USS Cole (DDG-67)

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Career

Ordered:	16 January 1991
Laid down:	28 February 1994
Launched:	10 February 1995
Commissioned:	8 June 1996
Decommissioned:
Fate:	Active in service
Struck:
General Characteristics
Displacement:	8,315 tons
Length:	505 ft
Beam:	66 ft
Draught:	31 ft
Propulsion:	4 x General Electric LM 2500-30 gas turbines, 2 shafts, 100,000 shp
Speed:	30+ knots
Range:
Complement:	337 officers and enlisted
Armament:	1 x 29 cell, 1 x 61 cell Mk 41 vertical launch systems, 90 x RIM-67 SM-2, BGM-109 Tomahawk or RUM-139 VL-Asroc, missiles 1 x 5 in, 2 x 25 mm, 4 x 12.7 mm guns, 2 x Phalanx CIWS 2 x Mk 46 triple torpedo tubes
Aircraft:	1 SH-60 Sea Hawk helicopter can be embarked
Motto:

The second USS Cole (DDG-67) is an Arleigh Burke-class "Aegis" guided missile destroyer homeported in 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.

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 inflatable 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 the 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 heavy transport ship 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. The 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 the Cole because an earlier attempt to bring down USS The Sullivans on January 3, 2000 failed. See: 2000 celebration terrorist attacks plot.

General characteristics

Length: 505 ft

Waterline Length: 466 ft

Extreme Beam: 66 ft

Waterline Beam: 59 ft

Maximum Navigational Draft: 31 ft

Draft Limit: 22 ft

Displacement

Light: 6767 tons
Full: 8889 tons

Dead Weight: 2122 tons

Propulsion: 4 LM-2500 General Electric gas turbines totalling 100,000 horsepower (75 MW)

Speed: 31 knots

Accommodations: Officers 26, Enlisted 315

Armament
- Two 20mm Close-In Weapons Systems
- 90-cell Vertical Launch System
- Eight Harpoon missiles in quadruple canisters
- Six 12.75" anti-submarine torpedoes in triple tube launchers

There was another Cole; see USS Cole (DD-155).