During the 1970s and 1980s, every battle group deploying to the Mediterranean would find and track Soviet subs. McCloy was a legendary ASW ship, Fry says. “Under my predecessors she won every ASW award possible. Every time she went to the Med she came back with the ‘Hook ‘Em’ award,” he says, referring to the award given to the combatant in each battle group with the best ASW performance.
The TASS display showed a very solid contact. So strong that Fry knew he was right on top of the Soviet boat. “Just then we felt a shudder and we lost array power. The tail stretched, and then snapped like a whip. The after lookout is standing five feet from the cable drum and was reporting that the cable was flying up above our “mack” like a whip, then ‘birdcaged’ in the reel.”
In 1983, McCloy was dispatched to the “Yankee Box,” a station off the U.S. Eastern seaboard where the Soviets kept a Yankee-class ballistic missile sub with the range to attack U.S. cities. “We were diverted to go find a Soviet Victor III, a brand new Soviet nuclear submarine that we had never seen in the Western Atlantic. With our TASS system we located the Victor III at extended range off Charleston, but because of deteriorating weather and heavy shipping, I wanted to get closer so we could pick him up in ‘direct path.’ We took in our tail and sprinted down to where we calculated we would pick him up. We streamed out the array and I went into the TASS van that we had installed inside the DASH hangar to see if we had reestablished contact.”
A starboard view of the frigate USS McCloy (FF 1038). The vessel is approaching the disabled attack submarine USS BONEFISH (SS 582) off the coast of Florida. An on board fire disabled the Bonefish and claimed the lives of three crew members. U.S. Navy photo
The TASS display showed a very solid contact. So strong that Fry knew he was right on top of the Soviet boat. “Just then we felt a shudder and we lost array power. The tail stretched, and then snapped like a whip. The after lookout is standing five feet from the cable drum and was reporting that the cable was flying up above our “mack” like a whip, then ‘birdcaged’ in the reel. We still had the Victor III passively on our 26. We handed him off to a P-3, I sent an OPREP-3 Pinnacle Front Burner (a “highest precedence” emergency notification message to the highest levels of the Navy), and we went back into Norfolk where I expected to be relieved for cause. Shortly after the investigation commenced, the commander of the Second Fleet, Vice Adm. Joe Metcalf, sent a message to wide distribution that said, ‘When McCloy gains contact, McCloy confirms contact. A new tail is on the way.’ And that was the end of the investigation.”
The next day, a Navy P-3 sighted a Soviet Victor III attack submarine stopped on the surface 282 miles west of Bermuda and 470 miles east of Charleston, S.C. A few days later a Soviet tug takes the boat under tow and into Cienfuegos, Cuba.
“It was the first good look at the non-circular hull of the V-III and her counter-rotating propellers,” says K. J. Moore, co-author of Cold War Submarines. “She was embarrassed, we got a good look, and she got a good length of array.”
The Mexican navy frigate ARM Hermenegildo Galeana (F 202) is underway during a passing exercise with the littoral combat ship USS Independence (LCS 2) following a port visit to Manzanillo, Mexico. Galeana is the former U.S. Navy frigate USS Bronstein (FF 1037). U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Trevor Welsh
In addition to being an extraordinarily capable ASW platform, the ship was engaged in a number of contingency operations. The ship covered the evacuation of Beirut in 1976 during the Lebanese Civil War. “The ship was there in 1982 covering the landing of the Marines into Lebanon and escorted merchant ships carrying Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters out of Beirut as part of the cease fire between Israel and the PLO,” Callas recalls.
Both were decommissioned in December 1990, and sold to Mexico in October 1993.
Adm. Paul David Miller, Commander-in-Chief, US Atlantic Fleet, and a former commanding officer of McCloy, delivered the decommissioning speech at Naval Station Norfolk Dec. 14, 1990, in near gale force winds. Capt. Wright, then working for the admiral after his command tour in Bronstein, helped prepare the remarks. In his closing remarks, Adm. Miller noted, “McCloy has long-served as a proving ground for youthful naval leadership. She has never been commanded by someone who initially was any more senior than a lieutenant commander, and along with her sister ship, USS Bronstein, remained one of only two lieutenant commander frigate commands in the United States Navy. As the thirteen other former commanding officers of these two ships here today can attest, that fact has long been a distinction of pride to all who have been fortunate to lead these two ships.”
FF 1037 is now the Hermenegildo Galeana (F-202) and FF 1038 is the Nicolas Bravo (F-201), based at Manzanillo.
Captain Lundquist is a retired naval officer and chief engagement officer with Echo Bridge, LLC, in Springfield, Virginia. This story originally appeared in Surface Warfare magazine.