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USS Defender (MCM 2)

USS DEFENDER was the second AVENGER class Mine Countermeasures ship. Decommissioned on October 1, 2014, the DEFENDER was sold for scrapping to Marine Group Boat Works of San Diego, Calif., on November 3, 2014.

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Crew List:

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

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About the Equipment:

USS DEFENDER was built by Marinette Marine Corporation, in Marinette, WI. This 224-foot ship was commissioned on September 30, 1989. The hull is made of laminated wood structure with composite glass exterior sheeting, to prevent the ship from setting off anti-magnetic mines. USS DEFENDER’s propulsion systems are made up of four Waukesha main propulsion diesel engines (600 BHP each), one bowthruster unit (350 BHP), two low speed electric propulsion motors (200 BHP each) and two main propulsion shafts driving controllable pitch propellers. The ship also has three Waukesha ship service diesel generator sets (375 kW each) and one gas turbine magnetic minesweeping generator. USS DEFENDER’s electronic systems include the AN/SSN-2 Precise Integrated Navigation System (PINS), AN/SQQ-30 Sonar, AN/SPS-55 Radar and the AN/WSN-2 Gyro Compass. The ships Mine Countermeasure Equipment Suite includes the AN/SLQ-48 (V) Mine Neutralization System, Magnetic Minesweeping Gear, Acoustic Minesweeping Gear, MDG-1701 Marconi Magnetometer, Degaussing System, and two 50 cal. Machine Guns.

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USS DEFENDER History:

USS DEFENDER was the second AVENGER-class mine countermeasures ship, built to give the U.S. Navy a low-signature, dedicated oceangoing mine hunter and sweeper able to open littoral approaches for larger surface forces. She was laid down at Marinette Marine Corp. in Marinette, Wisconsin, on December 1, 1983, launched on April 4, 1987, and commissioned at Marinette on September 30, 1989. AVENGER-class ships combined a wooden hull with fiberglass sheathing and non-magnetic machinery to reduce vulnerability to influence mines, and USS DEFENDER was fitted with variable-depth mine-hunting sonar, remotely controlled mine neutralization vehicles, mechanical sweep gear and light armament for self-defense.

After commissioning, USS DEFENDER completed fitting out and trials on the Great Lakes and then moved down the St. Lawrence Seaway toward the Atlantic, ultimately joining the Atlantic Fleet at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, Virginia. Through 1990, she operated from Little Creek, conducting shakedown training, maintenance and local operations along the U.S. East Coast. On July 18, 1990 she departed Little Creek for Savannah, Georgia, one of her first documented port visits following commissioning, before returning to the Virginia Capes operating area. Her 1990 command history also recorded a lightning strike close aboard while she was moored at Little Creek, an incident that did not result in serious long-term damage.

In the early 1990s, USS DEFENDER shifted from Little Creek to the dedicated mine-warfare homeport at Naval Station Ingleside, Texas, which became the hub for U.S. Atlantic and Gulf mine countermeasures forces. By early 1993 her homeport of record was Ingleside. From there, she entered a pattern that would define much of her career: cycles of maintenance, inspections and training in the Gulf of Mexico and western Atlantic, punctuated by deployments to the European theater under U.S. 6th Fleet for NATO mine warfare exercises.

On February 16, 1993, USS DEFENDER departed Naval Station Ingleside on her first deployment to the U.S. 6th Fleet area of responsibility. During this roughly six-month cruise, she took part in two major NATO exercises, BLUE HARRIER '93 and LINKED SEAS '93. LINKED SEAS '93 was a large, ten-day multinational exercise held in the approaches to Lisbon, between northern Portugal and the Strait of Gibraltar, involving a dozen nations, more than sixty warships and a wide mix of aircraft. While the overall scenario emphasized rapid deployment and joint air-surface-subsurface warfare in support of peacekeeping operations, USS DEFENDER's contribution focused on mine warfare: hunting, classifying and neutralizing practice mines to keep approach routes open for amphibious and surface forces. Reports from the deployment note her integration into NATO mine warfare task groups and her use of variable-depth sonar and remotely operated vehicles in demanding Atlantic and Mediterranean conditions before she returned to Ingleside in mid-1993.

In 1994, USS DEFENDER's schedule was dominated by inspections and preparations for renewed overseas employment. Command-history excerpts show her returning to Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek in March 1994 for a major readiness and material condition inspection (MRCI), during which she was evaluated on combat systems, engineering readiness and administrative standards. The ship was reported as meeting high battle-readiness benchmarks before returning to her Gulf base.

Throughout this period, she remained assigned to Mine Countermeasures Squadron forces and took part in routine exercises and certifications in the Gulf of Mexico and western Atlantic. In 1995, USS DEFENDER again deployed from Ingleside for an extended 6th Fleet cruise, this time about five months long, built around the mine-warfare-focused NATO exercise BLUE HARRIER '95 and the Mediterranean exercise ALCUDRA '95. BLUE HARRIER '95 was conducted in the Baltic Approaches off Denmark, with seven nations participating. In this exercise, USS DEFENDER was placed under the United Kingdom's Mine Countermeasures Squadron MCM 1 and tasked to clear a designated sector of practice mines. Available accounts note that she cleared all assigned training mines in her sector and was rewarded with a short, 24-hour port visit as recognition for effective performance within the squadron.

Later in the same deployment, USS DEFENDER worked closely with the British minehunter HMS LEDBURY to clear a particularly dense exercise minefield, applying coordinated tactics that combined detailed sonar searches with systematic, low-speed passes to ensure that the sector was free of targets before being turned over to follow-on forces. Later in 1995, the ship shifted into warmer waters, joining USS WARRIOR (MCM 10) and the Standing Naval Force Channel (STANAVFORCHAN) at Palma de Mallorca for NATO exercise ALCUDRA '95. ALCUDRA introduced the crew to team minesweeping, emphasizing coordinated operations with other Allied mine countermeasures vessels to sweep moored practice mines in confined Mediterranean waters. USS DEFENDER successfully swept the three moored exercise mines assigned to her, then shifted to bottom-mine hunting. During this more demanding phase, one of her diesel engines suffered a cracked block, an engineering casualty that required significant repair work and effectively marked the end of major tasking on that deployment.

After completing remaining commitments with three other MCM ships, she returned across the Atlantic to the United States and restarted the familiar cycle of maintenance and local operations from Ingleside. In 1996, USS DEFENDER's mine-hunting systems were used in a real-world emergency rather than a planned exercise. Working alongside USS GLADIATOR (MCM 11), she was assigned to assist the Coast Guard in the search for a downed Navy T-44 training aircraft. Her variable-depth sonar and low-speed maneuverability made her well suited to the task, and she was credited in open sources with locating the wreckage, providing closure to the search effort.

Through the late 1990s and early 2000s, USS DEFENDER remained heavily engaged in mine warfare training from Ingleside. She participated in a series of Gulf of Mexico Exercises - GOMEX 97-2, 98-1, 00-1 and 02-4 - which were recurring joint mine warfare drills bringing together surface MCM ships, airborne mine countermeasures helicopters and underwater units to practice clearing shipping lanes and amphibious approaches under realistic conditions. She also took part in Squadron Exercise 98-1 and the readiness-oriented RONEX series (RONEX 00-1 and 02-1), which tested mine force integration with larger battle groups. During these years, DEFENDER's command histories and secondary summaries describe frequent port visits along the U.S. East Coast and into Canadian and Great Lakes ports, combining public outreach with recruiting and naval presence.

A highlight of this period was the 2000 Great Lakes Domestic Outreach Recruiting Cruise. With only limited notice, USS DEFENDER embarked on a high-speed transit of more than 3,000 nautical miles, passing once more through the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Welland Canal to reach a series of recruiting ports on the Great Lakes. This cruise required careful navigation in confined waterways and locks not normally used by an oceangoing mine countermeasures ship. After concluding her outreach visits and transiting back downriver, she returned to her homeport at Ingleside on August 31, 2000, closing a deployment that combined domestic engagement with seamanship and engineering challenges uncommon for her class.

In 2004, USS DEFENDER left Ingleside for the U.S. 3rd Fleet area of responsibility, joining a West Coast and Pacific deployment that culminated in participation in the multinational Rim of the Pacific exercise, RIMPAC 2004. Departing Texas in March, she transited roughly 7,500 miles across the Gulf of Mexico and up the Pacific coast, conducting mine warfare engagement and capability briefings with destroyer squadron and expeditionary strike group staffs in San Diego before continuing to Hawaii. On June 12, 2004, she arrived at Pearl Harbor as the Ingleside-based mine warfare ship in a small group that included USS AVENGER (MCM 1) and the Canadian minesweeper HMCS BRANDON, ready to support RIMPAC's complex joint and combined training scenarios.

During the exercise, she contributed to mine-warfare vignettes designed to test the ability of coalition forces to locate and neutralize simulated minefields in approaches to the Hawaiian operating areas, and then retraced her route back toward the continental United States at the end of the deployment.

In late August 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the U.S. Gulf Coast, closing ports, damaging offshore infrastructure and littering coastal shipping channels with wreckage. USS DEFENDER was quickly retasked from normal training duties to support post-storm survey and clearance operations. Working alongside USS GLADIATOR, USS SCOUT (MCM 8), USS FALCON (MHC 59) and a helicopter mine countermeasures squadron, she began operations on September 10, 2005, using her sonar and MCM equipment to examine approximately 938 nautical miles of sea area near the Louisiana coast and the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), a key facility for U.S. oil imports.

The mine countermeasures ships and airborne teams searched for potential structural damage, leaks and submerged hazards in and around the offshore port complex. After completing this mission, DEFENDER and her consorts shifted to clearing coastal transit lanes to a depth of 65 feet, locating sunken vessels and debris that could endanger commercial or relief shipping into the region's ports.

By the mid-2000s, the Navy began consolidating its surface mine countermeasures forces on the West Coast as Naval Station Ingleside prepared for closure under base realignment decisions. Open photographic and news sources show USS DEFENDER operating from San Diego by 2009, when she is described as homeported there while deploying to the western Pacific and the U.S. 7th Fleet area of responsibility. In the interim, she continued routine training, evaluations and maintenance from her new homeport, keeping mine warfare proficiency aligned with fleet requirements.

As the decade closed, USS DEFENDER's operational focus moved firmly into the western Pacific. In 2009, she was transported across the Pacific aboard the heavy-lift ship CONDOCK IV and offloaded at Fleet Activities Sasebo, Japan, on June 3, 2009. Initially still administratively homeported in San Diego but operating from Japan, she conducted patrols and training in the 7th Fleet area of responsibility. Later that year, in October 2009, she made a three-day port visit to Miyanoura on Yakushima Island in Kagoshima Prefecture, becoming the first U.S. Navy ship to visit that port and conducting community relations activities such as a local beach cleanup with residents.

By December 2009, Sasebo had become her formal homeport, and she was integrated into Mine Countermeasures Squadron Seven as part of the forward-deployed naval forces in Japan. From Sasebo, USS DEFENDER took part in a series of bilateral and multilateral exercises and patrols throughout the western Pacific. On May 22, 2010, she operated off the coast of Okinawa, conducting astern refueling practice with the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force minesweeping support vessel JS URAGA, a snapshot of routine combined logistics and mine warfare cooperation between the two navies. Five days later, on May 27, 2010, she was photographed entering her forward-deployed operating base at Sasebo, underscoring her status as a permanently deployed mine countermeasures asset in Japan. During this period, she joined other U.S. and allied ships in exercises and presence operations across the 7th Fleet region, though many of these routine patrols and training events are recorded only briefly in official histories.

In August 2011, USS DEFENDER visited White Beach Naval Facility in Okinawa during a deployment that continued her pattern of mine warfare patrols and regional engagement. Shortly afterwards, she sailed south to the Bay of Bengal to participate in Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) Bangladesh 2011. In mid-September, she arrived at Chittagong, Bangladesh, where local navy bands marked her entry and the ship hosted tours for students and officials as part of the bilateral exercise's public-relations component. On September 19, 2011, sailors welcomed high-school students from Chittagong Grammar School aboard USS DEFENDER for a ship's tour, and on September 20 crew members took part in a music class and other activities at the Ashar Alo School and Rehabilitation Center, illustrating the community-engagement side of CARAT.

At sea, CARAT Bangladesh 2011 focused on improving interoperability, basic seamanship and maritime security skills with the Bangladesh Navy. DEFENDER's contribution centered on mine countermeasures and small-ship operations in coastal waters.

As part of the forward-deployed mine countermeasures group she helped maintain the ability of 7th Fleet to respond to potential mine threats in key chokepoints and approaches across East Asia. Over these years, she also took part in formation maneuvers and passing exercises off Kyushu and elsewhere, as seen in official imagery, and continued the routine maintenance, inspections and training that underpinned her operational readiness.

By 2014, the Navy was reorganizing its Japan-based mine force. In early February 2014, the service announced that USS CHIEF (MCM 14) and USS PIONEER (MCM 9), based in San Diego, would shift forward to Sasebo, replacing USS AVENGER and USS DEFENDER in the forward-deployed mine countermeasures role. The older ships would in turn be transported back to San Diego for decommissioning. As part of this transition, USS DEFENDER completed her final western Pacific patrols and prepared for turnover of equipment and responsibilities. On July 12, 2014, she departed Sasebo for the last time, beginning her final transit across the Pacific back to California.

USS DEFENDER arrived at Naval Base San Diego later that summer to start inactivation procedures. On October 1, 2014, she was officially decommissioned there after twenty-five years of commissioned service. Following decommissioning, she entered the inactive fleet list briefly, and on November 3, 2014, the ship was sold for scrapping to Marine Group Boat Works of San Diego, bringing her physical life to a close.

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