USS Bagley (FF-1069) was a of the United States Navy. She was the 18th ship of the Knox class, built as a destroyer escort (DE) and redesignated as a frigate (FF) in the 1975 USN ship reclassification. Bagley was the fourth ship of the USN named for Ensign Worth Bagley, the only US Navy officer killed in action during the Spanish–American War.
Construction and career Bagley was laid down on 5 October 1970 at Seattle, Washington, by the Lockheed Shipbuilding and Construction Company. The ship was launched on 17 April 1971, sponsored by Mrs. Marie Louise H. Bagley, widow of Admiral David Worth Bagley and posthumous sister-in-law of Ensign Worth Bagley. The vessel was commissioned on 6 May 1972 at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
1972–1979 The escort ship conducted acceptance trials along the coasts of Washington and British Columbia and then headed south for her new home port at San Diego, California, where she arrived on 25 July 1972. The warship began a restricted availability from 31 July to 9 September. She departed San Diego on 16 September, bound for Pearl Harbor and her shakedown cruise. Bagley arrived in Pearl Harbor on 22 September and operated in Hawaiian waters into October. On the 3d of that month, she stood out of Pearl Harbor and headed for San Diego. The warship reached that port on 9 October. Over the next month, she conducted exercises out of San Diego. On 15 November, Bagley entered the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and began an extended post-shakedown availability during which her main propulsion plant was converted to use Navy distillate fuel.
The warship completed repairs and modifications on 4 May 1973 and returned to San Diego that same day. She began training operations along the California coast three days later and continued those evolutions through most of the summer. She stood out of San Diego on 11 September and headed for the western Pacific. She conducted training operations in the Hawaiian Islands 17 September–26 and then resumed her westward voyage. She arrived in Yokosuka, Japan, on 5 October. A week later, the escort ship shaped a course for the Philippines. Bagley arrived in Subic Bay on 17 October for two days of upkeep and liberty. On the 19th, she weighed anchor and headed for a patrol station in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Ten days later, she received orders to accompany the aircraft carrier to the Indian Ocean. That contingency force went to the western portion of the Indian Ocean in response to hostilities that had broken out between Israel and her neighbors, Egypt and Syria (the Yom Kippur War). Bagley spent the next seven weeks on patrol in the Indian Ocean as an indication of American resolve to end the fighting in the Middle East and as a deterrent to keep Soviet forces from intervening in the conflict. During that time, she and the guided missile destroyer entered the Red Sea and docked at the port of Masawa, Ethiopia for a few days.
On 17 December 1973, Bagley reentered Subic Bay for an extended leave and upkeep period. For the remainder of the deployment, the warship participated in the usual 7th Fleet exercises punctuated by port visits to Hong Kong; Keelung, Taiwan; Buckner Bay, Okinawa; Pusan, Korea; and Yokosuka, Japan. On 20 February 1974, she departed Yokosuka and began the voyage home. The warship stopped at Midway Island and Pearl Harbor before arriving in San Diego on 8 March.
For the rest of 1974 and the first six months of 1975, she operated out of San Diego conducting a series of exercises, inspections, and qualifications. On 30 June 1975, Bagley was redesignated a frigate, FF-1069. The warship spent the month of July 1975 preparing for her second deployment to the Far East. She stood out of San Diego on 1 August. Following stops at Pearl Harbor and Guam, the frigate arrived in Subic Bay on 13 September. For the next five months, Bagley conducted normal operations—training evolutions and port visits—with ships of the 7th Fleet. She departed Subic Bay on 12 February 1976 to return to the United States. She stopped at Pearl Harbor from 26 February to 3 March before continuing on to San Diego where she arrived on 1 April. She resumed normal operations out of San Diego, and continued that duty into 1977.
On 17 February 1977, she shaped a course for Hawaiian waters where she joined ships of the American, Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand navies in Exercise RIMPAC 77. The frigate returned to San Diego on 12 March and, two days later, was drydocked in the Long Beach Naval Shipyard for hull repairs. She came out of drydock on 2 April and returned to San Diego on the 6th.
Bagley weighed anchor again 12 April 1977 and set course for the Orient. She made the usual stopover at Pearl Harbor and arrived in Subic Bay on 6 May. During this six months in the Far East, the frigate visited most of the usual liberty ports and participated in a number of training exercises with other ships of the 7th Fleet. On 6 November, she departed Yokosuka for an uninterrupted voyage to San Diego. The warship reentered her home port on 21 November and remained there through the end of the year.
The frigate conducted normal operations out of San Diego during the first six weeks of 1978. On 14 February 1978, she entered the Long Beach Naval Shipyard for an overhaul that occupied the rest of 1978. She completed post-overhaul trials and tests in January 1979 and resumed operations out of San Diego early in February. Exercises, qualifications, and tests in the southern California operating area occupied her throughout 1979 and for most of the first two months of 1980. The warship departed San Diego on 25 February, bound ultimately for the Far East. En route to the western Pacific, however, she participated in the multinational Exercise RIMPAC 80 conducted in the Hawaiian Islands. She resumed her voyage west on 19 March and entered Subic Bay on 8 April.
1980–1989 After conducting training operations—notably gunfire support drills and ASROC firings—in the Subic Bay operating area, Bagley departed the Philippines late in April in company with a task force built around the aircraft carrier . The task force constituted a part of the increased American military presence in the western Indian Ocean deemed necessary after radical Iranian students occupied the American embassy in Tehran and took the American diplomatic staff hostage. The continuing hostage crisis and hostilities between Iran and Iraq kept a large number of Navy ships on patrol in nearby waters. Bagleys task force remained in the vicinity until 29 July when it headed back to the Pacific. En route to the Philippines, she stopped at Singapore and at Pattaya, Thailand. She reentered Subic Bay on 20 August with 36 Vietnamese refugees whom she had rescued on the passage from Thailand. Bagley voyaged to Pusan, Korea, for a goodwill port call in mid-September and returned to Subic Bay on 23 September. On 1 October, the frigate got underway to return to the United States. After the customary pause at Pearl Harbor, Bagley arrived back in San Diego on 15 October. Except for a brief period underway on 20 November, the frigate remained in port at San Diego for the remainder of 1980.
She continued the inport period through the first seven weeks of 1981. On 18 February, Bagley resumed normal operations in the southern California operating area. Fleet exercises and single ship drills occupied her until 20 October 1981 when she again headed for the Far East. She stopped at Pearl Harbor 31 October – 2 November and then resumed her voyage west. Bagley arrived in Subic Bay on 22 November. She operated out of Subic Bay until early when she headed for the Indian Ocean. En route to Indian Ocean contingency operations, the warship encountered Vietnamese refugees adrift in a boat in the South China Sea. She took the boat's 37 occupants on board, sank the boat as a potential hazard to navigation, and proceeded to Singapore where she disembarked the refugees. The frigate resumed her voyage to the Indian Ocean on 12 December and arrived at Al Masirah, Oman, on the last day of 1981.
The year 1982, opened with Bagley operating in the western Indian Ocean and in the Arabian Sea. That deployment lasted until late January when she made a port visit to Mombasa, Kenya, before heading back to the Far East. On that journey, she took a very circuitous route, visiting the Australian port of Geraldton, Diego Garcia Island, and Penang in Malaysia, before returning to Subic Bay in mid-April. Late in April and early in May, Bagley took part in readiness exercises carried out near Guam in company with Constellation, and . At the conclusion of those evolutions on 8 May, the frigate set a course, via Hawaii, to the west coast and reentered San Diego on 23 May. After the customary month of post-deployment leave and upkeep, Bagley resumed normal training duty in California waters and remained so occupied for the rest of the year.
Local operations out of San Diego kept the frigate busy well into 1983. She did not set out for another overseas assignment until 9 June when she put to sea, once again bound for the western Pacific. Along the way, Bagley and her travelling companions , , , and spent a week in the Hawaiian Islands in mid-June before resuming the voyage west on the 17th. The warships "INCHOPped" (changed operational control) to the Commander, 7th Fleet, on 27 June and reached the Philippines at Manila on Independence Day 1983. Over the next five months, the frigate took part in a number of exercises at sea, most often with a task group built around Midway, and visited a series of Far Eastern ports. On 17 July 1983 enroute to Sembawang, Singapore the Bagley crossed the equator at Latitude 000.00 by Longitude 105.39.6 and presented King Neptune with worthy sailors. Late in July, she visited Singapore and Thailand before heading for a set of exercises in Korean waters carried out at the end of July and during the first part of August. After a call at Guam in late August and early September, Bagley steamed to Sasebo, Japan, whence she operated until the first week in November when she returned to the Philippines at Subic Bay. The warship made one more stop at a Japanese port, Yokosuka, and then headed back to the United States on 1 December. She called briefly at Pearl Harbor before arriving back in San Diego on 13 December 1983.
Post-deployment leave and upkeep kept Bagley immobile at San Diego for the rest of the year and during the first half of January 1984. In fact, despite a short two-day period underway between 17 and 19 January, she did not resume normal west coast operations until the second week in February when she put to sea for READIEX 84-2 and a cruise to the Pacific coast of Central America. Bagley returned to San Diego from those missions on 9 March and remained there until 22 March. At that time, the warship headed north to Esquimalt, British Columbia, where she took part in CNO Project 371, tests on new submarine torpedo designs. She completed her part in the tests on 30 March and, after visits to Vancouver, British Columbia, and to San Francisco, returned to San Diego on 11 April. Just over a month after her return, Bagley began an eight-month regular overhaul at the naval station.