Saturn III (AFS-10)
1983–2009
The Roman god of seed sowing and the harvest.
III
(AFS-10: displacement 16,680; length 523'; beam 72'; draft 26'; speed 18 knots; complement 193; armament 8 3-inch; aircraft flight deck (but no hangar) for 2 Boeing Vertol UH-46 Sea Knights; class Sirius)
The third Saturn (AFS-10) was laid down as British Ness-class fleet stores ship Stromness (A.344) on 1 October 1965 at Wallsend, United Kingdom, by Swan, Hunter, & Wigham Richardson, Ltd.; launched on 1 September 1966; placed in service with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary on 1 June 1967; and sold to the U.S. Military Sealift Command (MSC) on 1 January 1983.
The ship was inactivated and stricken from the Navy List on 6 April 2009, and then transferred to the Naval Sea Systems Command Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility at Philadelphia, Pa. MSC-manned salvage ship Grasp (T-ARS-51) towed Saturn to sea, and aircraft and ships of the George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) Carrier Strike Group, including guided missile cruisers Gettysburg (CG-64) and Philippine Sea (CG-58), guided missile destroyer Mitscher (DDG-57), Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawks of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 70, and Lockheed P-3C Orions from Patrol Squadrons 10 and 45, sank Saturn with 5-inch, 25 millimeter, Mk 15 Close In Weapon System, and .50 caliber gunfire, air-to-surface missiles, and bombs during a training exercise, about 250 miles off the North Carolina coast on 10 October 2010.
Detailed history under construction.
Mark L. Evans
3 April 2014