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USS Conyngham (DDG 17)

USS CONYNGHAM was the 16^th CHARLES F. ADAMS - class guided missile destroyer and the third ship in the Navy to bear the name. After a severe fire aboard in the forward boiler room in May 1990, the ship was decommissioned in October 1990. She was stricken from the Navy list on May 30, 1991, and was sold for scrapping on April 15, 1994. USS CONYNGHAM was broken up for scrap by J+L Metals in Wilmington, N.C. in 1995.

The ship was last homeported in Norfolk, Va.

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Crew List:

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

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USS CONYNGHAM Cruise Books:

• Mediterranean Cruise Book 1970

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Accidents aboard USS CONYNGHAM:

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About the Ship's Name:

Born about 1744 in County Donegal, Ireland, Gustavus Conyngham commanded the merchant brig CHARMING PEGGY in 1775. When his ship was interned in Europe, Conyngham sought and on 1 March 1777 obtained a captain's commission in the Continental Navy. As commanding officer, successively, of SURPRISE, and REVENGE, he became a terror to British shipping, taking some 60 prizes in 18 months. As a privateer he was captured in 1779, escaped to Europe, and was recaptured while returning to America in 1780. Exchanged a year later, he was in France preparing to cruise against the British when the war ended. He returned to the merchant service and commanded the armed brig MARIA during the Quasi-War with France. As a member of the Common Council of Philadelphia, he assisted in the defense of that city during the War of 1812. Captain Conyngham died 27 November 1819 at Philadelphia, Pa.

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USS CONYNGHAM History:

From her completion in the early 1960s through her final days in 1990, USS CONYNGHAM served as an Atlantic Fleet guided-missile destroyer that cycled steadily between training, maintenance, and frequent forward deployments, most often with the U.S. SIXTH FLEET. Built at New York Shipbuilding, Camden, New Jersey, she was laid down on May 1, 1961, launched on May 19, 1962, and commissioned on July 13, 1963. After shakedown and post-shakedown availability, she settled into the rhythm expected of a CHARLES F. ADAMS-class ship: anti-air warfare picket duty built around the Tartar/Standard missile system, anti-submarine screening with ASROC and torpedoes, and gunnery support with her twin 5-inch/54 mounts. In her first operational years she operated from the U.S. East Coast into the Caribbean and across the Atlantic, joining the SIXTH FLEET for periodic Mediterranean cruises that linked missile exercises, convoy and screen drills, and allied training with liberty calls at the established NATO logistics hubs of the era. Those early deployments overlapped with the Cold War's recurring Eastern Mediterranean tensions, including the Cyprus crises in the mid-1960s, in which destroyers like CONYNGHAM were used as visible stabilizing assets while carriers provided air cover offshore.

The pattern intensified from late 1965 into 1966, when CONYNGHAM made a Mediterranean deployment from October 1965 to March 1966, returning to Atlantic Fleet training afterwards. A subsequent cruise in 1967 again placed her in the Eastern Mediterranean during a year of elevated Arab-Israeli tensions. Through the end of the decade and into 1970, she alternated Atlantic and Caribbean exercises - missile shoots, replenishment at sea, convoy and antisubmarine workups - with SIXTH FLEET duty. In mid-March 1970, the destroyer took turnover in Barcelona, Spain, relieving another ADAMS-class unit and assuming routine Med patrols as the region moved from the aftermath of the 1967 war toward the political shock of "Black September" later that year. As a guided-missile escort, CONYNGHAM's day-to-day tasks in these cruises were practical: screening the carriers, conducting radar picket and air defense exercises, participating in NATO task group drills, and visiting alliance ports to sustain logistics and political ties.

Following an overhaul period in the mid-1970s that modernized combat systems and machinery, CONYNGHAM returned to the Mediterranean twice more, again as part of the carrier and amphibious screen. During NATO's large "National Week" series in the Western Mediterranean - high-tempo combined-arms training meant to stress allied interoperability - CONYNGHAM was involved in a minor collision with the guided-missile cruiser JOSEPHUS DANIELS (CG 27) on August 25, 1976. Both ships continued operations after repairs. The broader regional picture remained unsettled, from post-1973 Arab-Israeli ceasefires to shifting great-power naval postures, and U.S. destroyers rotated accordingly to show presence, conduct surveillance, and rehearse reinforcement of the southern NATO flank.

In the later 1970s the destroyer's itinerary reflected widening commitments. She continued with Atlantic and Caribbean evolutions, and by the decade's end operated into the Black Sea during the early years of the United States' formal Freedom of Navigation program, a period when the Navy challenged excessive maritime claims by transiting contested waters under international law. The ship also endured misfortune at home: on July 13, 1979, two small onboard fires drew a shipwide response and an investigation. Normal operations resumed after the incident concluded the next day. Through all of this, the crew cycled through missile proficiency shoots, engineering reliability trials, and the regular certification milestones (from combat systems to nuclear-weapons surety inspections) expected of front-line destroyers.

The 1980s pushed CONYNGHAM across nearly every U.S. maritime theater short of the Western Pacific. In the Mediterranean in 1982 she operated amid the period's Libya-related tensions and continued the standing presence mission there. In 1983, she was part of East Coast naval forces that were diverted to the Caribbean for the Grenada crisis. Operating in support of U.S. intervention forces during Operation URGENT FURY, she provided the escort and sea control functions destroyers bring to ad-hoc joint operations while larger amphibious and carrier groups executed combat tasks ashore and in the air. The same year saw the Navy managing parallel crises in Lebanon. Destroyers rotated through Eastern Mediterranean patrol boxes to provide air defense and naval gunfire in support of multinational forces, and CONYNGHAM's deployments contributed to that posture. In 1984, she accompanied the recommissioned battleship IOWA (BB 61) through the Panama Canal, a highly visible demonstration of the Navy's ability to shift major combatants rapidly between oceans for contingency tasking along the Pacific coasts of Central America.

By 1986 and 1987, CONYNGHAM was drawn into the "Tanker War" phase of the Iran-Iraq conflict. She transited to the Persian Gulf as part of the U.S. Middle East Force for convoy escort and screen duties in Operation EARNEST WILL. On May 17, 1987, when the frigate STARK (FFG 31) was struck by two anti-ship missiles in the central Gulf, CONYNGHAM responded at short notice from Bahrain to assist the damaged ship. She helped fight the fires and took STARK under tow toward Bahrain, where the frigate received temporary repairs before returning to the United States. The episode underscored the destroyer's value as an all-purpose escort - equal parts air-defense picket, damage-control partner, and tug of opportunity - in a crowded and politically volatile waterway. That late-1980s period also included North Atlantic and Northern European operations and, in 1988, an unusual personnel incident: a teenage stowaway boarded the ship in Ireland and remained hidden for days during the Atlantic crossing. Once discovered near the end of the voyage the U.S. and Irish authorities handled her repatriation, and several sailors were punished for assisting her.

CONYNGHAM's last full peacetime deployment cycle began with maintenance and workups in early 1990. While operating off the Virginia Capes on May 8, 1990, a catastrophic fuel-oil fire erupted in the forward fire room before dawn and quickly spread upward into the forward superstructure, isolating sections of the crew and forcing an all-hands damage-control effort that lasted through the day. One officer was killed and multiple sailors were injured. USS NORMANDY (CG 60) and BRISCOE (DD 977) rendered assistance at sea, and the ship ultimately returned to port under her own power. After assessment, the Navy judged a full repair uneconomical given the ship's age and the scope of the damage. CONYNGHAM was decommissioned on October 30, 1990, struck from the Naval Vessel Register on May 30, 1991, sold for scrapping on April 15, 1994, and broken up the following year. Across twenty-seven years, her logbooks map nearly continuous service on the Atlantic seaboard, in the Caribbean, across the Mediterranean, and into the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf, always in the company of carriers, cruisers, amphibious ships, and allied units - escorting, screening, exercising, standing watch during crises, and then returning home to repair, rearm, and sail again.

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Homeports of USS CONYNGHAM:

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USS CONYNGHAM Image Gallery:

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