USS ''Cook'' (FF-1083) was a built for the
United States Navy by
Avondale Shipyard,
Bridge City, Louisiana.
The ship was named after
Lieutenant Commander Wilmer P. Cook, USN, a
Douglas A-4E Skyhawk
The Douglas A-4 Skyhawk is a single-seat subsonic aircraft, subsonic Carrier-based aircraft, carrier-capable light attack aircraft developed for the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps in the early 1950s. The delta wing, delta-wi ...
aviator from
Attack Squadron 155 aboard . On 22 December 1967, LCdr. Cook launched on a combat mission over North Vietnam. LCdr. Cook was killed when he ejected from his burning aircraft, a rescue helicopter was unable to recover his body when it came under heavy fire.
Design and description
The ''Knox''-class design was derived from the modified to extend range and without a long-range missile system. The ships had an
overall length of , a
beam
Beam may refer to:
Streams of particles or energy
*Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy
**Laser beam
*Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles
**Charged particle beam, a spatially localized grou ...
of and a
draft of . They
displaced at full load. Their crew consisted of 13 officers and 211 enlisted men.
The ships were equipped with one
Westinghouse geared
steam turbine
A steam turbine is a machine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Charles Parsons in 1884. Fabrication of a modern steam turbin ...
that drove the single
propeller shaft. The turbine was designed to produce , using steam provided by 2
C-E boilers, to reach the designed speed of . The ''Knox'' class had a range of at a speed of .
[Gardiner, Chumley & Budzbon, p. 598]
The ''Knox''-class ships were armed with a
5"/54 caliber Mark 42 gun
The Mark 42 5"/54 caliber gun (127mm) is a naval gun (naval artillery) mount used by the United States Navy and other countries. It consisted of the Mark 18 gun and Mark 42 gun mount. United States naval gun terminology indicates the gun fires a p ...
forward and a single
3-inch/50-caliber gun
The 3"/50 caliber gun (spoken "three-inch fifty-caliber") in United States naval gun terminology indicates the gun fired a projectile in diameter, and the barrel was 50 calibers long (barrel length is 3 in × 50 = ). Different guns (identifi ...
aft. They mounted the 5-inch (127 mm) gun on the
bridge. Close-range anti-submarine defense was provided by two twin
Mk 32 torpedo tubes. The ships were equipped with a torpedo-carrying
DASH
The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
drone helicopter; its telescoping hangar and landing pad were positioned
amidships aft of the
mack. Beginning in the 1970s, the DASH was replaced by a
SH-2 Seasprite LAMPS I helicopter and the hangar and landing deck were accordingly enlarged. Most ships also had the 3-inch (76 mm) gun replaced by an eight-cell
BPDMS missile launcher in the early 1970s.
[Friedman, pp. 360–61; Gardiner, Chumley & Budzbon, p. 598]
Construction and career
Her keel was laid 20 March 1970, she was launched 23 January 1971 and delivered 9 December 1971. ''Cook'' was commissioned 18 December 1971 and decommissioned 30 April 1992. She was struck 11 January 1995 and disposed of through the
Security Assistance Program
The United States Department of Defense's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program facilitates sales of U.S. arms, defense equipment, defense services, and military training to foreign governments. The purchaser does not deal directly with the defense ...
(SAP), and transferred to
Taiwan 29 September 1999. She served the
Republic of China Navy (ROCN) as ''Hai-Yang'' (FFG-936) with additional re-modifications and retired May 2015 .''Hai-Yang'' used as the target during the exercise in 2020. Sunk by F-16V as target 1 July 2020.
Notes
References
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Further reading
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External links
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Navsource images
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cook
Ships built in Bridge City, Louisiana
Knox-class frigates
1971 ships
Maritime incidents in 2020
Ships transferred from the United States Navy to the Republic of China Navy