shipyard in Norfolk, Va, on September 6, 2022. Note the painting on the forward 5-inch mount.

The photos below were taken by Michael Jenning and show the USS STOUT at Naval Base Norfolk, Va., on October 9, 2023.

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