Postwar Service
Sierra was deployed to the Western Pacific two more times in the next three years. Her last assignment terminated at San Diego, California on 8 April 1949; and, two months later, she sailed for Norfolk, Virginia, which was her new home port, arriving there on 29 July 1949. She serviced ships there until 6 January 1950 when she was deployed to the United States Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea as relief of the destroyer tender USS Shenandoah (AD-26), returning to Norfolk on 24 June. The tender was deployed to the Sixth Fleet again from 12 June to 6 November 1951.
Upon her return to Norfolk, Sierra moored at Pier 21, Destroyer Submarine Piers(D&S Piers). On 7 November, she was designated the flagship of Commander, Destroyer Flotilla 4 and retained this honor until 1 July 1962 when she was assigned as flagship for Commander, Cruiser Destroyer Flotilla 4. Sierra remained at Norfolk until 1959, aptly coping with the heavy demand by destroyers for repairs, which was her primary duty. For other than local operations, the longest period of time that she was away from the D&S Piers was when her services were required for Operation Springboard from 6 January to 2 March and again from 9 November to 4 December 1953.
Sierra sailed for the Mediterranean on 30 June 1959 for her third deployment with the Sixth Fleet and returned to Norfolk on 13 December to continue her work as destroyer tender. She was deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from 23 October to 14 December 1961 to tend the reserve training ships recalled to active duty during the Berlin Wall Crisis.
Read more about this topic: USS Sierra (AD-18)
Famous quotes containing the words postwar and/or service:
“Fashions change, and with the new psychoanalytical perspective of the postwar period [WWII], child rearing became enshrined as the special responsibility of mothers ... any shortcoming in adult life was now seen as rooted in the failure of mothering during childhood.”
—Sylvia Ann Hewitt (20th century)
“In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.”
—George Grosz (1893–1959)