A destroyer’s first deployment took an unexpected turn
Diverted from the western Pacific, USS Daniel Inouye’s Red Sea duty included the rescue of Iranian mariners.
Jennifer Hlad | October 6, 2024
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii—The USS Daniel Inouye’s maiden deployment was supposed to be seven months long, and include mostly “encouraging stability” by working with regional partners like Japan and Korea as part of the Theodore Roosevelt strike group. But as tensions in the Red Sea heated up, the group’s deployment was extended, and the brand-new destroyer received a fresh tasking: deter aggression and protect “the free flow of commerce” in the waters of the Middle East.
While there, the crew heard an emergency call.
“A distressed mariner is a distressed mariner,” Cmdr. Kevin Dore, the commander of the Inouye, said Friday after his ship and crew tied up at their homeport here. “If an emergency like that happens, it is ‘Get there as fast as you can and do everything you can’ to save what, in this case, was two distressed mariners who happened to be Iranian.”
The crew sent search-and-rescue swimmers out in a small boat, rescued the mariners, and gave them medical assistance.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2024/10/destroyers-first-deployment-took-unexpected-turn/400083/?oref=d1-homepage-river
