The Naval War College and the Naval Station in Newport attract young military service members for training, education, and career advancement. The Navy base has also seen a lot of crucial military history, and this April, history is returning.
From April 24-27, the USS Yosemite Association, a society dedicated to the Navy ship and its service members, invites Veterans who served on the Yosemite and family members and friends to the 2024 Reunion in Rhode Island. The reunion party plans to stay together at the Crowne Plaza Providence-Warwick (Airport) Hotel in a block of rooms, and from there, the association will host a variety of activities, including banquets, a tour of the Newport Naval War College, and tours of other Navy ships.
The reunion is coming to Newport to pay homage to the site of one of Yosemite’s “homeports,” a place where the ship can be restocked on supplies, receive maintenance, and where the crew can recuperate on land. “After World War II, the first homeport for Yosemite was Newport,” William “Bill” Krug III, president of the USS Yosemite Association, explains. The Yosemite was in Newport for 24 years, and “she was there bestowed the honor of being named the Flagship of Commander Destroyer Force Atlantic, [which means] the Admiral that controlled all the warships in the Atlantic Fleet was on board in Flag Quarters with his staff.” One of the most notable flag officers on board the Yosemite was Admiral Arleigh Burke, who later became the chief of naval operations in the Pentagon and the person who controls the entire U.S. Navy.
The Yosemite’s keel was laid on January 16, 1942, and Commissioned on May 25, 1944. The ship saw conflicts ranging from World War II to the Cuban Blockade and the Persian Gulf War. The ship was known as a “destroyer tender,” a vessel designed to provide maintenance support for a flotilla of destroyers without the need for a port—a “floating repair facility,” as Krug notes—but “we could fix any ship,” he proudly says.
Krug served on the ship as the assistant repair officer (ARO), overseeing production on the destroyer tender. Under his watchful guidance, 550 service members used a vast library of blueprints and an incredible array of technical shops on board to “create any part needed with precision,” and with dental and medical departments on board as well, the Yosemite also “fixed people,” ensuring that “ships never needed to pull into a port while deployed. Ships in port are always vulnerable,” warns Krug.
The Yosemite also had an underwater dive team on board, and during one of its missions in the Gulf War, that team burned holes in the sides of mines to allow the salt water to neutralize them. The mines – 3 feet by 7 feet – were then taken on board, repaired to look new, and distributed from Bahrain to areas in the United States to be on display as monuments.
Despite its great accomplishments, the Yosemite is no longer a working vessel. It was Decommissioned January 27, 1994, in service for fifty years, and at the time, it was the oldest ship in the Navy. On November 18, 2003, it was sunk in the Atlantic by U.S. Naval gunfire to serve as a site for a coral reef.
Although the USS Yosemite has a new underwater crew (corals and fish) and will never return to its homeport of Newport, RI, the ship’s storied history of important work lives on through the reunion of its past service members and their families. Through the human experience, Newport will receive another historic chapter of the Yosemite.
Photos
William “Bill” Krug III, president of the USS Yosemite Association, shared the following images with What’sUpNewp,
