“Frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG 58) Returns to Naval Station Mayport. Courtesy HD Video | Navy Media Content Services | Date: 12.15.2014. Family and friends welcome back the guided-missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG 58) to Naval Station Mayport. Samuel B. Roberts returned from deployment to the U.S. 6th Fleet area of responsibility in support of U.S. national security interests in Europe and Africa. The ship is scheduled for decommissioning on May 22, 2015. (U.S. Navy video by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Nathan Lang/Released)”
If the ship sounds familiar, the Sammy B was in the very last batch of Oliver Hazard Perry (FFG-7) class frigates to commission in April 1986. You could still smell the new paint on board when she was sent to the Persian Gulf to stand guard between Saddam’s Iraq and the Iranian rogue state. It was there on 14 April 1988, as part of Operation Earnest Will, the escort of re-flagged Kuwaiti tankers during the Iran–Iraq War, that she struck a Soviet-made M-08 naval mine in the central Persian Gulf. The mine blew a 15-foot hole in her, knocked her GE LM2500 turbines off their mounts, and broke her keel.
16 April 1988: Dubai – A view looking through the hole in the hull of Samuel B. Roberts sustained when the ship struck a mine while on patrol in the Persian Gulf. The ship is in dry dock undergoing temporary repairs. (U.S. Navy photo DVID #DN-SN-93-01451 by PH2 Rudy D. Pahoyo)
30 July 1988: Newport RI- An aerial view of the Dutch heavy lift ship Mighty Servant II transporting the guided missile frigate Samuel B. Roberts. (U.S. Navy photo DVID #DN-ST-89-01414 by PH2(SW) Jeff Elliott)
Normally, this would have been a death sentence for such a small “tincan”. However Sammy was rebuilt, the Iranians, whose mine it was, were plastered in Operation Preying Mantis which sank the Iranian frigate IS Sahand (F74), and things got back to being normal.
Unlike most of the Perrys that are being decommed, the 29-year old Sammy B will not be going overseas as Foreign Aid to some needy third world fleet.
She will be scrapped after her planned decommissioning in May.
