A destroyer’s first deployment took an unexpected turn

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii—The USS Daniel Inouye’s maiden deployment was supposed to be seven months long, and include mostly “encouraging stability” by working with regional partners like Japan and Korea as part of the Theodore Roosevelt strike group. But as tensions in the Red Sea heated up, the group’s deployment was extended, and the brand-new destroyer received a fresh tasking: deter aggression and protect “the free flow of commerce” in the waters of the Middle East.

While there, the crew heard an emergency call.

“A distressed mariner is a distressed mariner,” Cmdr. Kevin Dore, the commander of the Inouye, said Friday after his ship and crew tied up at their homeport here. “If an emergency like that happens, it is ‘Get there as fast as you can and do everything you can’ to save what, in this case, was two distressed mariners who happened to be Iranian.”

The crew sent search-and-rescue swimmers out in a small boat, rescued the mariners, and gave them medical assistance.

“That was really one of those moments where we see the team fully come together, because we knew there were lives at stake, and the crew gets that. It’s incredible to watch that happen and really to be able to take action and to make a difference,” Dore said.

Cmdr. Ryan Kelly, the ship’s executive officer, said the crew quickly drew on their training.

“Everyone was cool under pressure, and they executed the mission just like we asked, every single time. And that was just another perfect example of being ready for anything,” Kelly said.

The Inouye returned home Friday to a crowd of cheering families holding signs, leis, and in one case, a Starbucks iced coffee with a curly straw.

“I’ve been a part of a lot of great crews before, but this team on board Daniel Inouye is one of the most special and unique groups of people that I’ve ever been a part of,” Kelly said. “Every challenge, every piece of adversity that we felt through an entire nine-month deployment, they just delivered every single time.”

The homecoming is a key milestone for the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, which was commissioned in 2021 and named for Sen. Daniel Inouye, who represented Hawaii in Congress from 1959, when it became a state, until his death in 2012. Inouye earned the Medal of Honor for his service in the Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II.

The destroyer served as the air and missile defense commander for the Roosevelt strike group during the deployment, and Dore said the ship’s helicopter detachment did “a massive amount of flight ops,” the vast majority of which were at night.

“We asked a lot of them, and they delivered,” he said.