Everett’s final frigate pulls into port Friday

EVERETT — Naval Station Everett’s final frigate is coming home Friday to be sold.

The USS Rodney M. Davis and its roughly 200 sailors were to return Friday after six months patrolling the Pacific and Indian oceans.

Fourteen crewmen will meet newborns when they arrive, said Kristin Ching, spokeswoman for Naval Station Everett. It was expected to arrive at 12:30 p.m. Friday.

The U.S. Navy plans to decommission the 27-year-old ship early in March and sell it to a foreign government.

To get the ship ready to be decommissioned, crew members will remove supplies and equipment that can either be re-used or are too sensitive to export, she said. “When she departs from Everett” in the spring, “it’ll basically be bare bones.”

When it leaves, it will be the last to go of the three Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates formerly stationed here.

The USS Ford was decommissioned in 2013. The USS Ingraham was decommissioned last month, and it is still in port, where sailors are gutting it. The Ingraham is scheduled Jan. 30 to be towed from Everett to Naval Station Kitsap in Bremerton, where it will be scrapped.

After the frigates are gone, Naval Station Everett will still be homeport to the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers — the USS Shoup and USS Momsen — and two Coast Guard cutters. Naval Station Everett will have about 6,000 men and women assigned here, Ching said.

In 2012, the Navy said it plans to move three more destroyers here. No update was immediately available.

The Navy plans to decommission all remaining Perry-class frigates by Oct. 30, the end of the fiscal year. The 1970s-era frigates are being replaced by new, smaller littoral combat ships, which have been plagued by cost overruns during development. An amphibious assault ship, two submarines and the USNS Rainier, a support vessel stationed in Bremerton, are also being decommissioned.

The Navy had previously planned to keep the Davis operating until 2016 and the Ingraham until 2019. But budget cuts prompted the Navy to get rid of the ships sooner.

During the Davis’ final deployment, the ship took part in the largest international maritime warfare exercise, Rim of the Pacific — or RIMPAC — 2014. The exercise involved 48 ships from 22 countries.

The ship logged more than 37,000 nautical miles and visited ports in Japan, Singapore, the Maldives, Thailand, Indonesia and Brunei.

The frigate is named for Marine Corps Sgt. Rodney Maxwell Davis, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in Vietnam. It was built by Todd Pacific Shipyards in San Pedro, California, and commissioned on May 9, 1987.

Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.