Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard Repairs About Half of RIMPAC Ships

Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility (PHNSY & IMF) answered the call for 132 repairs to U.S. and foreign surface ships taking part in the 2012 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise that ended Aug. 3.

Held every two years by the U.S. Pacific Fleet, the two-month-long RIMPAC is the world’s largest multinational maritime exercise. Twenty-two nations participated this year. Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Russia, Singapore, and the United States sent more than 40 surface ships and submarines.

The Shipyard began providing maintenance support as ships started arriving in port in advance of the exercise. Almost half of the trouble calls came in the week before and week after the June 29 start date of RIMPAC. By the end of the exercise, the Shipyard and contractors had worked on jobs on about half of the RIMPAC ships.

The majority of the repair calls concerned communications and other electronics gear. Fleet Technical Support Division, Code 210, was the Shipyard shop most impacted by the requests for technical assistance.

Surface Operations Superintendent William Sullivan commended Code 210 personnel for their expert guidance to ships’ crews on numerous high-tech issues. He also acknowledged “great support from our business agents, Barry Ferreira and Neil Teves, … (and) ship superintendent support, led by Senior Chief Engineman Eduardo Romero and Chief Engineman Samuel Bernal.”

The Surface Ship Operations Division, Code 103, led by Assistant Project Superintendent Henry Mata, and Shop 11 shipfitters and Shop 26 welders, led by Shipfitter Supervisor I Calvin Chang and Welder Supervisor I James Joseph Jr., displayed outstanding effort on structural repairs, Sullivan noted. Code 760 divers also provided outstanding support on short notice to numerous ships. “It was a team effort and the entire project contributed to supporting the fleet,” he said.

The shipyard is a field activity of the Naval Sea Systems Command and a one-stop regional maintenance center for the Navy’s surface ships and submarines. It is the largest industrial employer in the state of Hawaii with a combined civilian and military workforce of about 4,850. Strategically located in the mid-Pacific, the Navy’s largest ship repair facility between the West Coast and the Far East is about a week of steam time closer to potential major regional contingencies in East Asia than sites on the West Coast.

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Naval Today Staff, August 29, 2012; Image:Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard