USS Butte (AE-27)

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Career (US)

Ordered:	March 30, 1965
Laid down:	July 21, 1966
Launched:	August 9, 1967
Commissioned:	December 14, 1968
Decommissioned:	June 3, 1996
In service:	Transferred to the MSC
Out of service:	May 24, 2004
Struck:	May 24, 2004
Status:	sunk as a target July 3, 2006
Homeport:	Norfolk, Virginia (original) Naval Weapons Station Earle (last)
General Characteristics
Displacement:	Light: 10,524 tons Full load: 20,068 tons
Length:	564 ft (169.2 m)
Beam:	81 ft (24.3 m)
Draught:	30 ft (9.1 m)
Propulsion:	3 × boilers steam turbines single shaft 22,000 shp
Speed:	20 knots (37 km/h)
Complement:	As AE-27: 28 officers, 388 enlisted as T-AE-27: 125-133 civilian crew, 7-24 military
Armament:	As AE-27: two Phalanx CIWS as T-AE-27: none
Aircraft carried:	2 CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters
Motto:	"We keep the guns loaded"

The second USS Butte (AE-27) was a Kilauea-class ammunition ship in the United States Navy.

Butte was laid down July 21, 1966 by General Dynamics, Quincy, Massachusetts and was christened and launched August 7, 1967. She was commissioned on December 14, 1968 in the Boston Naval Shipyard and assigned to the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, originally homeported in Norfolk, Virginia.

During the crisis in Jordan in 1970, Butte was awarded a Meritorious Unit Citation for her peacekeeping role in that operation.

From December 1972 to July 1973 she operated in the Tonkin Gulf and was awarded the Vietnam Service Medal with one battle star.

Shortly after getting underway from Norfolk on 3 September 1974, Butte suffered a major fire in the main switchboard, disrupting all ship support electrical supply. She was towed back to the naval base for repairs which included replacing the switchboard.

In July 1978, Butte's homeport was temporarily shifted to Brooklyn, New York where she underwent a major overhaul. In June 1979, her homeport then became Naval Weapons Station Earle, New Jersey. Butte underwent another major overhaul in Mobile, Alabama from August 1985 to May 1986 and a short Phased Maintenance refitting yard period from April 1988 to September 1988.

Butte was a big part of Operation Goldenrod during a 1987 Mediterranean deployment when she helped with the arrest of two Lebanese terrorists in international waters off the coast of Lebanon.

In September 1995, Butte began her last deployment as part of the USS America's Battlegroup. She spent October operating in the Adriatic Sea, supporting air strikes in Bosnia as part of Operation Deliberate Force. The ship also visited Cannes, France as the U.S. Navy's representative to the annual Admiral De Grasse birthday celebration. In mid November, Butte headed south through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea. The ship delivered turkeys and other supplies for holiday meals to United States embassies in Jordan, Eritrea, Yemen and Djibouti. Upon departure from the Persian Gulf, Butte returned to the Adriatic, supporting the NATO Peace Implementation Forces in Operation Joint Endeavor. Between operations in the Adriatic in January and February, she spent her time completing ammunition exchanges and "rollback" among the ammunition facilities in the Mediterranean. On her way home across the Atlantic in February 1996, Butte and America conducted the last underway replenishment operation for America prior to her decommission. Butte was scheduled to return to port on 24 February 1996, however, offsetting winds around Sandy Point, kept her from entering port until 3 days later.

She was decommissioned in 1996 and placed in service with the Military Sealift Command, where she became USNS Butte (T-AE-27). Like five of the six other ships of her class, she was overhauled upon the transfer: accommodations were improved, the main armament was taken out and she was outfitted for reduced civilian crewing. On May 24, 2004, she was put out of service by the MSC, stricken from the Naval Vessel Register and transferred to the NAVSEA Inactive Ships Maintenance Facility in Philadelphia awaiting her disposal. On July 3, 2006, Butte was sunk as a target off the east coast of the United States using Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles and a Mark 48 torpedo fired from USS San Juan. Coincidentally, the previous USS Butte was also sunk deliberately in 1948 after use as a target ship in Operation Crossroads.