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USS Firebolt (PC 10)

USS FIREBOLT was the tenth CYCLONE - class patrol coastal boat and the first ship in the Navy to bear the name. From November 2001 on, the CYCLONE - class ships were temporarily operated under US Coast Guard control for homeland defense. In February 2003, the FIREBOLT deployed to the Persian Gulf for an 18-month deployment in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. For the deployment, the FIREBOLT temporarily shifted her homeport to Manama, Bahrain. Even after this deployment, FIREBOLT remained forward-deployed for the remainder of her career. On February 23, 2022, FIREBOLT was both decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register. On March 30, 2022, following a Foreign Military Sale, she was transferred to the Royal Bahrain Naval Force and recommissioned as RBNS Jenan (PC 73).

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Crew List:

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

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Accidents aboard USS FIREBOLT:

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USS FIREBOLT History:

USS FIREBOLT was a CYCLONE-class patrol coastal ship built for close-in, high-speed patrol and interdiction work in confined waters. Ordered on July 19, 1991, and constructed by Bollinger Shipyard at Lockport, Louisiana, she was laid down on September 17, 1993, and launched on June 10, 1994. FIREBOLT was delivered to the Navy on February 7, 1995, sponsored by Andrea Danzig, wife of future Secretary of the Navy Richard J. Danzig. She was commissioned on July 10, 1995, joined the Atlantic Fleet and was assigned Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, Virginia, as her homeport, beginning a career that would increasingly center on littoral security and coalition operations in the Middle East.

In the years immediately after commissioning, FIREBOLT operated from Little Creek as part of the growing CYCLONE-class patrol coastal force, conducting training and patrol duties along the U.S. East Coast and in the western Atlantic. Official records show that she undertook at least two early deployments to the Mediterranean, supporting U.S. 6th Fleet operations. On November 1, 1996, she returned from what was described as her second Mediterranean deployment, and a contemporary photograph shows the ship underway returning to Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek after this cruise.

These early years established the pattern of a small, fast warship used to provide presence, maritime interdiction capability, and coastal patrol support to larger surface forces. In 1998, her command history lists Little Creek as her permanent duty station, confirming her continuing role as an Atlantic Fleet coastal patrol asset. By 1999, FIREBOLT had matured as an operational unit within the patrol coastal community. For her performance that year, she received the Navy Battle Efficiency "E" Award for the period January 1 to December 31, 1999, indicating consistently high readiness and performance in all warfare areas compared with her peers.

Through the turn of the millennium, she continued training and patrol operations from Little Creek, integrating with larger battle group exercises and honing the visit, board, search and seizure (VBSS) skills that would later become central to her mission set. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 shifted FIREBOLT's focus toward homeland defense and then to overseas counter-terrorism operations. Immediately after the attacks, she deployed to New York, helping secure New York City's harbor and approaches as part of the broader effort to protect critical infrastructure and sea lines of communication along the U.S. East Coast. This domestic security role was relatively brief, but it foreshadowed the ship's later specialization in protecting high-value maritime targets and chokepoints.

On March 10, 2003, FIREBOLT forward-deployed to Bahrain as part of the U.S. buildup for operations in the Persian Gulf region. Operating under U.S. 5th Fleet, she conducted missions in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and, as the campaign expanded, Operation Iraqi Freedom. Official Navy accounts describe her as "forward deployed" and note that, after her arrival in the region in early 2003, she remained on station through crew swaps with other Norfolk-based patrol coastal ships rather than returning to Little Creek.

In this period, FIREBOLT participated in maritime interception operations, coastal patrols, and infrastructure protection missions in the northern Arabian Gulf, enforcing exclusion zones around Iraqi oil terminals and monitoring commercial traffic linked to Iraqi ports. On February 16, 2004, FIREBOLT was involved in a navigation incident off the Iraqi coast. While operating near a buoy, she collided with a navigational aid and suffered a three- to four-inch gash in her hull and minor flooding; no injuries were reported. A subsequent Judge Advocate General investigation reviewed the circumstances of the collision. On April 1, 2004, following the inquiry, the Navy relieved Lt. Cmdr. Michael T. Sullivan, FIREBOLT's commanding officer, citing loss of confidence in his ability to command. Cmdr. Shan Byrne, previously chief staff officer for Destroyer Squadron 50 / Commander, Task Force 55, assumed command of FIREBOLT; the ship remained forward-deployed to Bahrain and the northern Arabian Gulf in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Just weeks later, FIREBOLT's crew was at the center of one of the most serious attacks on coalition maritime infrastructure during the Iraq conflict. On April 24, 2004, while FIREBOLT was conducting maritime security operations in the northern Arabian Gulf, she was tasked with providing security for the Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal (KAAOT), one of Iraq's key offshore loading facilities.

A suspicious dhow approached the terminal, and FIREBOLT deployed a rigid-hull inflatable boat (RHIB) carrying a seven-person boarding team to investigate and interdict the craft before it could threaten the terminal. As the RHIB closed the dhow, the small vessel exploded in what was later assessed as a suicide attack. The explosion flipped the RHIB and threw its occupants into the water. Two U.S. Navy sailors, Boatswain's Mate 1st Class Michael J. Pernaselli and Signalman 2nd Class Christopher E. Watts, and U.S. Coast Guard Damage Controlman 3rd Class Nathan B. Bruckenthal, assigned to a Coast Guard law enforcement detachment embarked in FIREBOLT, were killed. Bruckenthal became the first Coast Guardsman killed in action since the Vietnam War. The attack underscored both the vulnerability of offshore infrastructure and the central role of small patrol craft like FIREBOLT in defending it.

On April 29, 2004, a memorial service was held alongside FIREBOLT at Manama, Bahrain, honoring Pernaselli, Watts and Bruckenthal; photographs show crew members and shipmates gathered pier-side to remember the fallen boarding-team members.

In April 2005, FIREBOLT's crew took part in a large-scale humanitarian rescue in the Gulf of Aden. On April 29, 2005, a small vessel carrying migrants capsized approximately 25 miles off the coast of Somalia. FIREBOLT, operating with other coalition units, responded to the distress. Together with the guided-missile cruiser USS NORMANDY (CG 60), the patrol coastal ship USS TYPHOON (PC 5) and the German frigate FGS KARLSRUHE (F 212), FIREBOLT assisted in rescuing 89 survivors from the water. At least five people were confirmed dead and a significant number were reported missing. Department of Defense imagery from the event shows FIREBOLT's decks crowded with survivors as her crew provided immediate aid. The Naval Historical Evaluation notes this rescue as one of her major humanitarian operations.

On October 20, 2005, the ship was again documented operating in the Persian Gulf on scheduled maritime security operations, helping to set conditions for security and stability in the region's sea lanes. These missions typically involved patrols near critical infrastructure, approach-and-assist visits to local fishing and trading dhows, and coordination with coalition naval and coast guard units. By March 7, 2007, FIREBOLT was serving with Combined Task Group 158.1 in the North Arabian Gulf, once more performing maritime security operations that included protecting Iraq's offshore oil infrastructure and enforcing security perimeters around platforms such as KAAOT and Al Basrah Oil Terminal.

On August 13, 2008, FIREBOLT made a notable port visit to Umm Qasr, Iraq, as part of celebrations for Iraq Navy Day. She transited the Khawr Abd Allah River and entered the port escorted by Iraqi security boats, marking the first visit by a U.S. ship to Iraq in more than fifteen months. While alongside, FIREBOLT's crew participated in friendship-building events and engagements with senior Iraqi naval officers, symbolizing both improved security conditions and the growing role of the Iraqi Navy in managing the country's maritime approaches.

Through the late 2000s and early 2010s, FIREBOLT remained a fixture in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations, based in Bahrain and assigned to Commander, Task Force 55. She continued to carry out maritime security operations, theater security cooperation, and infrastructure protection missions, often working in close company with U.S. Coast Guard cutters assigned to Patrol Forces Southwest Asia and with regional partner navies.

On October 1, 2011, she took part in an exercise in the Arabian Gulf; open-source summaries indicate that around this time, FIREBOLT supported operations involving the carrier USS JOHN C. STENNIS (CVN 74) as the carrier strike group operated in the Persian Gulf, providing additional security and patrol capability in constrained waters. In 2012, FIREBOLT was credited with another significant rescue at sea when she recovered an Iranian mariner from a capsized fishing vessel in regional waters. The event was cited alongside the 2005 Gulf of Aden rescue in official and media summaries as evidence of the ship's continuing role in humanitarian and safety-of-life-at-sea missions, irrespective of the nationality of those in distress.

Mine countermeasures and large-scale multinational exercises became increasingly important in FIREBOLT's schedule. In May 2013, she participated in International Mine Countermeasures Exercise (IMCMEX) 13, a major U.S. 5th Fleet-led exercise involving more than forty nations. Photographs from the period show FIREBOLT underway with the British destroyer HMS DRAGON (D 35), and other imagery documents her conducting convoy escort operations with a large liquefied natural gas tanker as part of the exercise's focus on protecting commercial shipping from mine threats. During IMCMEX 13, FIREBOLT also hosted reporters in Bahrain, with the executive officer briefing them on the ship's role in the exercise and on her broader mission in the Gulf.

Later in 2013, FIREBOLT joined Exercise Spartan Kopis, a U.S. 5th Fleet training event designed to validate joint aviation support to maritime operations and exercise combined command and control arrangements. On August 11, 2013, for example, she conducted live-fire training with her forward Mk 38 25 mm gun while underway in the Arabian Gulf, as documented in U.S. Navy imagery. These exercises highlighted the ways in which small patrol ships could integrate with aviation assets and coalition partners to conduct complex security missions in heavily trafficked waters.

The memory of the April 24, 2004 attack remained central to FIREBOLT's crew culture. On April 28, 2014, while still based in Bahrain, the ship's company and personnel from Naval Support Activity Bahrain held a remembrance and rededication ceremony honoring Pernaselli, Watts and Bruckenthal. Participants emphasized both the loss suffered on that day and the continuing importance of the mission to protect maritime infrastructure in the northern Arabian Gulf.

In 2015, FIREBOLT continued intensive operations in the Arabian Gulf under Commander, Task Force 55. On March 19 and March 20, 2015, she conducted a mass-casualty drill at sea, practicing the treatment and movement of injured personnel within the ship, and a Navy video released on March 24 showed FIREBOLT on patrol in support of maritime security operations and theater security cooperation.

On June 28, 2015, she test-fired a Griffin missile during a proficiency shoot, as documented in official Navy photography. The event reflected the integration of new precision-guided weapons on patrol coastal ships to enhance their ability to engage small, fast craft at longer ranges.

Throughout the latter half of the 2010s, FIREBOLT remained one of a group of CYCLONE-class ships permanently forward-deployed to Bahrain. Interviews with her commanding officer in 2019 describe her mission as providing maritime security and stability operations, building partnerships through regular exercises and approach-and-assist visits with regional mariners, and, when necessary, escorting Army watercraft and other high-value units between ports in the region. FIREBOLT routinely worked alongside U.S. Coast Guard cutters, partner-nation patrol craft, and other U.S. patrol coastal ships such as USS TYPHOON (PC 5) and USS WHIRLWIND (PC 11), operating where larger combatants could not as easily maneuver.

On April 28, 2021, FIREBOLT was involved in a high-profile encounter with Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) fast inshore attack craft in the North Arabian Gulf. While FIREBOLT and the U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat USCGC BARANOF (WPB 1318) were conducting routine maritime security patrols in international waters, several IRGCN craft rapidly approached, closing to within about 68 yards despite repeated warnings by radio and loud-hailer. After the Iranian boats failed to alter course, FIREBOLT fired warning shots to compel them to increase their distance. The incident was later cited by U.S. Naval Forces Central Command as an example of the disciplined escalation measures used to deter unsafe approaches to U.S. and coalition ships.

By early 2022, FIREBOLT had spent nearly two decades focused on the Middle East, and she was one of ten patrol coastal ships forward-deployed to the region. On February 23, 2022 her crew marked the end of her U.S. Navy service during a decommissioning ceremony at Naval Support Activity Bahrain. The ceremony, attended by regional and Navy leadership, emphasized both the ship's operational record and the sacrifice of the three personnel killed in the 2004 terrorist attack at sea.

FIREBOLT was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on the same day she was decommissioned, February 23, 2022. On March 30, 2022, following a Foreign Military Sale, she was transferred to the Royal Bahrain Naval Force and recommissioned as RBNS Jenan (PC 73), continuing her career as a patrol craft in the same waters where she had spent so much of her U.S. Navy service.

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