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USNS Hassayampa (T-AO 145)

Named after a river in Arizona, the USNS HASSAYAMPA was the third ship in the NEOSHO - class of fleet oilers. The HASSAYAMPA was transfered to the Military Sealift Command on November 17, 1978. Finally decommissioned in 1991, the HASSAYAMPA was stricken from the Navy list on February 16, 1994, and spent the following years laid up with the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, Benicia, Calif., awaiting final disposal. Sold for scrapping in April 2014, HASSAYAMPA was towed to nearby Mare Island for cleaning in late May and left the former Naval Shipyard on June 11, 2014, on her final voyage to Brownsville, Tx. She arrived on June 26, 2014, and was subsequently scrapped.

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Crew List:

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

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USS HASSAYAMPA Cruise Books:

• WestPac Cruise Book 1962

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USS / USNS HASSAYAMPA History:

USS HASSAYAMPA was laid down at New York Shipbuilding, Camden, New Jersey, on July 13, 1953; launched on September 12, 1954; and commissioned on April 19, 1955, joining the Pacific Fleet as a NEOSHO-class fleet oiler based at Pearl Harbor. In her first years she settled into a steady rhythm of Western Pacific logistics, completing three WESTPAC deployments between 1955 and 1958 in support of the U.S. SEVENTH FLEET. In June 1958, she briefly returned to the U.S. West Coast to participate in the 50th-anniversary observances of the "Great White Fleet" at San Francisco before resuming Hawaiian-based duties.

As tensions flared in the Taiwan Strait during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, HASSAYAMPA deployed with the SEVENTH FLEET in September 1958 to help deter invasion of the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu and to support escorted Nationalist convoys - one of the first major Cold War tests of brinkmanship at sea in the region. These Strait operations, which stabilized by October and wound down by year's end, marked the oiler's first brush with high-tempo deterrence duty in contested waters.

The oiler continued WESTPAC rotations through 1961, including a 1960 swing to Australia for Coral Sea commemorations and a string of Japan-Philippines-Hong Kong port cycles typical for the era's underway-replenishment train. In 1962, she supported two very different missions at opposite ends of the Pacific. In the spring and summer she backed SEVENTH FLEET movements that put U.S. Marines into Thailand amid the Laos crisis - an overt show of resolve under the SEATO umbrella as Washington sought a negotiated settlement in Laos. Later that year, she joined the large naval logistics effort that sustained Operation Dominic I, the U.S. atmospheric nuclear test series centered on Johnston and Christmas (Kiritimati) Islands, one of the most demanding blue-water resupply tasks of the early 1960s.

By 1964, HASSAYAMPA's role expanded into the Indian Ocean during the "Concord Squadron" goodwill and presence cruise led by Rear Adm. R. B. Moore with BON HOMME RICHARD, SHELTON (DD 790), BLUE (DD 744), and FRANK KNOX (DD 742), making high-profile calls from Karachi and Bombay to Bandar Abbas, Colombo, and Sembawang at a moment when Washington was emphasizing maritime partnerships along the Indian Ocean littoral. The cruise meshed public diplomacy with fleet readiness and showcased fast carrier logistics sustained by oilers like HASSAYAMPA.

Vietnam-era commitments pulled HASSAYAMPA into increasingly intense schedules. After the Gulf of Tonkin crisis in August 1964, she fed the carriers and escorts of the SEVENTH FLEET's fast task groups. Completing a 1965 deployment, she returned to Pearl Harbor on December 16, 1965, and in March 1966 served as a recovery logistics ship for NASA's Gemini 8 mission (Neil Armstrong and David Scott), followed by duty for Gemini 9 in June - underlining how Pacific Fleet oilers underwrote both combat operations and national space milestones.

Sailing again for the Western Pacific on June 5, 1966, HASSAYAMPA maintained a grueling tempo, refueling carriers such as CONSTELLATION (CVA 64) and ORISKANY (CVA 34) and their screens on Yankee Station and along the South China Sea sea lanes. The hazards of crowded, contested waters were evident: on September 8, a Soviet AGI "Gidrofon" nosed toward the formation during refueling. A nearby destroyer shouldered the trawler away to keep the oiler-carrier UNREP safe. On October 26, 1966, an accidental flare fire erupted aboard ORISKANY during an UNREP with HASSAYAMPA. The carrier executed an emergency breakaway as the oiler recovered hoses while the blaze raged, an incident that killed 44 on the carrier and forced her to Subic Bay. In two weeks that November, HASSAYAMPA refueled 67 ships; by the end of the cruise she had fueled 367 ships, a snapshot of the scale of underway sustainment required by Vietnam operations.

She returned to WESTPAC frequently through the late 1960s, supporting rolling air operations and coastal patrols as U.S. naval strategy shifted from Market Time interdiction to broader campaigns. In 1969, she figured in two landmark recoveries: on July 22 she refueled HORNET (CVS 12) shortly before the carrier recovered the APOLLO 11 crew, and on November 23 she fueled HORNET again during the APOLLO 12 recovery - photographed alongside under the steady routines of UNREP that made "space splashdown" operations possible.

HASSAYAMPA remained a workhorse into the early 1970s as the conflict's naval phase persisted. In October 1972, amid wider fleet racial tensions that followed the KITTY HAWK (CVA 63) riot, she experienced a notable race-relations incident while in the Philippines - one of several episodes that led CNO Adm. Elmo Zumwalt to push new Navy race-relations policies. She returned to Pearl Harbor on September 24, 1973, after being diverted to refuel special mission ships observing French nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll, executing extended UNREP evolutions from a station astern when alongside replenishment was not possible.

On November 17, 1978, HASSAYAMPA transferred to the Military Sealift Command as USNS HASSAYAMPA (T-AO 145), beginning a second career as a civilian-manned fleet oiler that would take her from the Western Pacific to the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. In 1981, working in company with the submarine BARBEL (SS 580), she helped secure the rescue and transfer of Vietnamese refugees at sea. In the same period she encountered another overloaded craft and embarked more than one hundred additional refugees, part of a series of at-sea rescues that ultimately totaled 211 people by 1983. On May 8, 1984, she embarked twenty more from a small teak boat south of Vietnam - episodes that illustrate the humanitarian dimension of routine logistics routes across the South China Sea.

In September-October 1983, HASSAYAMPA joined Task Force 71's multinational search and salvage effort after the shootdown of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 off Sakhalin, operating alongside U.S. combatants and support ships - including USCGC DOUGLAS MUNRO (WHEC 724), the rescue-salvage ship CONSERVER (ARS 39), and the fleet tug NARRAGANSETT (T-ATF 167) - amid sustained Soviet interference at sea. As with Apollo recoveries a decade earlier, the oiler's presence ensured the task force could remain on station for extended periods while shifting search boxes along the international boundary.

Through the mid- to late-1980s, HASSAYAMPA continued to provision carrier battle groups and surface action groups during large fleet exercises (e.g., the multi-carrier FLEETEX cycles) and then supported heightened Persian Gulf commitments. During 1987-1988, she provided logistics to U.S. naval forces during Operation Earnest Will, the reflagged-tanker escort mission, and remained on the line as related retaliatory actions - Operation Nimble Archer in October 1987 and Operation Praying Mantis in April 1988 - required sustained underway support to forward-deployed units. Her role in those Gulf operations reflected MSC oilers' importance as the fuel spine for deterrence patrols, convoy escorts, and surge combat activity in narrow waters.

In August 1990, HASSAYAMPA pivoted again, sailing to support Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. As coalition naval forces surged into the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and Persian Gulf, she shuttled black oil and JP-5 to carriers, amphibious groups, and escorts, enabling prolonged air and maritime control operations from the opening embargo through the concentrated air campaign and brief ground war of early 1991. With the cease-fire and the downsizing that followed, she was placed out of service on October 2, 1991, closing 36 years of front-line replenishment across the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Post-service, HASSAYAMPA was maintained in the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet before disposal actions proceeded in the 2010s. Stricken and transferred to MARAD, she departed California in 2014 for dismantling in Brownsville, Texas.

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USS / USNS HASSAYAMPA Image Gallery:

The photos below were taken by me and show the HASSAYAMPA laid-up in Suisun Bay, Calif., on March 27, 2010.

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