Gator crews prep for hull swap in Japan - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Gator crews prep for hull swap in Japan

NAVAL STATION SAN DIEGO — Sometime next month, two of the Navy’s big-deck amphibious assault ships will swap hulls in a move designed to put an updated gator ship in Japan.

The crew aboard Bonhomme Richard leaves California on Tuesday for what looks to be about a four-month deployment with an all-important mission: Bring the 20-year-old Essex to San Diego for a much-needed shipyard overhaul and repairs.

The San Diego-based crew will arrive in March at Fleet Activities Sasebo for the hull swap, taking over Essex and turning Bonhomme Richard over to the Sasebo sailors before sailing Essex to California. With a hull swap, neither ship’s crew has to change its home port or make a permanent move.

Bonhomme Richard, commissioned in 1998, is six years younger than Essex, but it completed an intense nine-month-long dry dock phased maintenance availability last year at General Dynamics NASSCO Shipyard in San Diego designed to prepare it for operational service with 7th Fleet in Japan.

Stateside ships routinely go into the shipyard for in-depth repairs and upgrades to ship infrastructure and systems including hulls, but Japan has no major shipyard maintenance capability available for amphibious ships. So Essex, originally homeported in San Diego but sent to Japan in 2000 to join the forward-deployed naval force, has not received an extensive shipyard availability since.

Navy officials decided to bring Essex to San Diego to do the repairs, and they announced last August that Bonhomme Richard would replace Essex in 7th Fleet for what’s expected to be at least 10 years.

Preparing the San Diego sailors for the short but important deployment has been the top priority for Capt. Jonathan Harnden, who until Feb. 3 was Bonhomme Richard’s commanding officer.

“Our No. 1 job is to deliver the best ship that we can,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s going to be operational for a decade, so we have to make sure we give them a good product.”

Bonhomme Richard “was a pretty good ship going in,” Harnden said of the shipyard period. The ship got several alterations and upgrades — from a new fuel/oil compensation system to new decking and mattresses — and extra attention “knowing that she was going to go to FDNF for a number of years and not being able to go into a big availability,” he said. “So a lot of things came together to make this package big.”

Bonhomme Richard’s leaders and crew, he said, have been planning and preparing for the swap with the goal of a smooth transition for both crews. With operational demands in 7th Fleet, “they don’t have time to deal with long-term issues,” Harnden said of the Sasebo sailors. At the same time, a priority has been “making sure this crew is ready to take [and] do this process, which is big.”

Harnden, former skipper of the dock landing ship Pearl Harbor, came to Bonhomme Richard in 2008 as the executive officer. On Feb. 3, he ended his command tour and handed the reins to his XO, Capt. Chuck Litchfield, who will lead the ship through the hull swap.

Litchfield oversaw the recent shipyard period that included a concerted effort to get as much of the ship’s life-cycle maintenance work done, along with the big-ticket repairs and upgrades of the dry dock phased maintenance availability.

The past two years have been busy for Bonhomme Richard, which returned in April 2010 from an operational deployment and began its maintenance availability that fall. Following sea trials last summer, the ship went to Seattle for the city’s annual Seafair festival in August and visited San Francisco for Fleet Week in October. Through the months, both crews kept communication in weekly phone conferences and short visits by crews, some who also were sent to specialized schools for training and familiarity with their “new” ship.

Staying busy stateside

Once they swap hulls in Sasebo, the San Diego sailors will bring Essex to California, but it won’t be for a long rest: The ship is scheduled to participate in the biennial multinational Rim of the Pacific exercises off Hawaii this summer, officials said, for its last operational commitment before returning to San Diego to enter the shipyard.

“RIMPAC is a very high-visibility exercise,” Litchfield said, noting a big-deck amphib served as the overall exercise flagship in 2010. “We expect that RIMPAC 2012 will be similar.”

Following RIMPAC, the “Essex San Diego” crew will get the ship — and themselves — ready for Essex’s dry dock phased maintenance availability, which is scheduled to run 52 weeks.

With at least a year without any underway periods, some crew members will milk as much as they can from the upcoming short deployments, said Command Master Chief (SW/AW) Ted Verschueren, the top enlisted sailor on Bonhomme Richard.

“Unfortunately for some of these sailors, it’ll be the only deployment they’ll see for some time, because the ship will be welded to that pier for a while,” said Verschueren, who has spent four years aboard Bonhomme Richard, his second tour on the ship, but who will leave in May for a new assignment with Afloat Training Group-Pacific. “I think for a lot of sailors who did the yard period, they already know what they’re in for.”

The toughest mission, though, might come in the next few months as both ships’ crews adjust to their new ship. “For a 13-year old ship, we look really good,” Verschueren said of Bonhomme Richard. “The biggest challenge is taking [over] a ship that hasn’t been in the yard for 12 years.”

However, “If there was a crew to pick to take Essex, this is the crew,” he said.