Navy destroyer draws huge crowd in Port Angeles

PORT ANGELES — Early Tuesday morning, more than 1,000 people were lined up through the Port of Port Angeles to take a tour of the USS Momsen, a U.S. Navy destroyer in town for the Fourth of July holiday.

The Momsen is a 505-foot, Arleigh Burke-class destroyer built in 2004 and stationed in Everett, which has been the ship’s homeport for its entire career, according to commanding officer Commander Ryan Downing.

“She is exclusively a ship that has been homeported in the Pacific Northwest,” Downing said. “Upon commissioning, she had been homeported in Everett, and she has been there for almost 20 years.”

The ship is designed for several different mission types, including anti-air and anti-submarine warfare, search and rescue and anti-surface combat using its complement of vertically launched missiles.

Downing — who’s been in command of the ship since December — said the Momsen can be deployed all over the globe. It recently made a stop in Homer, Alaska, after a tour in the Arabian Gulf and the Western Pacific.

The ship’s main weapon is its missile battery, but the Momsen also has a 5-inch gun on the bow which it uses for land bombardment.

Fire Controlman First Class Charlie Beyer couldn’t give an exact range for the cannon but said, “if you can see it, basically we can shoot it.”

In addition to its basic crew of 280, the Momsen at times also hosts a helicopter crew with an additional 30 crew members and two MH-60 helicopters, which can conduct anti-submarine warfare or search-and-rescue missions.

One visitor to the Momsen on Tuesday morning was retired Capt. Glenn Wiggins, who joined the Navy out of college in 1955.

Despite being in the Navy, Wiggins said he never liked ships and “avoided them like the plague,” opting instead to fly land-based PV-2 Neptune planes from Whidbey Island.

Wiggins, who also is a former Port Angeles City Council member and mayor, said he heard about the Momsen’s visit and decided to join a tour specifically for veterans.

The ship is named for Rear Admiral Charles Momsen, who, in addition to his service in World War II, was a pioneer in submarine rescue.

His invention — the Momsen lung — was an early rebreather designed for emergency submarine escapes. Momsen was called on to direct the rescue of the crew of the USS Squalus, a submarine that sank off the coast of New Hampshire in 1939. The incident was chronicled in the book, “The Terrible Hours,” by Peter Maas.

Momsen was nicknamed “the Lucky Swede” and the crew of the USS Momsen keep that name to this day.

“It’s something that has stuck with us, something that is embraced by all my sailors,” Downing said. “We refer to each other as Lucky Swedes at all times and we double down on that with the motto of the ship, which is ‘Rise Above.’”

Downing said the visit to Port Angeles is a great opportunity to connect with the community and the town, which has its own naval history.

“I know ships of sail and steam used to sail through here in the 1850s, the Great White Fleet in the early 1900s, and so for us to be able to bring one of our active commissioned ships back to Port Angeles on July 4th is quite amazing, especially because Momsen has been a Pacific Northwest ship for its entire life,” Downing said.

The Momsen’s crew members participated in several of Port Angeles’ holiday festivities Tuesday, including the hot dog eating contest, a baseball game and the town’s parade.

“This is an opportunity to reconnect with a community that does have that naval heritage,” Downing said.

“For my sailors, it’s an opportunity for them to interact with the community, the families, especially the children, participate in the festivities, bridge that togetherness and show the community what the sailors are capable of.”

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Reporter Peter Segall can be reached at peter.segall@peninsuladailynews.com.