"The Nucleus Crew began forming up in the first two months
of 1980 and I arrived to join the men in March. The ship's
hull had already been launched and we helped oversee the
remaining phases of construction. We were also tasked to
maintain an active overview of the progress of construction
of the remaining ships in the class, pending the arrival of
their nucleus crews. Meanwhile the Balance crew, under the
Prospective Executive Officer, was gathering in San Diego.
All was on track for a fall delivery of the ship, when the
builder was in the early stages of operating the boilers and
caused a significant explosion in the starboard boiler's
Economizer. That set us back almost three months, extending
the Nucleus crew on site. The Balance crew remained in San
Diego and took advantage of the increased time by attending
additional worthwhile classes at the various local training
facilities on a "standby basis."
The ship was delivered in Oakland, California the final days
of 1980, with the Nucleus Crew aboard as passengers, while
the builder provided a skeleton civilian crew to steam the
ship via the Panama Canal, as stipulated in the building
contract.
On the 9th of January 1981, on a rare sunny winter day in
Oakland, USS CIMARRON (AO-177) was put into commission. Vice
Admiral Baggett, Commander, Surface Force Pacific was the
principal speaker. As captured on local television, the ship
came to life with the crew trotting aboard from the
ceremonial site on the pier to manning the rail and all
decks, accompanied by celebratory whistles and the rigging
of dress ship.
Thereafter USS CIMARRON completed the trials necessary to
establish the acceleration/deceleration and turning
characteristics, both empty and fully loaded, for the class
of ships, of which she was the first. We came up with the
appropriate motto, "First In Service," which slogan we did
our very best to fulfill thereafter.
Thereafter one of the first order of business was to
correct the cavitations problem presented by the five-bladed
propeller's crashing mixed air and water currents against
the hull. The sound was so loud that hearing protection
would have had to be worn in the after crew's quarters when
traveling at higher speed. An approximately fifty foot
shaped fin was added to each side of the underwater hull and
the problem resolved for the whole class of oilers.
After full work-up and participation in several major West
Coast exercises (one with a total of 147 men aboard), our
home port was changed to Pearl Harbor. After that surprise,
personal upheaval for almost everyone was completed, USS
CIMARRON steamed hundreds of miles south to meet three
Australian and one New Zealand destroyers enroute to Hawaii
to participate in a Multi-Nation Eastern Pacific Exercise.
CIMARRON, along with these four destroyers and a US Navy
cruiser, posed as the simulated threat to a major combined
Navy fleet transiting from Southern California to the
Hawaiian Islands.
From commissioning until deployment to the Western Pacific
in November 1982, CIMARRON successfully completed over a
hundred underway replenishments. Many of those fuel
deliveries were conducted at experimental speeds up to
eighteen knots."
Robert S. Black
