Canisteo (AO 99) - Naval Cruise Book

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Senior Departmental Assistants CW03 Stanley C. Kogutkiewicz Main Propulsion Assistant BMCM(SW) Roger A, LaCross St-iip ' s Bo ' sun BTCS(SW) Edward V. Joyner Senior Enlisted Propulsion Engineer ETC(SW) Gregory A. Scott 3M Coordinator

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Department IHeads LCDR Ronald G. Keim First Lieutenant LCDR Michael B. Shepperd Ctiief Engineer LT William A. Macht Operations Ofticer LT Alvin L. Peschke, SC Supply Otficer LT Chris E. Buck, CHC Chaplain

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History of the USS CANISTEO (AO 99) The history of the CANISTEO is a 42-year saga of versatility, support and dependability. Built by Bethle- hem-Sparrows Point Shipyard under a U.S. Maritime Commission contract, she received a commission on 3 December, 1945 under the command of LCDR E. L. Denton, USNR. She is the next to the last ship built in a class of 24 oilers v hich v» as originally designed in the mid 1930s for Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. CANISTEO ' s first year set the pace for the rest of her history. On her maiden assignment she delivered diesel fuel to the Allied occupation forces in Ger- many. She returned west to spend time training in the Caribbean before she sailed north to Greenland and Iceland. She concluded her first year of service by steaming south through the Panama Canal to the opposite end of the earth, where she played a criti- cal role in Operation High Jump, the largest scien- tific expedition ever to explore Antarctica at the time. Supplying fuel to the fleet is CANISTEO ' s primary mission, but by no means is it her only one. In her early history she played a particularly major role in transferring personnel from one ship to another. In 1957 while operating with the Sixth Fleet, she per- formed what is believed to be a record for trans- ferring personnel by highline at sea: a total of 254 persons in less than 24 hours. CANISTEO has a long history for aiding ships in distress. In 1946 she towed a disabled merchantman to safety. Nine years later in August 1955, the U.S. Maritime Administration commended CANISTEO for her help extinguishing a fire on the SS JOHN STEPHEN- SON. Her premier rescue occurred in the late Janu- ary of 1961, when the modern-day pirate Henrique Galvao and 50-100 armed men seized the Portu- guese luxury liner SANTA MARIA. CANISTEO chased the pirates 3000 miles and was present in Recife, Brazil for their capture. During September and October of 1965 CANIS- TEO entered the realm of Boreas Rex while operat- ing in the North Atlantic, whereupon all crew mem- bers became true ice- and brine-encrusted Bluenoses. The following month, she again pro- ceeded to the opposite end of the earth to South Africa, where she replenished American naval units returning from the Far East. On the completion on this 14,000 mile deployment, CANISTEO returned to Norfolk manned entirely by a crew of Bluenosed Shellbacks. In January 1967 CANISTEO returned to her birth- place at Bethlehem Steel Shipyard, where she had her forward superstructure and a hull section amid- ships removed and replaced. The main deck, previ- ously open on the sides and covered by a wooden deck on the 01 level, was now enclosed entirely in steel. The Navy ' s new electro-hydraulic winches and rigs replaced the steam winches and first-generation unrep gear. Most importantly though, she was 91 feet longer and capable of carrying not only fuel, but refrigerated and dry stores, bottled gases, lube oils, 600 tons of ammunition and over 6.7 million gal- lons of jet and diesel fuels. Returning to the fleet in January 1969, the now AOJ(Jumbo)-99 reasserted her place. After leaving refresher training in Cuba with the highest score earned by on auxiliary in years, she reported to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. During seven months in the Med, 1969-1970, CANISTEO provided replenishment services 341 times, establishing a new record for Sixth Fleet oilers as she worked the bugs out of the Navy ' s new unrep technology.