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Career
Ordered:	8 August 1960
Laid down:	30 June 1961
Launched:	14 September 1963
Commissioned:	14 March 1964
Decommissioned:	1 October 2004
Status:	Awaiting disposal
Homeport:	Bremerton, Washington
Motto:	Ready for Service
Struck:	1 October 2004
General characteristics
Displacement:	18,884 tons light; 54,000 tons full
Length:	796 ft (243 m)
Beam:	107 ft (33 m)
Draft:	38 ft (11.6 m)
Propulsion:	2 × steam turbines, 2 × shafts, 100,000 shp (75 MW)
Speed:	25 knots
Complement:	34 officers and 602 enlisted
Armament:	2 × 20 mm Phalanx CIWS Mark 15 guns 1 × 8 cell NATO Sea Sparrow Mark 29 missile launcher

USS Sacramento (AOE-1) was the third ship in the United States Navy to bear the name, for both the Sacramento River and the capital city of California. She was the lead ship of her class of fast combat support ship.

She combined the functions of three logistics ships in one hull; fleet oiler (AO), ammunition ship (AE), and refrigerated stores ship (AFS).

Admiral Arleigh Burke originated the concept of a single supply ship system. He saw the design as an answer to logistics problems he encountered during World War II. The limited speed, range, and payload of early underway replenishment groups prevented resupply due to bad weather and tactical demands of the war. To counter these problems, the Fast Combat Support Ship (AOE) was designed.

The keel was laid for the first at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Washington on June 30, 1961. The traditional champagne bottle was broken against the bow of AOE-1 on September 14, 1963, by the ship's sponsor, Mrs. Edmund Brown, wife of the Governor of California.

Sacramento was commissioned on March 15, 1964. Undersecretary of the Navy, Paul B. Fay Jr., addressed the crowd, stating, "The greatest pleasure I have in being here today is ... participating in the commissioning of a vessel which will provide the Navy with a unique capability hitherto never contained in one ship." He added the ship would be able to "run in speed with a destroyer escort, thereby giving our fast attack carrier task forces a flexibility of action hitherto unknown."

Sacramento served in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War. It was known as a "floating supermarket" because of all the goods it carried.

Her original armament consisted of four 3-inch/50 guns. The two forward guns were replaced by Mk29 NATO Sea Sparrow in 1976 and the two aft mounts were replaced by Mk15 Phalanx CIWS in 1981. In 1995 MK-23 TAS (Target Acquisition System) was installed to facilitate NSSMS and locate and track air threats.

The FAST (Fast Automated Shuttle Transfer) cargo handling system originally installed was replaced with the STREAM (Standard Tensioned Replenishment Alongside Method) underway replenishment system in 1977.

Sacramento is considered a benchmark in West Coast shipbuilding. The ship and two of her sister ships, Seattle and Detroit, are the largest ships ever built on the West Coast as of 2005. Only Iowa-class battleships and aircraft carriers have greater displacements than Sacramento.

The ship's main engines came from the never-completed battleship Kentucky (BB-66), and deliver in excess of 100,000 shaft horsepower (75 MW) to two 23-foot (7 m) screws weighing 19.25 tons each, the largest on any ship in the Navy.

Sacramento decommissioned 1 October 2004.

See USS Sacramento for other ships of this name.

• Naval Vessel Register entry for Sacramento
• united-states-navy.com: USS Sacramento
• combatindex.com: USS Sacramento
• navsource.org: USS Sacramento

This article includes text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.