A port bow view of the guided-missile destroyer USS ARLEIGH BURKE (DDG-51) underway in rough seas. Camera Operator: PH3 JAMES COLLINS Date Shot: 31 Mar 1993 DNSC9303708
USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51), the paterfamilias of the largest class of warships built in the West since Korea and longest production run for any post-WWII U.S. Navy surface combatant, was laid down at Bath Iron Works in Maine on this day in 1988, set for a 1991 commission.
Elsewhere that day, Roy Orbison died of a heart attack at age 52, Nelson Mandela was transferred to Capetown’s Victor Vester Prison, Mikhail Gorbachev was Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, and Ronald Reagan was busy packing for the ranch in California as George H. W. Bush was slated to move into the Oval Office.
The top of the Top 100 that week, as related by Casey Kasem, was Chicago’s power ballad Look Away.
To borrow a line from the song, the Navy may have been looking (hard) but they haven’t “Found someone else” and Burke remains on active duty. In 2011, she completed a hull, mechanical and electrical (HM&E) modernization to extend her service life to 40~ years, well into the 2030s. By that time, as many as 104 Burke-class destroyers could be on the Navy List.