27 February 2008

Hayler Departing

Not much time for a post, but I've got a few minutes before I leave for work. This outage will end soon, so I will be back to posting on a more regular basis in a few weeks. Anyway, for now a little backstory:

I entered the Navy in '87. Bootcamp at Great Lakes, A-school at Dam Neck Virginia, and was then stationed aboard the USS Hayler, DD-997, the last of the Spruance class destroyers. I'll post later about some of my Navy travels and such, but for now I'm just posting about what I found out about a month ago.

I did an online search for Hayler a few years ago and found that she had been decommissioned, then an old buddy of mine called about a month ago and told me that, yes, he was still alive, and did I know they had decommed the Hayler? I told him I did know. Then he said, but do you know where she is now? I didn't. The picture tells the story:




They used her as a target!


Man, I just don't know how to feel about that.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How sad!

Anonymous said...

Yep. When I close my eyes, I can still walk from one deck to another and from one end to another. Standing on the fantail on a sunny day in the Carribean at about 30 knots was one of my favorite things to do.


Crot