What do you make of the fact...there were no armed weapons, bombs, etc..or fuel on the ship? IOW...it would have blown up..quite fast.
That said...I don't quite understand either...why get rid of a seemingly functional ship..that seemingly could be re-fitted.
Sad to see. The Thach was one of the ships in the battle group during my first WESTPAC.
I think those older Perry class FFGs were getting tough to maintain. There were parts issues. I got a chance to go on one when it visited Boston, and in talking to some of the guys it sounded like the vessel was somewhat compromised in its seaworthiness. It sounded like it was good for interdiction duty over in the Persian Gulf, but...going across the Atlantic sounded like an adventure. It had its missiles removed, had no launcher, as I recall. (This was a while back) He said they couldn’t be upgraded to the SM2, and the SM1 was compromised, they couldn’t maintain the missiles due to (IIRC) the actual propellant section of the missile wasn’t being produced any more, so they just pulled the entire thing out. It had no missiles. No Harpoons or SM1 missiles, as I recall.
So, to me, the vessel seemed compromised. He said they did interdiction duty, and the guys were ribbing the Chief about a time they had to sink some half sunken Iranian aluminum fishing boat because it was a navigation hazard, and...they simply couldn’t sink it! They gleefully told the story while the Chief fidgeted good naturedly, I got the impression he thought it was kind of funny after the fact, but...the thing wouldn’t sink. They filled it full of holes with their twin .50s, then turned their cannon on it, and finally the CIWS, and eventually it sank.