The former USS Charles F. Adams (DDG-2) was ordered in 1957 and was a very important stepping stone in modern Naval history due to her being designed to complete as a guided missile destroyer, carrying a Mark 11 twin-armed launcher for Tartar missiles. Her design proved so useful that a total of 29 Adams-class DDGs were built including 23 for the USN (of which three later went to Greece), three for Australia (the Perth-class) and three to West Germany (the Lutjens-class) and they gave great service for 30 years from Southeast Asia and the North Atlantic to the Persian Gulf.
By the end of the Cold War, however, these tin cans were cramped and outdated, especially compared to VLS/Aegis ships, and they were rapidly removed from service. On 29 April 1993, the last of the class on active duty with the Navy, USS Goldsborough (DDG-20) was decommissioned and struck.
By 2003, the Germans, last to operate the type, removed theirs from the fleet. Of the 29 hulls built, 27 have been scrapped or sunk as targets.
Only two remain Mölders (D186) which has been preserved at Wilhelmshaven, and Adams herself, which has been laid up at the Philadelphia Naval Inactive Ship Facility for the past 27 years.
However, a group in Jacksonville has been raising money since 2008 to bring her there and set her up as a naval museum.
They posted this over the weekend, and I hope they can pull it off.
