Decatur, John Paul Jones return home - Military News | News From Afghanistan, Iraq And Around The World - Military Times

Decatur, John Paul Jones return home

SAN DIEGO — Crews aboard two San Diego-based ships made it home in time to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Sailors aboard guided missile destroyer Decatur arrived at the San Diego Naval Base on Monday, wrapping up a six-month deployment that took the ship to the Persian Gulf and western Pacific. A day later, guided missile destroyer John Paul Jones pulled into its San Diego berth nearby, ending an independent, seven-month deployment to the Persian Gulf.

Decatur had deployed as part of the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group and saw its deployment extended about a month when the ship was tasked for maritime security missions in the Gulf region. Decatur’s crew helped to defend two key Iraqi oil terminals, al-Basrah and Khawr al-Amaya oil terminals, and in the process earned the Iraqi Defense Medal, the only ship of the strike group to receive that award, U.S. 3rd Fleet officials said.

Decatur’s sailors also ran a small boat marina and conducted numerous shipboarding, or visit-board-search-seize, missions in the region, and the ship provided ballistic-missile defense capabilities to commanders in the 5th and 7th Fleet regions. “This crew has operated at the tip of the spear for months on end, flawlessly,” Decatur’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Christopher Sweeney, said in a statement.

John Paul Jones, another ship in the Navy’s Aegis ballistic-missile defense fleet, helped to track and collect data for BMD launches in the 5th Fleet region, officials said. Ship crews conducted counter-smuggling operations, disrupting the shipment of more than four tons of illegal drugs through the region.

For two months, the ship joined in defense, training and logistics support for Task Force Iraqi Maritime. During separate liberty visits, sailors with John Paul Jones sailors helped rebuild a local school and children’s home in Bahrain and Phuket, Thailand.

“This has been an incredibly productive and successful deployment for the men and women of John Paul Jones,” Cmdr. Sam Hancock, the ship’s skipper, said in a statement. The ship “executed operations in every mission area from approach and assist visits to Ballistic Missile Defense.”