USS O'BANNON DD-987

USN Flag Career
Ordered:15 January 1975
Laid down:21 February 1977
Launched:25 September 1978
Commissioned:15 December 1979
Decommissioned:19 August 2005
Struck:19 August 2005
Fate:Sunk as training target 6 October 2008
General Characteristics
Displacement:9, 494 tons full load
Length:529 ft (161 m) waterline; 563 ft (172 m) overall
Beam:55 ft (16.8 m)
Draft:29 ft (8.8 m)
Propulsion:4 x General Electric LM2500-30 gas turbines; 80,000 shp (60 MW); 2 x shafts
Speed:32.5 knots (60 km/ h)
Range:6,000 nautical miles (11,000 km) at 20 knots
(37 km/ h); 3,300 nautical miles
(6,000 km) at 30 knots
(56 km/ h)
Complement:101 officers and enlisted
Armament:4x4" (102 mm), 2 x 3" (76 mm), 12 x 21" (533 mm) tt.

USS O'Bannon (DD-987), a Spruance-class destroyer, was the third ship of the United States Navy to be named for Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon (17761850), an early hero of the US Marine Corps.

O'Bannon was laid down on 21 February 1977 by the Ingalls Shipbuilding, Pascagoula, Miss.; launched on 25 September 1978; and commissioned on 15 December 1979.

Originally scheduled to remain in service through 2010, decommissioning of the Spruance-class destroyers was accelerated as a cost saving measure, and by June of 2005 O'Bannon was the last Spruance destroyer in service in the Atlantic Fleet.

O'Bannon was decommissioned on 19 August 2005 and struck from the Naval Vessel Register the same day. In 2004 O'Bannon was to be sold to Chile, but in 2005 she was scheduled to be transferred via FMS to the Turkish Navy. In the end she was sunk off the coast of Virginia at 3:23pm on 6 October 2008 in a training exercise by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier group, using missiles, guns and finally a Mk 82 bomb.

 

 

O'Bannon moored in port.