USS Dale (DLG-19)
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| Career |  |
|---|---|
| Ordered: | 7 November 1958 |
| Laid down: | 6 September 1960 |
| Launched: | 28 June 1962 |
| Commissioned: | 23 November 1963 |
| Decommissioned: | September 1994 |
| Fate: | sunk as target, January 2000 |
| Struck: | |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 8520 tons (full) |
| Length: | 533 ft (162.5 m) |
| Beam: | 55 ft (17 m) |
| Draft: | 26 ft |
| Propulsion: | Steam Turbine |
| Speed: | |
| Range: | |
| Complement: | 32 officers, 413 enlisted |
| Armament: | |
| Aircraft: | |
| Motto: | |
USS Dale (DLG-19/CG-19) was a United States Navy 5670-ton Leahy class cruiser. Dale was named in honor of Commodore Richard Dale (1756–1826).
Dale was built at Camden, New Jersey, USA and commissioned in November 1963. Assigned to the Pacific Fleet, she made five deployments to the Western Pacific over the next seven years. Between 1965 and 1970, Dale's Seventh Fleet tours included participation in Vietnam War operations, during which she rescued several American aviators in the Gulf of Tonkin.
In November 1970 Dale began modernization at Bath, Maine. This work fitted her with the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) and other improvements that enhanced her anti-air and anti-submarine warfare capabilities. When recommissioned in December 1971, Dale joined the Atlantic Fleet. While on the first of her many Sixth Fleet cruises, she operated in the eastern Mediterranean Sea during the tense period of U.S.-Soviet relations that accompanied the October 1973 Yom Kippur War. Dale was reclassified as a guided-missile cruiser (CG-19) at the beginning of July 1975. A year later, in July 1976, she helped represent the U.S. Navy during the Bicentennial Naval Review in New York Harbor. During another Mediterranean deployment, in mid-1980, she entered the Black Sea to visit Romania.
Dale was regularly updated, receiving Harpoon surface-to-surface guided missiles and the Phalanx gun system in 1981 and the New Threat Upgrade combat systems enhancement at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard later in that decade. During the 1980s her Mediterranean tours were sometimes extended to take her into the increasingly important Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf regions. In 1986 she took part in the confrontation with Libya.
Dale spent much of her final years of service on counter-narcotics patrols in the Caribbean area, and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as on regular cruises with the Sixth Fleet. During 1991 she went to the Red Sea to help enforce sanctions against Iraq after the Gulf War. She had similar duties in 1992–93, in support of United Nations' Resolutions concerning Bosnia and Yugoslavia.
Dale was decommissioned in September 1994 at Naval Station Mayport, Florida. She was sunk as a target in January 2000.
This article includes information collected from the Naval Vessel Register, which, as a U.S. government publication, is in the public domain.
See USS Dale for other ships of this name.
[edit] External links
- A page on USS Dale
- Official Homepage for USS Dale (CG-19) Association
- Photos and history at NavSource Online
