TARBATNESS RFA (A345)

The full index of our ship stamp archive
Post Reply
shipstamps
Posts: 0
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2009 8:12 pm

TARBATNESS RFA (A345)

Post by shipstamps » Wed Feb 25, 2009 3:37 pm


Built under yard No. 2018 as supply and store ship by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd., Wallsend-on-Tyne, U.K for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) Service.
01 April 1965 keel laid down.
01 February 1967 launched under the name RFA TARBATNESS (A345) one of the Ness class store ships.
Tonnage 12.359 gross, 4.744 net, 7.832 dwt. Dim. 159.7 x 22 x 6.7m. (draught)
Powered by one 8-cyl. Wallsend-Sulzer 8RD76 diesel 11.520 bhp., speed 17.5 knots. One propeller.
Crew 151.
21 March 1967 commissioned.

She is fitted out to transfer bulk supplies of naval and victualling stores rapidly to Royal Navy ship whilst underway by jackstay from six separate points, or by helicopters from her flight deck.
The supplies are stored on pallets, and the pallets are transported from the holds by lifts, roller transport and fork lifts to the transfer points on deck.
She was later refitted in an Assault Landing Ship, which enabled her to carry 1.300 Mariners, six landings craft and three helicopters.
1978 Decommissioned.

When the United States Navy urgently required combat stores ships, to support carrier battle groups in the Indian Ocean area during the Iranian hostage crisis, the United States Military Sealift Command bought her and the two other ships of her class in 1981.
01 November 1981 commissioned under the name USNS SPICA (T-AFS 9).
Displacement 10.205 ton light, 16.680 fully loaded.
Armament nil.
Two CH-46 helicopters.
Crew 123 and 47 navy personnel.
First based in the Pacific but from June 2001 based in the Atlantic.

25 January 2008 decommissioned at Philadelphia and stricken from the MSC rolls, and turned over to the Navy Inactive Ships Program in Philadelphia, and laid up awaiting disposal.
2009 Still there.

Tristan da Cunha 1978 10p sg 251, scott?

Source: Log Book. Register of Merchant ships completed in 1967. http://www.btinternet.com/~warships/Pos ... A/ness.htm http://www.navysite.de/afs/afs9.htm

aukepalmhof
Posts: 7771
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:28 am

Re: TARBATNESS RFA (A345)

Post by aukepalmhof » Thu Jun 12, 2014 10:40 am

06 May 2009 during a fleet exercise used as target and scuttled.

Source: Internet.

Post Reply