USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62), named for United States Navy officer Lieutenant William Charles Fitzgerald, is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer in the US Navy.
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| USS Fitzgerald |
In early April 2004, it was announced that Fitzgerald would be one of fifteen destroyers and three cruisers that would be deployed to counter ballistic missile threats worldwide. She arrived in Yokosuka, Japan, on 30 September 2004, to join the US 7th Fleet after participating in a personnel exchange known as “Super Swap”. One-hundred forty sailors from the destroyer O’Brien transferred to Fitzgerald and 95 of Fitzgerald’s sailors joined the decommissioning unit for O’Brien. She is now home-ported at Yokosuka Naval Base in Yokosuka, Japan, and is part of Destroyer Squadron 15.
In March 2011, in company with the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, Fitzgerald was deployed off northeastern Honshu, Japan, to assist with relief efforts after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
On 16 November 2011, while docked in Manila, Philippines, Fitzgerald acted as the site where US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario signed the Manila Declaration calling for multilateral talks to resolve maritime disputes and to mark the 60th anniversary of the American-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty
First Published: wikipedia.org
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