USS Cole

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The USS Cole is a guided missile destroyer that is part of the battle group of the carrier USS George Washington. The Destroyer is 505 feet long with a top speed of more than 33 mph. It has a crew of 350. It is armed with the Aegis weapons system, the latest in anti-aircraft and anti-submarine technology. The USS Cole was named in honor of Marine Sgt. Darrell S. Cole, a machine gunner killed in action during the Second World War.

On August 8, 2000 the USS Cole departed the Norfolk Naval Station for a five-month deployment to the Persian Gulf to participate in the US-led operation enforcing UN sanctions against Iraq. It was scheduled to return to the United States on December 21, 2000.

It sailed through the Suez Canal on October 9, 2000 and docked in Aden, Yemen to refuel. On October 12, 2000, a small boat filled with explosives blew up alongside the USS Cole, blowing a 40-foot hole in its side. Seventeen of the USS Cole's crew were killed and 39 were injured.

Various Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations claimed responsibility for the bombing but this could not be verified. A prime suspect for the bombing of the USS Cole is considered to be Saudi Arabian terrorist Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing more than 224 people, and the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 people.

Last updated: June 22, 2004.

American destroyer attacked in 2000 while refueling in Yemen, focusing international attention on the developing conflict between the United States and terrorists in the region.

On 12 October 2000 two men exploded a small boat in the port of Aden alongside USS Cole, killing themselves and seventeen U.S. sailors and wounding thirty-nine. Despite suspicion that the bombing was sponsored by the al-Qaʿida network, initially no links were found and the U.S. administration decided against a retaliatory strike on al-Qaʿida camps in Afghanistan. In a videotaped speech in January 2001, Osama bin Ladin praised the attack as a blow against American "injustice" but denied his own involvement, in an interview with the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Raʾy al-Amm. In June an al-Qaʿida recruitment tape that claimed responsibility for the bombing was brought to public attention by the newspaper; and in December, a letter was discovered ordering attacks on American ships in Yemen, purportedly written by bin Ladin in late 1997, before U.S. ships began to refuel in Aden. In the months following the attack, Yemen captured a number of mostly local suspects; in 2003 it revealed confessions had been made alleging that the attack was ordered by the prominent cleric Shaykh Zindani, a leader of the Islah Party. In 2002 U.S. forces killed one fugitive suspect and in 2003 indicted two of ten further suspects when they escaped from jail in Yemen.

— GEORGE R. WILKES

On the morning of October 12, 2000, as the Navy destroyer USS Cole sat anchored in the Yemeni port of Aden, a small boat packed with explosives rammed into its side, tearing a 40-foot hole through the ship's outer hull, killing seventeen sailors and wounding thirty-nine more. It was the deadliest attack against the United States military since 1996, when a truck bomb exploded near an apartment complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen.

A ship in hostile waters. The Cole, one of the Arleigh Burke class of guided missile destroyers, was based in Norfolk, Virginia. The ship was on its way from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf to help enforce United Nations sanctions against Iraq, when it made a routine stop in the Yemeni port of Aden for refueling. American intelligence officials had long been aware that Yemen was home to a number of Islamist fundamentalist groups. In the weeks before the attack, the country was home to violent demonstrations against the treatment of Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and America's supposed pro-Israeli stance. Although Cole Commander Kirk Lippold had been told of no specific threat against his ship, it was on what is known as "Threat Condition Bravo"—the second highest of four threat levels. At alerts of that level, the ship's guards were required to be on the lookout for small boats.

No flags were apparently raised when a small fiber-glass boat approached the Cole. Eyewitnesses said the boat was helping the big destroyer with its mooring, when it pulled back to the Cole's port side. The two men on board reportedly stood at attention before their boat exploded, blowing a massive hole in the destroyer's steel hull. Damage to the $1 billion warship was estimated at $250 million.

Within hours of the explosion, Pentagon officials said they had reason to suspect a terrorist attack. FBI and CIA agents, as well as the Pentagon's Fleet Anti-Terrorist Support Team, were quickly sent to the scene to investigate. Within weeks, officials announced that they believed the blast to be the work of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi Arabian exile whose al-Qaeda terrorist network was also connected to the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Kenya and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Al-Qaeda would later be linked to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

As the FBI and CIA began piecing together the evidence, they revealed that this wasn't the first plot against U.S. military interests in the region. Intelligence officials said they had already foiled at least two attempted plots against American ships. In mid-September 2000, a CIA report indicated the possibility that terrorists would attack a warship in the Mediterranean using a boat filled with explosives. And just two weeks before the attack, the Arab news channel Al Jazeera broadcast a video of bin Laden in which he made threats against the United States.

A troubled investigation. Although American intelligence officials moved quickly after the USS Cole attack, the investigation hit a number of snags. Yemeni officials questioned more than 1,500 people, yet they restricted American officials' access to key suspects. In June 2001, FBI agents were pulled out of Yemen because of credible evidence that there was a terrorist threat against them. The FBI and U.S. State Department disagreed over how to steer the investigation and deal with the uncooperative Yemeni government. The U.S. government still could not prove that al-Qaeda was behind the attack, and they were concerned that several key operatives remained at large, possibly planning more attacks against American interests.

United States officials did make significant progress in their investigation, eventually capturing several key suspects in the attack. In October 2002, the FBI nabbed a senior al-Qaeda operative named Abd Al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is suspected of masterminding the Cole attack, as well as plotting several other attacks against other U.S. and British warships. The following month, a CIA-launched missile killed Abu Ali (also known as Qaed Senyan), a man who was said to have played a major role in the Cole attack, as he was traveling with five other al-Qaeda members in Yemen.

Further Reading

Periodicals

Hosenball, Mark, and Greg Vistica. "The Search for Clues: Did Officials Miss Hints of an Impending Attack?" Newsweek. November 6, 2000:45.

Kaplan, David E., Chitra Ragavan, and Richard J. Newman, et al. "Terror's Grim Toll." U.S. News & World Report. October 30, 2000:32.

MacLeod, Scott, Elaine Shannon, Mark Thompson, Edward Barnes, and William Dowell. "How Feuds and Culture Clashes Have Stymied the USS Cole Investigation." Time. Volume 158 (July 16, 2001): 38.

Nordland, Rod, John Barry, Mark Hosenball, Debra Rosenberg, and Gregory Vistica. "A Sneak Attack: Death at Sea." Newsweek. October 23, 2000: 27.

Electronic

U.S. Department of State. "Attack on the USS Cole: IIP Archives." <http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/colearch.htm> (December 20, 2002).

For other ships of the same name, see USS Cole.

Career (US)
Name:	USS Cole
Namesake:	Sgt Darrell S. Cole, USMC
Ordered:	16 January 1991
Builder:	Ingalls Shipbuilding
Laid down:	28 February 1994
Launched:	10 February 1995
Commissioned:	8 June 1996
Status:	in active service, as of 2009[update]
General characteristics
Class and type:	Arleigh Burke class destroyer
Displacement:	Light: approx. 6,794.38 tons Full: approx. 8,885.66 tons
Length:	505 ft (154 m)
Beam:	66 ft (20 m)
Draft:	31 ft (9.4 m)
Propulsion:	4 General Electric LM2500-30 gas turbines, two shafts, 100,000 total shaft horsepower (75 MW)
Speed:	30+ knots (56+ km/h)
Range:	4,400 nautical miles at 20 knots (8,100 km at 37 km/h)
Complement:	33 Officers 38 Chief Petty Officers 210 Enlisted Personnel
Sensors and processing systems:	• AN/SPY-1D Radar • AN/SPS-67(V)2 Surface Search Radar • AN/SPS-73(V)12 Surface Search Radar • AN/SQS-53C Sonar Array • AN/SQR-19 Tactical Towed Array Sonar • AN/SQQ-28 LAMPS III Shipboard System
Electronic warfare and decoys:	• AN/SLQ-32(V)2 Electronic Warfare System • AN/SLQ-25 Nixie Torpedo Countermeasures • MK 36 MOD 12 Decoy Launching System • AN/SLQ-39 CHAFF Buoys
Armament:	1 × 29 cell, 1 × 61 cell Mk 41 vertical launch systems with 90 × RIM-66 SM-2, BGM-109 Tomahawk or RUM-139 VL-Asroc missiles 1 × Mark 45 5/54 in (127/54 mm) 2 × 25 mm chain gun 4 × .50 caliber (12.7 mm) guns 2 × 20 mm Phalanx CIWS 2 × Mk 32 triple torpedo tubes
Aircraft carried:	1 SH-60 Sea Hawk helicopter can be embarked
Motto:	Gloria Merces Virtutis "Glory is the Reward of Valor"
Badge:

The second USS Cole (DDG-67) is an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyer homeported in NS Norfolk, Virginia. The Cole is named in honor of Marine Sergeant Darrell S. Cole, a machine-gunner killed in action on Iwo Jima on 19 February 1945, during World War II. The ship was built by Ingalls Shipbuilding and was delivered to the Navy on 11 March 1996.

On 12 October 2000, the Cole was attacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists who committed a suicide attack in the Yemeni port of Aden; seventeen sailors were killed and thirty-nine were injured, and the ship was damaged.^[1] On 29 November 2003 Cole deployed for her first overseas deployment after the bombing and subsequently returned to her homeport of Norfolk, Virginia on 27 May 2004 without incident.

Contents 1 Construction 2 History 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

Construction

Cole is one of 62 authorized Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, and one of 21 members of the Flight I-class that utilized the 5"/54 caliber gun mounts found on the earliest of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. In addition to her guns, Cole carries nearly 100 missiles of various types aboard two separate Mk 41 VLS magazines. Her superstructure features the AN/SPY-1 radar indicative of the Aegis combat system, which allows the destroyer to track over 100 targets simultaneously.^[2] She also has two Phalanx CIWS gun mounts located aft and stern which are intended to protect Cole against enemy missiles that manage to evade the ship's anti-missile missiles. Cole was launched on 10 February 1995 and commissioned on 8 June 1996.^[3]

History

For more details on this topic, see USS Cole bombing.

On 12 October 2000, while at anchor in Aden, the Cole was attacked by Al-Qaeda suicide bombers, who sailed a small boat near the destroyer and detonated explosive charges.^[1]. The blast created a hole in the port side of the ship about 40 feet (12 m) in diameter, killing 17 crewmembers and injuring 39. The ship was under the command of Commander Kirk Lippold.

Cole was returned to the United States aboard the Norwegian heavy-lift vessel 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 Pascagoula, Mississippi, shipyard of Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, Ingalls Operations. After 14 months of repair, Cole departed on 19 April 2002, and returned to her homeport of Norfolk, Virginia.

The U.S. government offered a reward of up to US$5 million for information leading to the arrest of people who committed or aided in the attack on Cole. Al-Qaeda was suspected of targeting Cole because of the failure of a 3 January 2000 attack on USS The Sullivans, one of the 2000 millennium attack plots. On 4 November 2002, Ali Qaed Sinan al-Harthi, a suspected al-Qaida operative, who is believed to have planned the Cole attack, was killed by the CIA using an AGM-114 Hellfire missile launched from an MQ-1 Predator unmanned drone.

On 29 November 2003 Cole deployed for her first overseas deployment after the bombing and subsequently returned to her homeport of Norfolk, Virginia on 27 May 2004 without incident. In 2005 Cole participated in BALTOPS 05 with the Baltic Nations. Cole returned to the US in early July and was able to attend Fourth of July Celebrations in Philadelphia.

The Cole being carried by the MV Blue Marlin.

The Cole deployed to the Middle East on 8 June 2006 for the first time since the bombing. While passing the port city of Aden the crew manned the rails to honor the crewmembers killed in the bombing. She returned to her homeport of Norfolk, Virginia on 6 December 2006 without incident.

On 21 August 2006, the Associated Press reported that the Cole's commanding officer at the time of the bombing, Commander Kirk Lippold was denied promotion to the rank of Captain.^[4]

On 28 February 2008, the Cole was sent to take station off Lebanon's coast, the first of an anticipated three-ship flotilla. "The United States believes a show of support is important for regional stability. We are very concerned about the situation in Lebanon. It has dragged on very long," said a top US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity signaling 'impatience' with Syria.^[5]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: USS Cole (DDG-67)

• USS Samuel B. Roberts

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Yemeni pair charged in USS Cole bombing
2. ^ Owing to the presence of the Aegis system, Cole and her sisters are sometimes incorrectly referred to as Aegis class ships.
3. ^ http://www.navsource.org/archives/05/01067.htm
4. ^ military.com "Cole Skipper Off Promotion List"
5. ^ USS Cole off Lebanon Coast; Show of Support to Whom? 29 February 2008

External links

• Rewards for Justice Site
• Official website of USS Cole
• navsource.org: USS Cole
• USS Cole Association
• Official Department of Defense FOIA files on the USS Cole [1] [2] [3]
• USS Cole Redeploys
• Maritimequest USS Cole DDG-67 Photo Gallery

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