Welcome Aboard!!
The "Orient Express" is at your service...
USS White Plains (AFS-4)

 

Built in 1968 in San Diego by National Steel & Shipbuilding Company, she was a "Mars"-Class combat replenishment vessel. Powered by three Babcock & Wilcox conventional boilers (two on-line, one off-line for maintenance or stand-by), ships of this class were designed to travel at high-speed with carrier battle groups.
 

The ship was the Navy's sea-going version of K-Mart, Sears, Wal-Mart & Costco -- wrapped in a hull.  WHITE PLAINS was a floating warehouse, gas station, airport & supermarket; with everything from jet engines, issue clothing, sides of beef, ice cream, ammo, three flavors of Navy gas (JP-4 jet fuel, Navy black oil & JP-5 naval fuel), frozen vegetables, and (most important) mail from home. 

Because of her speed, WHITE PLAINS was affectionately called "The Orient Express" because of her swift delivery of fuel, supplies & food by helicopter & alongside to Seventh Fleet ships. 

With a crew compliment of 25 officers & 450 enlisted (excluding the Air Department, with eight officers & 20 enlisted), her homeport was at U.S. Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Japan.


Being a "forward deployed" (not Stateside-based) vessel, we routinely travelled to many ports-of-call in the Western Pacific, Persian Gulf & Indian Ocean.


Besides travel, our main job was to provide food, fuel & spare parts to aircraft carriers& their escorts (collectively known as a "battle group").  We were part of the Naval Logistics Support Force, which included oilers & ammo ships (such as NAVASOTA, MISSIPILLION, SACRAMENTO, PASSUMPSIC, MAUNA KEA & SHASTA).

We received cargo bound for the battle groups from Naval Supply Depots at Yokosuka & Subic Bay, and through support facilities in Hong Kong; Pusan, Korea; Bahrain, UAE and Singapore.


WHITE PLAINS routinely replenished the carriers MIDWAY (another Yokosuka-homeported ship), CONSTELLATION, RANGER, KITTY HAWK and ENTERPRISE by two methods:
Underway (side-by-side) replenishment, also called UNREP.  In this picture you can see WHITE PLAINS' deck seamen readying a shuttle rig and connector probe that's part of the STREAM (Standard Tensioned Replenishment Alongside Method) system used by U.S. & allied warships.

Cargo is placed in a sling below the STREAM shuttle, which rides on a tensioned highline; much like a ski resort cable car. A hydraulic ram at each of WHITE PLAINS' transfer stations maintained about a ton of constant tension on the highline.

Huge elevators moved palletized cargo from four hold levels; each almost the size of a basketball court. One four-deck section of the ship was designated for refrigerated & frozen stores. An internal fleet of 10 electric forklifts moved cargo on the elevators, main & flight decks. Two ships could be replenished simultaneously from four port & starboard stations (no waiting!); all while travelling at 20+ knots!

WHITE PLAINS also carried two Boeing CH-46 "Sea Knight" helicopters; a detachment of Helicopter Combat Support Squadron THREE (HC-3), home-based at Naval Air Station North Island (in San Diego).  Used primarily for aerial (or VERTREP) replenishment, the pair (dubbed "Hotel California" & "Reaper") would take cargo from our aft flight deck in cargo nets on their belly hooks to other ships steaming nearby.  They were also used for personnel transfer, medical evacuation and search & rescue.

Orignally dubbed "The Golden Arches Express" (complete with the gold arches on their tails & the old McDonald's slogan, "We do it all for you" painted on their bellies), it was later changed to "Orient Express Airlines," keeping with our ship's nickname.
 

We were a hard-working ship & crew; worked hard, 
trained hard, played hard.

Long days were the norm for us, but we always delivered 
the goods when called!
Sadly, WHITE PLAINS was struck from the Navy's registry & decommissioned in 1993. Her sisters, SYLVANIA, CONCORD, MARS, SAN JOSE & SAN DIEGO have been converted to Military Sealift Command (MSC) vessels with civilian crews.

She now resides quietly at anchor in the
Inactive Ship Facility, West Loch 
near Naval Station Pearl Harbor,
awaiting recall to duty or the scrapper's torch.

A footnote: I recently visited Honolulu on vacation with my wife and took her to see WHITE PLAINS at anchor at the inactive ship facility.  Through a chain-link fence I saw her.  Though her name and hull numbers were painted-over in haze grey, her ship's crest (now faded with age from the Hawaiian sun) still emblazons the helo hangar door.  She still looks like she could be ready to sail.  A flood of great memories came rushing back as I strained to look for any signs of life aboard her.

As I turned to leave with a heavy heart, I could have sworn
I heard my name being passed over her 1MC --
or was it a breeze from the Ko'olau Mountains?

This page last updated: October 21, 1999

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