USS Cole (DDG-67)

From Freepedia

Career	Image:Dtomjack large.png
Image:USS Cole (DDG 67).jpg
Ordered:	16 January 1991
Laid down:	28 February 1994
Launched:	10 February 1995
Commissioned:	8 June 1996
Decommissioned:
Status:	Active in service as of 2005.
Struck:	—
General Characteristics
Displacement:	8,315 tons (7540 t)
Length:	505 ft (154 m)
Beam:	66 ft (20.1 m)
Draught:	31 ft (9.4 m)
Propulsion:	4 × General Electric LM2500-30 gas turbines, 2 shafts, 100,000 shp (75 MW)
Speed:	30+ knots (56+ km/h)
Range:
Complement:	337 officers and enlisted
Armament:	1 × 29 cell, 1 × 61 cell Mk 41 vertical launch systems, 90 × RIM-67 SM-2, BGM-109 Tomahawk or RUM-139 VL-Asroc, missiles 1 × 5 in, 2 × 25 mm, 4 × 12.7 mm guns, 2 × Phalanx CIWS 2 × Mk 46 triple torpedo tubes
Aircraft:	1 SH-60 Sea Hawk helicopter can be refueled and rearmed. Flight IIA DDG-79 and following can embark helicopters
Motto:	Gloria Merces Virtutis "Glory is the Reward of Valor"

The second USS Cole (DDG 67) is an Arleigh Burke-class "Aegis" guided missile destroyer homeported in NS Norfolk, Virginia. This Cole is named in honor of Marine Sergeant Darrell S. Cole, a machine gunner killed in action on Iwo Jima on 19 February 1945.

Image:USS Cole Coat of Arms.jpg

She was built by Ingalls Shipbuilding and delivered to the Navy on 11 March 1996.

On 12 October 2000, Cole was attacked from a small boat by suicide bombers. Seventeen sailors were killed and 39 were injured. The U.S. government offered a reward of up to US$5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of those persons who committed or aided in the attack on Cole. On 4 November 2002, Ali Qaed Sinan al-Harthi, who is believed to have planned the attack, was killed by the CIA using an AGM-114 Hellfire missile launched from a RQ-1 Predator unmanned drone.

Cole was returned to the United States aboard the Norwegian semi-submersible heavy-lift MV Blue Marlin owned by Offshore Heavy Transport of Oslo, Norway. The ship was off-loaded 13 December 2000, from Blue Marlin in a pre-dredged deep-water facility at the shipyard of Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, Ingalls Operations. After a successful 14-month effort to repair the damage Cole departed Pascagoula, Mississippi, on 19 April 2002, and returned to its homeport of Norfolk, Virginia. Cole left Norfolk on November 29, 2003 on the destroyer's first overseas deployment since it was bombed in the year 2000.

Al-Qaida, a terrorist group, probably targeted Cole because an earlier attempt to bring down The Sullivans on January 3, 2000 failed. This was one of the 2000 millennium attack plots.

The first Cole, DD-155, was named for Edward B. Cole.

Image:USS Cole;05016721.jpg