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THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2022
USS Oregon: First Navy ship to carry the state’s name since 1893
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submarine or ship, the Mk-48
has advanced proximity fuses
to detonate with maximum
explosive force.
When fi red at surface
ships, the Mk-48 torpedo
dives under the hull and det-
onates at the keel, the blast
breaking the back of the ship.
The USS Oregon has a
quiver of variety when it
comes to weaponry. It can fi re
surface-skimming Harpoon
anti-ship missiles, a weapon
that is now reaching Ukrainian
coastal defense troops fi ght-
ing Russia’s attempt to bottle
up the port of Odesa.
The submarine also is
equipped with BGM-109
Tomahawk cruise missiles
that can reach targets on land
up to 1,500 miles away. It
can carry conventional and
nuclear warheads.
The USS Oregon is also
designed to house and qui-
etly deploy Navy SEAL
commando teams on covert
operations.
The submarine will move
through the water pow-
ered by pump-jet propulsion
instead of traditional screws
with blades — reducing the
amount of bubbles and noise
— called cavitation — that
can be heard on sonar.
The submarine’s S9G
nuclear reactor gives the USS
Oregon a top speed of 25
knots submerged. Its reactor
will run for about 30 years
without any additional fuel.
The nuclear power gives the
submarine virtually unlim-
ited range and the ability to
stay submerged for up to three
months.
The advanced systems of
the submarine also cut the
size of crew needed at sea.
The submarine has 15 offi cers
and 120 crew. The battleship
could operate with 600 offi -
cers and crew.
The Navy has commis-
sioned 19 Virginia-class sub-
marines — the USS Oregon
is the 20th. Eight more are
under construction, including
what would become the USS
Idaho.
Vice Adm. Michael J. Con-
nor told Congress in 2015 that
the USS Oregon and its sister
boats were “game changers”
in maintaining a balance of
power with Russia and China.
“The undersea arena is the
most opaque of all warfi ght-
ing domains,” Connor said.
“It is easier to track a small
object in space than it is to
U.S. Navy
A Virginia-class submarine
similar to the USS Oregon.
U.S. Navy
The crew of the USS Oregon line the railings as the battleship steams along at sea in the late 1890s.
track a large submarine, with
tremendous fi repower, under
the water.”
The commissioning of the
USS Oregon ended a long gap
in Navy history without a ship
named for the state.
Once pride of the fl eet
The fi rst USS Oregon was
a brigantine purchased in
1842 from a private owner to
be used as an exploring ship
until 1849.
The Confederacy seized
a privately owned steam-
wheeler mail boat during the
Civil War and converted it
into blockage runner chris-
tened CSS Oregon. It was
scuttled and burned by its
crew as Union forces closed
in on New Orleans in April
1863.
By 1889, the Navy had
adopted a tradition of naming
battleships after states.
In 1893, the USS Oregon
was launched at a cost $4 mil-
lion — about $115 million in
today’s dollars. The nation’s
third battleship, it was 351
feet long — 26 feet shorter
than the USS Oregon subma-
rine. It was the fi rst American
warship named for the 33rd
state.
More than 20,000 people
came to the Union Iron Works
shipyard on Mare Island to
watch the ship slide into San
Francisco Bay.
“The Oregon In Her Ele-
ment” said a wire report head-
line in the New York Times.
The battleship’s four coal-
fi red boilers could push the
ship to a top speed of 15 knots
with a range of 4,900 nautical
miles before requiring refuel-
ing. It was nicknamed “Bull-
dog of the Navy” for the way
its bow thrashed through open
seas.
In 1898, the USS Oregon
made headlines by steam-
ing more than 15,700 miles
from San Francisco, around
South America’s Cape Horn,
to Florida — arriving 66 days
after it left, just as the Span-
ish-American War broke out.
At the Battle of Santiago
de Cuba, the USS Oregon
cornered a Spanish cruiser
and ordered it to run aground
and surrender. The New York
Herald newspaper published a
poem about the battleship on
its front page.
But battleship design was
evolving so rapidly that less
than 10 years after it was
commissioned, the USS Ore-
gon was obsolete — too slow,
too lightly protected, and car-
rying too many small-caliber
guns.
It would be suicide for the
ship to go blow-to-blow with
the new type of dreadnaughts
that began to appear in 1906.
Featuring all large-caliber,
long-range guns in turrets
mounted on the deck, their
thicker armor plating made it
easier to absorb hits from the
biggest guns of opponents.
Reduced to a ceremonial
role, the USS Oregon was
decommissioned in 1919 and
docked on the Portland water-
front for tourists to see. When
World War II came along, the
old ship was pressed into the
fi ght, as scrap metal. Struck
from the Naval Vessel Regis-
ter, the hull became IX-22, an
“unclassifi ed miscellaneous
vessel.”
The husk of the battleship
did get into the war zone, as
an ammunition barge towed
across the Pacifi c for the bat-
tle of Guam. American troops
abandoned it there and the last
remnants were sold for scrap
by a Japanese company in
1956.
The USS Oregon’s mast
and bow shield were pre-
served and used in 1956 to
create the Battleship Oregon
Memorial in what is now Tom
McCall Waterfront Park in
Portland. It’s frequently used
as a meeting point for down-
town demonstrations.
No battleships put Navy
in a bind
After ship-launched Jap-
anese planes attacked Pearl
Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the
Navy made aircraft carriers
the premier ships of the fl eet.
The USS Missouri was the
last battleship commissioned
in the Navy, one of four Iowa-
class battleships ordered and
being built at the time of Pearl
Harbor. Commissioned in
June 1944, its most historic
role was as the site of the Jap-
anese surrender in Tokyo Bay
in September 1945.
After World War II, no
more battleships were built,
putting the Navy in a politi-
cal bind.
Naming a battleship after a
state was political prestige for
members of Congress, who
voted on the Navy’s budget.
In the 1960s, the Navy
named six guided-missile
cruisers after states.
Attack submarines had tra-
ditionally been named after
sea creatures — the Tang,
Snook, Seahorse and Wahoo
were among the top subma-
rines to sink Japanese ship-
ping during World War II.
But pressure mounted
to name attack submarines
after major cities, then states.
Submariners didn’t like the
switches, but Adm. Hyman
Rickover, the father of the
nuclear-powered Navy, once
observed, tradition and
political expediency don’t
always match.
“I guess I’m a tradition-
alist — I think submarines
should be named after fi sh,’’
r etired Navy Capt. William
F. McGonagle told the New
York Times in 1996. ‘’But as
Admiral Rickover said, ‘fi sh
don’t vote.’’’
When the new Sea-
wolf-class fast attack sub-
marine was introduced to the
fl eet, one was named USS
Connecticut. Since the intro-
duction of the Virginia-class
submarines, nearly all have
been named for states.
In 2011, U.S. Sen. Jeff
Merkley, an Oregon Demo-
crat, inquired about naming a
ship after Oregon. A constit-
uent’s letter had noted a long
gap in having a USS Oregon
in the fl eet.
Merkley wrote a letter to
then-Navy Secretary Ray
Mabus asking him to put Ore-
gon near the top of the queue
for submarine naming.
“It would be a great honor
to the sailors, marines, mil-
itary service members as
well as citizens of Oregon to
have one of the newest naval
submarines named in their
honor,” Merkley wrote.
In October 2014, Mabus
came to the Battleship Ore-
gon Memorial in Portland to
announce that a fast attack
submarine with hull number
SSN-793 would be named the
USS Oregon.
The Navy plans on keep-
ing the new USS Oregon
much longer than its prede-
cessor’s namesake. The Navy
forecast the USS Oregon will
be in service until at least the
mid-2050s.
Saturday was offi cially
Day One in the Navy for the
new USS Oregon.
“May this crew remem-
ber that at the heart of service
is compassion and love: love
of this country, love of this
people, love of her values,”
Gov. Kate Brown said at the
ceremony.
The Oregon Capital
Bureau is a collaboration
between EO Media Group
and Pamplin Media Group.
Johnson: Former state senator widely expected to qualify for election
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Kaylee Domzalski/Oregon Public Broadcasting
Betsy Johnson, a former Democrat, often broke with Democratic
leaders on gun control when she served in the state Legislature.
Johnson,
meanwhile,
played down the incident in
a statement to news outlets.
“While the vast major-
ity of people were support-
ive, a few folks tried to shut
down productive dialogue,”
Johnson wrote. “That’s
unfortunate, but I remain
undaunted.”
The decision to invite
Johnson drew criticism of
the TEDxPortland confer-
ence from some who felt the
event was off ering free pub-
licity to a candidate whose
politics they do not agree
with. Johnson has not yet
made the November ballot,
but will collect signatures
for a nonaffi liated campaign
widely expected to qualify
for the election.
TEDxPortland issued an
apology to its audience that
evening.
“Having a potential politi-
cal candidate for public offi ce
on our stage this morning
was not the right decision,”
the organization wrote.
Assuming Johnson, who
has millions of dollars on
hand, can collect 23,744
signatures, she’ll face for-
mer House Speaker Kotek
and former House Minority
Leader Christine Drazan, a
Republican.
Kotek has been a sup-
porter of gun control laws,
while Drazan and Johnson
last year voted against a bill
mandating safe storage of
guns when not in use. John-
son has also opposed bills
allowing courts to confi scate
the guns of someone deemed
high risk, and requiring
background checks for pri-
vate gun sales.
Johnson has received
favorable ratings from the
National Rifl e Associa-
tion. And the Oregon Fire-
arms Federation, the state’s
most hard-line gun rights
group, wrote in a recent
post that “one thing John-
son most certainly has been,
is strongly and unapologeti-
cally pro-gun.”
New polling from Morn-
ing Consult suggests a broad
majority of Americans sup-
port steps such as mandatory
background checks for all
gun sales and banning peo-
ple reported as dangerous
from purchasing guns.
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