The Gearing-class destroyer USS Orleck (DD-886) has had a long and happy career, in at least four parts. Laid down 28 November 1944, the 77-year-old warship is about to embark on her fifth.
Her first part, beginning with her U.S. Navy commissioning two weeks after VJ Day, saw the support of post-WWII minesweeping operations off China, combat during Korea– where she received four battle stars and earned a spot in the “Train Busters Club” — followed by tense Taiwan Strait patrols.
Off Mare Island, 1959
The 1960s FRAMing added ASROC and DASH drones just in time to support the recovery of the Gemini IV space capsule for NASA, and deliver naval gunfire support off Vietnam.
Orleck NGFS March 1966, firing on a Viet Cong stronghold near Vung Tau, at the mouth of the Saigon River. Photo by J. L. Means, NPC K-31267
Decommissioned on 1 October 1982, she was transferred to Turkey for the second part of her work career, serving Istanbul as the destroyer TCG Yücetepe (D-345) for another 18 years.
Saved by the USS Orleck Association, the third part of her career saw her brought back “home” in 2000 and opened as a low-traffic museum ship in Orange, Texas, where she had been built by the Consolidated Steel Corporation in WWII.
Then, the historic ship moved to nearby Lake Charles a decade later, where she received even less traffic as the industrial Louisiana coastal city isn’t exactly on the tourism trail. Heck, I tried to tour Orleck three different times when I was passing through between Galveston and Pascagoula but she always seemed closed for one reason or another.
Last year, washed up the Calcasieu River by a hurricane, the group that runs her went ahead and called Lake Chuck quits and made contact with an organization in Jacksonville to move there, a Navy city with a plan to put her in a high-traffic park downtown.
In preparation for this move, last week Orleck was successfully towed to the Gulf Copper Central Yard in Port Arthur for a much-needed drydocking.
You can follow her progress here.