USS Vancouver (LPD-2) - History

History

Her keel was laid down on 19 November 1960 at Brooklyn, New York by the New York Naval Shipyard. She was launched on 15 September 1962 sponsored by Mrs. Stuart Symington, and commissioned on 11 May 1963 with Captain Thomas C. Harbert, Jr., in command.

After completing builder's trials at New York City and shakedown training out of Norfolk, Virginia, the amphibious transport dock ship departed the latter port on 14 August and laid a course for the west coast. She transited the Panama Canal on 20 August and after making a side trip to Acapulco, Mexico, to assist a disabled fishing vessel arrived in San Diego, California, her permanent home port, on 31 August.

Late in September and early in October, Vancouver made the traditional visit to her namesake city, Vancouver, Washington, and then returned to San Diego for seven weeks of training. Underway training occupied the first four weeks while amphibious training took up the last three. In mid-December, she welcomed on board the newly appointed Secretary of the Navy, Paul H. Nitze, and the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, Jr., as well as several other high ranking United States Navy and United States Marine Corps officers, and treated them to a display of her multifaceted amphibious capabilities.

In mid-February 1964, the ship moved from San Diego to Long Beach, California, where she entered the naval shipyard for post-shakedown availability. She finished repairs on 21 May, completed final acceptance trials early in June, and then returned to San Diego. Late in June, the amphibious transport dock ship made another voyage north to Canada for a visit to another namesake city, Vancouver, British Columbia, in time to participate in that city's annual maritime festival. On the way back home, she stopped in San Francisco, California, for the Fourth of July weekend and then reentered San Diego on 7 July. At that point, she began her operational schedule. She participated in three amphibious warfare exercises between July and October and then began preparations for her first deployment to the Far East.

Read more about this topic:  USS Vancouver (LPD-2)

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    [Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.
    Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)

    Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    ... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.
    Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)