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USS Typhoon (PC 5)

USS TYPHOON was the fifth CYCLONE - class patrol coastal boat and the second ship in the Navy to bear the name. From November 2001 on, the CYCLONE - class ships were temporarily operated under US Coast Guard control for homeland defense. USS TYPHOON was decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on February 28, 2022, in Bahrain, ending her U.S. Navy career at the same forward base from which she had operated for almost two decades. She was transferred via Foreign Military Sales to the Royal Bahrain Naval Force. On March 30, 2022, Bahrain commissioned her as RBNS DAMSAH (PC 71).

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Crew List:

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

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Accidents aboard USS TYPHOON:

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USS TYPHOON History:

USS TYPHOON originated in the U.S. Navy's effort to field fast, heavily armed patrol craft for coastal patrol, special operations support and maritime security. The construction contract for the fifth ship of the CYCLONE-class was awarded to Bollinger Machine Shop & Shipyard in Lockport, Louisiana, on August 3, 1990, reflecting the Navy's desire to replace aging Vietnam-era patrol boats with a platform optimized for special operations insertion, interdiction, and close-in surveillance. TYPHOON was laid down at Bollinger on May 15, 1992, and launched on March 3, 1993. She was commissioned on February 12, 1994, at Tampa, Florida, entering service as the second U.S. warship to bear the name TYPHOON.

In her first years of service, TYPHOON joined the Atlantic Fleet's small combatant and special operations support forces, operating from the U.S. East Coast and nearby waters. Open-source records for this period are sparse, but by the mid-1990s she was integrated into major NATO exercises in European waters. On June 6, 1995, TYPHOON took part in BALTOPS 95, a recurring multinational exercise in the Baltic Sea designed to enhance interoperability among U.S. and allied navies and to demonstrate freedom of navigation and collective security in the post-Cold War Baltic region. Her participation so soon after commissioning underlined the Navy's intent to use the CYCLONE-class not only for special operations but also for visible allied engagement in confined and littoral seas.

During the latter half of the 1990s, TYPHOON continued routine operations that do not appear in detail in official public summaries. Crew recollections from this era describe a demanding tempo of coastal patrols, training evolutions and visits to smaller ports that larger warships could not access, illustrating the niche these 170-foot patrol craft filled in fleet operations. While individual exercises and port calls are not fully documented in open sources, the ship remained part of the growing focus on littoral warfare and coastal security that characterized U.S. naval planning in the late 1990s.

In August 2001, shortly before the September 11 attacks, TYPHOON conducted a rare deployment into the Adriatic and northern Adriatic region. She visited Koper, Slovenia, to conduct joint training with the Slovenian patrol ship ANKARAN, a SUPER DVORA-class fast patrol boat. This engagement formed part of broader U.S. and NATO efforts to integrate the armed forces of newer European partners into allied maritime security frameworks and reflected the flexibility of CYCLONE-class craft for partner-navy cooperation in confined coastal waters.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the role of the CYCLONE-class shifted markedly toward homeland defense and the global war on terrorism. From November 2001 onward, the class, including TYPHOON, was temporarily operated under U.S. Coast Guard control for homeland defense missions, reflecting the immediate need for agile, heavily armed patrol craft to support coastal security, port protection, and boarding operations near the United States. In this period, TYPHOON alternated between deployments in support of the global war on terrorism and coastal security missions closer to home. She completed a documented deployment in support of the global war on terrorism on May 9, 2003, then returned to Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, Virginia, which served as her operational hub at that time.

Later that year, the ship experienced one of the most somber events in her career. On November 7, 2003, while TYPHOON was operating southeast of Cape Henry, Virginia, she had just completed supporting a Coast Guard homeland security boarding of a liquid gas tanker. As the rigid-hull inflatable boat (RHIB) carrying boarding personnel came alongside TYPHOON in the pre-dawn hours for recovery, sea swells caused the RHIB and the ship to move unpredictably. Engineman 2nd Class Douglas Bolles, age 42, fell overboard, and when the coxswain tried to grab him the RHIB capsized, throwing a second sailor into the water. TYPHOON's crew recovered the coxswain uninjured, but Bolles could not be found immediately despite intensive search efforts. The Navy mounted an extensive multi-day search using the guided-missile destroyers USS BARRY (DDG 52), USS DONALD COOK (DDG 75) and USS PORTER (DDG 78), patrol craft USS SHAMAL (PC 13), USS SIROCCO (PC 6), USS TEMPEST (PC 2) and USS THUNDERBOLT (PC 12), the Coast Guard cutter USCGC ALBACORE (WPB 87309), and aircraft from both services, but the search was formally suspended on November 10 and Bolles was later declared dead.

In parallel with these homeland missions, TYPHOON was increasingly drawn into sustained operations in U.S. Central Command's maritime area. At the end of April 2004, she and USS SIROCCO departed Little Creek for the Persian Gulf to relieve USS FIREBOLT (PC 10) and USS CHINOOK (PC 9), which had been guarding Iraq's offshore oil infrastructure in the northern Persian Gulf after the 2003 invasion. The transit showcased the long-range potential of these small craft when supported by logistics ships: TYPHOON and SIROCCO crossed the Atlantic with the fleet oiler USNS PATUXENT (T-AO 201), arriving in Rota, Spain, on May 12, 2004, for refueling and rest before continuing toward the Suez Canal and the Gulf.

By June 2004, TYPHOON and SIROCCO were on station in the Persian Gulf, integrated into a multinational maritime security task force. Their primary mission was to enforce a 2,000-meter exclusion zone around the Al Basrah Oil Terminal (ABOT) and Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal (KAAOT), critical nodes in Iraq's oil export system, and to conduct broader maritime security operations in the area. These operations took place against the backdrop of an evolving insurgency in Iraq and persistent concerns about attacks on critical energy infrastructure. The agile CYCLONE-class craft were particularly well suited for close-in patrols around the platforms and for rapidly intercepting small boats. By this stage, TYPHOON was effectively forward-based at Naval Support Activity Bahrain in Manama, which would remain her operational homeport for the rest of her U.S. Navy career.

In December 2004, TYPHOON responded to a distress call from a dhow in the Persian Gulf. A fisherman had been knocked unconscious and thrown overboard by a winch handle while hauling in nets. TYPHOON's crew recovered the injured man from the water, provided initial medical assistance and then transferred him to the amphibious assault ship USS ESSEX (LHD 2), which had more extensive medical facilities. The incident illustrated the routine but vital search-and-rescue work that accompanied her security patrols in busy regional fishing grounds.

On April 29, 2005, TYPHOON was part of a larger multinational response to a maritime disaster in the Gulf of Aden, about 25 miles off the Somali coast. A small, overloaded dhow carrying migrants or travelers capsized in rough seas. The guided-missile cruiser USS NORMANDY (CG 60) with an embarked SH-60B Seahawk helicopter from HSL-42 Detachment 1, the patrol craft USS FIREBOLT (PC 10), TYPHOON and the German frigate FGS KARLSRUHE (F 212) all converged on the scene. Together they rescued 89 survivors from the water and from the overturned hull of the dhow. This operation fit within the broader pattern of maritime security and humanitarian responses in waters increasingly associated with human smuggling and instability along the Horn of Africa.

TYPHOON's presence off the Horn of Africa continued into 2006 as counter-piracy and counter-terrorism concerns grew. In April 2006, she conducted maritime security operations in the Arabian Sea and off the Horn of Africa alongside the Dutch replenishment ship HNLMS AMSTERDAM (A 836) and the Coast Guard cutter USCGC WRANGELL (WPB 1332). Using her small size, high speed and shallow draft, TYPHOON intercepted dhows and other small merchant vessels, collected information on maritime traffic patterns, and contributed to a coalition presence intended to discourage piracy and terrorist movements in this vital transit corridor.

On September 7, 2007, TYPHOON again shifted from routine patrol to direct assistance. A merchant vessel sailing in the Arabian Gulf reported a life raft adrift. Coalition forces tasked TYPHOON, then based in Bahrain and engaged in maritime security operations and security for Iraqi oil platforms, to close and investigate. She recovered seven mariners from the raft, provided assistance and helped arrange their onward support. The event, later highlighted in Navy news releases, underscored the ship's dual role in both security and safety of life at sea.

Tensions with Iran in the Gulf occasionally brought TYPHOON into close contact with Iranian small craft. On April 11, 2008, while she was transiting from the central to the northern Persian Gulf outside Iranian territorial waters, three unidentified speedboats, assessed as Iranian, approached to within about 200 yards of the patrol ship. After repeated attempts to make contact over bridge-to-bridge radio received no response, TYPHOON fired a warning flare. The small craft broke contact without further incident and the ship continued on her course. Iranian officials later characterized the encounter as routine and denied that any confrontation had occurred.

That same general period also saw TYPHOON involved in another documented rescue. On August 10, 2008, she responded to a call for assistance concerning an injured Iraqi fisherman in the northern Persian Gulf. TYPHOON's crew evacuated the fisherman and delivered him to the Iraqi Khawr Al Amaya Oil Terminal, where medical personnel from a Maritime Expeditionary Security Detachment treated and released him. The ship and the detachment were serving under Combined Task Force 158, which was responsible for the security of Iraq's offshore oil terminals.

Throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s TYPHOON remained forward-deployed in the U.S. Fifth Fleet area, based in Bahrain and conducting continuous maritime security patrols in the northern Persian Gulf and adjacent waters. Imagery and public releases show her operating alongside larger U.S. warships and coalition partners, including participation in operations with the NASSAU (LHA 4) Amphibious Ready Group around April 2010, when she worked in concert with ships such as the destroyer USS THE SULLIVANS (DDG 68) to provide close-in patrol and security in congested waters.

A notable development in this phase was the introduction of the MK-60 Griffin missile system to the CYCLONE-class. By early 2014, TYPHOON was one of the Bahrain-based patrol craft fitted with the system, which provided a short-range precision surface-to-surface missile capability specifically tailored to counter swarming small-boat threats.

In March 2014, she took part in a Griffin missile exercise in the Arabian Gulf, during which she launched MK-60 Griffin missiles in a live-fire event described as one of the first surface-to-surface Griffin exercises in the U.S. Fifth Fleet area. Navy imagery from March 17 and March 20, 2014, shows TYPHOON launching a missile and operating her RHIB during the exercise, which was intended to refine crew proficiency and tactics for defending high-value units and critical infrastructure against small fast attack craft.

In March 2016, TYPHOON's command climate came under scrutiny when her commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Jeremiah Daley, was relieved of command following a Navy investigation. According to press reports based on the investigation, Daley was removed from command in March 2016 after the Navy determined that deficiencies in his leadership, maintenance practices and conduct had undermined confidence in his ability to command the ship safely.

TYPHOON's later years included continued involvement in interdiction operations in the Arabian Sea and Gulf region. A related historical evaluation of her sister ship USS TEMPEST (PC 2) notes that in 2021, TEMPEST and TYPHOON together intercepted a stateless dhow in the Arabian Sea carrying an illegal cargo of more than 2,800 AK-47 rifles and nearly 200 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, one of several high-profile weapons seizures by forward-deployed patrol craft assigned to U.S. Fifth Fleet in that period. This reflected the continuing role of the CYCLONE-class in counter-smuggling and enforcement of international arms embargoes in the region's crowded sea lanes.

After nearly three decades of service, the Navy moved to retire the aging CYCLONE-class. According to official records, TYPHOON was inactivated, decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on February 28, 2022, in Bahrain, ending her U.S. Navy career at the same forward base from which she had operated for almost two decades. Rather than being scrapped, she was transferred via Foreign Military Sales to the Royal Bahrain Naval Force. On March 30, 2022, Bahrain commissioned her as RBNS DAMSAH (PC 71), one of five ex-U.S. CYCLONE-class patrol ships handed over and placed into Bahraini service in a ceremony attended by Bahrain's king.

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