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General Characteristics

Crew List

About the Ship's Coat of Arms

Accidents aboard the Ship

History

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USS Monongahela (AO 178)

USS MONONGAHELA was the second ship in the CIMARRON - class of fleet oilers and the third ship in the Navy to bear the name. During her service life the ship has traveled to many parts of the world, including: The Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean, the North Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans and the Caribbean Sea. In December 1991, she completed an eleven-month "Jumboization" in the Avondale Shipyard, New Orleans, Louisiana, and returned to the Fleet as a greatly improved Fleet Oiler capable of delivering not only fuel, but also ammunition and supplies.

The MONONGAHELA was decommissioned and stricken from the Navy list on September 30, 1999, and is now berthed at the James River Reserve Fleet, Fort Eustis, VA, awaiting final disposal.

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Crew List:

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

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• Click here to see which USS MONONGAHELA memorabilia are currently for sale on ebay.

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About the Ship's Coat of Arms:

The dark blue of the shield is symbolic of the seas of the world. The colors blue and gray allude to the Civil War service of the first USS MONONGAHELA, including participation in the Battle of Mobile Bay. The gold compass rose refers to the high degree of seamanship and navigational skill required in the transfer of fuels at sea. The light blue and white roundel at the center signifies fresh water (in reference to the Monongahela River) and the three bars indicate the number of ships of that name which have served this country.

The Indian's head is an allusion to the Indian origin of the ship's name and to the motto. The stars on the headdress denote the ten battle honors earned by the second USS MONONGAHELA (AO 42) for World War II service in the Pacific Theater. The Korean symbol with ribbons signifies service in the Korean Conflict.

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Accidents aboard USS MONONGAHELA:

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USS MONONGAHELA History:

USS MONONGAHELA was laid down at Avondale Shipyards on the Mississippi River near New Orleans on August 15, 1978, launched on August 4, 1979, and commissioned on September 5, 1981. Built for the U.S. Atlantic Fleet as the second unit of the modernized CIMARRON-class oilers, she was designed around high-tempo underway replenishment of carrier and surface action groups, with a folding navigation mast to clear the Huey P. Long Bridge during river transits and a stern helicopter landing area to support vertical replenishment. In the months before commissioning, she conducted builder's and acceptance trials on the river and in the Gulf. A Navy photograph shows the new oiler underway on the Mississippi on April 6, 1981, signaling the end of yard work and the transition to fleet service.

After shakedown and type training, MONONGAHELA settled into the Atlantic Fleet's rhythm of deployments and workups from the East Coast, with Norfolk as her principal base. By 1983, she was operating in the Mediterranean amid the late stages of the Lebanon crisis, and that year extended into the Indian Ocean as U.S. carrier groups maintained presence from the Suez approaches to the Arabian Sea. In March 1984, she worked the cold, heavy seas of the North Atlantic during NATO serials, operating alongside British Royal Fleet Auxiliary units - one image taken from an RFA REGENT helicopter shows MONONGAHELA driving through gray seas, a typical scene of Allied replenishment choreography in the GIUK gap and approaches.

The long 1985-1986 deployment linked the Sixth and Seventh Fleet theaters at a moment when the United States was sustaining simultaneous Mediterranean commitments and Indian Ocean presence operations. On December 16, 1985, MONONGAHELA moored at Diego Garcia with the carrier USS SARATOGA (CV 60) and the destroyer USS SCOTT (DDG 995); the photograph of the three ships at the coral-ringed atoll notes that SARATOGA's visit was the first by a U.S. aircraft carrier to the island, underscoring the expanding logistics hub the atoll had become for sustained operations into the Arabian Sea. During the same deployment and into 1986, MONONGAHELA made port in Italy while supporting Sixth Fleet movements, part of the routine of maintenance, crew rest, and liaison that framed logistics work between underway periods.

Stateside, the oiler underwent an overhaul at Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock (Norshipco), with a dated image placing her in the yard on July 7, 1988 - one of several industrial availabilities that kept the class reliable as operational tempo remained high at the end of the Cold War. Early in 1989, she was back at sea supporting carrier movements in the Caribbean. On February 16, 1989, she conducted a multi-ship replenishment with the carrier USS CORAL SEA (CV 43) and the guided-missile destroyer USS KING (DDG 41) while the carrier transited from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, toward St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Later that year, during a Mediterranean period with the Sixth Fleet, MONONGAHELA suffered a boiler-room fire off Spain on November 1, 1989, that injured nine sailors. The accident - one of several high-profile mishaps that autumn across the fleet - occurred as U.S. naval presence in the Med remained intense even as the European security landscape began to shift.

From early 1990 through late 1991, MONONGAHELA was taken out of front-line service for a major mid-life conversion at Avondale: the so-called "jumboization". Yard workers cut the hull and inserted a new mid-body section on the order of a hundred-plus feet, increasing fuel capacity and adding modern cargo stations and limited dry-cargo capability, along with improved container tie-downs that reflected emerging at-sea logistics needs. The long industrial period - begun in early 1990 and completed by late 1991 - meant that while the Gulf crisis escalated into the January-February 1991 war, MONONGAHELA was in the shipyard rather than deploying to the theater. She returned to the fleet in December 1991, outwardly recognizable by her lengthened hull and updated replenishment gear, and reentered the Atlantic deployment cycle as expeditionary logistics demands shifted from Cold War patterns to postwar enforcement and presence missions.

The early 1990s brought a mix of home-water exercises, Mediterranean stretches, and transits to the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf as U.S. naval forces supported sanctions enforcement and no-fly operations over Iraq and sustained maritime presence from Suez to Hormuz. Against that backdrop, MONONGAHELA's routine of connected replenishments (CONREP) and vertical replenishments (VERTREP) carried on with the familiar choreography of approach, shot line, span wire, and rig. Not all evolutions were routine. On May 25, 1993, during a nighttime underway replenishment off Cape Hatteras, the amphibious assault ship USS GUADALCANAL (LPH 7) suffered a main gyrocompass failure and collided with MONONGAHELA. Several sailors received minor injuries and the two ships sustained notable but repairable damage. The investigation and subsequent reporting captured the interplay of equipment casualty, shiphandling, and the inherent risk of complex logistics evolutions at sea. Shortly afterward, a dated photograph shows MONONGAHELA moored at Naval Station Norfolk on July 4, 1993, a quiet counterpoint to the frenetic pace of her at-sea workups and deployments.

By the mid-1990s, the Navy was incorporating new environmental technologies afloat. A federal notice lists MONONGAHELA among the ships fitted with shipboard plastics processors by October 1, 1996, reflecting fleet-wide compliance with MARPOL Annex V prohibitions on plastic discharge and the Navy's push to manage solid waste responsibly during long deployments. Through the decade she continued to support Atlantic Fleet carrier and surface group workups and deployments, providing black oil and JP-5 to battle groups cycling through the Western Atlantic, Caribbean, and Mediterranean. Her career totals included frequent operations with big-deck strike groups as well as independent steaming to fuel individual destroyers, cruisers, frigates, and amphibious ships moving between theaters.

MONONGAHELA's active service concluded as the Navy shifted bulk underway logistics to the growing HENRY J. KAISER (T-AO) force under Military Sealift Command. She was decommissioned and struck from the Naval Vessel Register on September 30, 1999, after eighteen years in commission. The Maritime Administration took title on November 29, 2001, and the oiler went to the James River Reserve Fleet at Fort Eustis, Virginia, joining rows of inactive auxiliaries laid up for possible future use or disposal. Disposition followed the mid-2010s wave of removals from the reserve fleets: a domestic sale contract was recorded on January 30, 2015; the ship departed the James River Reserve Fleet under that contract on March 13, 2015; and dismantlement was completed at Southern Recycling in Amelia, Louisiana, with scrapping recorded as March 31, 2016.

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USS MONONGAHELA Image Gallery:

The photos below were taken by me on October 30, 2010, and show the MONONGAHELA laid up on the James River in Virginia.

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