Figure 1: USS Dale (DLG-19) ready for launching, at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation shipyard, Camden, New Jersey, 27 July 1962. She was launched the next day. Official US Navy Photograph, from the Collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 2: USS Dale (DLG-19) slides down the ways at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation shipyard, Camden, New Jersey, following christening, 28 July 1962. Official US Navy Photograph, from the Collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 3: USS Dale (DLG-19) launching a Terrier guided missile, while steaming off Point Mugu, California, in April 1964. Official US Navy Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 4: USS Dale (DLG-19) underway in the Yellow Sea, 27 April 1969. Photographed by PH1 J.E. Penner, of USS Enterprise (CVAN-65). Official US Navy Photograph, from the Collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 5: USS Dale (DLG-19) off Bath, Maine, following her anti-air warfare modernization, 5 October 1971. Official US Navy Photograph, from the Collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 6: USS Dale (DLG-19) off Bath, Maine, on 5 October 1971, following her anti-air warfare modernization. Official US Navy Photograph, from the Collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 7: USS Dale (DLG-19) off Bath, Maine, on 5 October 1971, following her anti-air warfare modernization. Bath Iron Works shipyard is at left. Official US Navy Photograph, from the Collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 8: USS Dale (DLG-19) underway off Bath, Maine, following her anti-air warfare modernization, 6 October 1971. Official US Navy Photograph, from the Collections of the Naval Historical Center.
Figure 9: USS Dale (DLG-19) underway in the Caribbean Sea, July 1972. Official US Navy Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 10: USS Dale (DLG-19) underway off Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, 5 June 1975. Official US Navy Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 11: USS Dale (CG-19) anchored in New York Harbor, dressed with flags and manning her rails in recognition of Independence Day, 4 July 1976. Dale was one of the ships present for the US Bicentennial International Naval Review and Operation Sail. Photographed by PHAN Gaudreau. Official US Navy Photograph, from the Collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 12: USS Dale (CG-19) underway at sea, during the 1980s or early 1990s. Official US Navy Photograph, from the Collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 13: USS Dale (CG-19) steaming offshore, during the 1980s or early 1990s. Official US Navy Photograph, from the Collections of the Naval Historical Center. Click on photograph for larger image.
Figure 14: USS Dale (DLG-19) jacket patch of the insignia adopted in 1963. Courtesy of Captain G.F. Swainson, USN, 1969. US Naval Historical Center Photograph. Click on photograph for larger image.
Named after Commodore Richard Dale (1756-1826), who served in the Continental Navy during the Revolutionary War and in the newly formed United States Navy in the late 1790s and early 1800s, the 5,670-ton USS Dale (DLG-19) was a Leahy class guided-missile destroyer that was built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation at Camden, New Jersey, and was commissioned on 23 November 1963 at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dale was the fifth US Navy warship to bear this name and was approximately 533 feet long and 53 feet wide, had a top speed of 34 knots, and had a crew of 396 officers and men. The ship was armed with two twin Terrier missile batteries (with a total of 80 missiles), four 3-inch guns, one ASROC missile launcher with eight missiles, and two triple torpedo launchers (with a total of six torpedoes).
After her shakedown cruise, Dale was assigned to the US Pacific Fleet and made five deployments to the western Pacific over the next seven years. From 1965 to 1970, Dale was part of the US Seventh Fleet and participated in numerous operations off the coast of Vietnam, including the rescue of several American pilots that were shot down over the Gulf of Tonkin.
Dale was decommissioned 10 November 1970 and the ship began a major overhaul and modernization program. The work was completed at the Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine, and the ship was equipped with the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) and other improvements that substantially increased Dale’s anti-air and anti-submarine warfare capabilities. Dale was re-commissioned on 11 December 1971 and was assigned to the US Navy’s Atlantic Fleet. Dale spent most of her time with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and was stationed off the coast of Israel in October 1973 during the Yom Kippur Arab-Israeli War. Initially, the war looked very bad for Israel and events rapidly brought tensions between the United States (which supported Israel) and the Soviet Union (which was allied with the Arab nations) to a boiling point. Dale was on the front lines of that war and would have been one of the first American warships to confront the Soviet fleet in the Mediterranean if events spun out of control. Fortunately, escalation was averted at the last moment when Israel counterattacked and managed to defeat the invading Arab forces.
On 30 June 1975, Dale was reclassified as a guided-missile cruiser (CG-19) and a year later, in July 1976, the ship helped represent the US Navy at the Bicentennial Naval Review in New York Harbor. In mid-1980, during another deployment with the Sixth Fleet, Dale entered the Black Sea and made a rare visit to Romania. During this time, Dale was updated regularly with new weapons systems, such as “Harpoon” surface-to-surface guided missiles and the “Phalanx” gun system in 1981. She also received the New Threat Upgrade combat system enhancements later that decade. During the 1980s, Dale extended some of her Mediterranean deployments by spending more time in the increasingly volatile Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf regions. In April 1986, Dale also took part in a confrontation with Libya, helping to suppress the terrorism that was being sponsored by that country’s leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi. Dale was part of the naval task force that used US carrier aircraft to bomb targets in Tripoli, Libya. The attacks were made in response to a Libyan terrorist bombing of a nightclub in West Berlin, West Germany, which killed one American and injured 40 others. The American air raid on Tripoli caused extensive damage to several buildings, including Colonel Gaddafi’s residential compound, which took a direct hit and killed Hanna Gaddafi, the adopted baby daughter of the Libyan leader.
Dale spent much of the rest of her career on counter-narcotics patrols in the Caribbean as well as on regular deployments with the Sixth Fleet. In 1991, she steamed into the Red Sea to enforce sanctions against Iraq after that nation was defeated in the first Gulf War. Dale performed similar duties from 1993 to 1994 when she supported United Nations Resolutions against Bosnia and Yugoslavia. USS Dale was decommissioned on 27 September 1994 and was eventually sunk as a target in January 2000.
At the bottom of this blog is a painting of the “Ship of the Month,” depicting the first USS Dale, a 566-ton sailing sloop-of-war. Compare that to the guided-missile cruiser USS Dale (CG-19) shown here, and you can see how far the US Navy has come since 1840, when the first Dale was commissioned.
