Pacific Ocean Deployment
Following shakedown, Vega sailed for the U.S. West Coast and duty with the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Between January 1956 and mid-1964, Vega made 13 deployments to the Far East, usually about four months in length. During this time, the versatile storeship sailed an average of over 30,000 miles per year and routinely visited Yokosuka and Sasebo, Japan; Hong Kong; Subic Bay, Philippines; and Kaohsiung, Formosa, with an occasional run to Kobe and Iwakuni, Japan. In 1956, Vega set a record for ships of her type when she provisioned Shangri-La (CVA-38) at a rate of 218 tons per hour. In 1963, the Vega again proved herself to be the Navy's fastest working storeship as she delivered 117 tons of provisions to Ranger (CVA-61) in just 27 minutes, giving her a transfer rate of 245 tons per hour.
Read more about this topic: USS Vega (AF-59)
Famous quotes containing the words pacific ocean, pacific and/or ocean:
“It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.... It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“And such the trust that still were mine,
Though stormy winds swept o’er the brine,
Or though the tempest’s fiery breath
Roused me from sleep to wreck and death.
In ocean cave, still safe with Thee
The germ of immortality!
And calm and peaceful shall I sleep,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep.”
—Emma Hart Willard (1787–1870)