Posted on May 16, 2022
Close to 2,000 people gathered at the Port of Charleston to celebrate the commissioning of a new Navy destroyer named for the Marine Corps’ first Black aviator.
The USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. was shrouded in a light fog the morning of May 14 as it sat in Charleston Harbor. The men and women who make up the ship’s crew, or its “lifeblood and soul,” as a U.S. Navy chaplain described them, stood at attention during the event.
The destroyer is a fighting vessel. As the crew took positions on the ship during the ceremony’s crescendo, its guns oscillated, cannons shot confetti and two fighter jets screamed across the morning sky.
Commander Daniel A. Hancock is the commissioning captain of the warship, responsible for sailing her to her homeport in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
“This American man-of-war, which my team and I labored to life, represents the cutting edge of U.S. Naval combat power,” Hancock told the crowd. “And, as of today, she’s America’s newest and most advanced guided-missile destroyer ever designed.”
Speakers at the ceremony said it was fitting the warship is named for Frank E. Petersen Jr., a Black man from Topeka, Kansas, who is remembered for his valor and courage during two combat tours in Korea and Vietnam.
Petersen joined the Navy as a seaman apprentice in 1950. He later accepted a commission as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps and, despite brutal racial indignities, rose through the military’s ranks, eventually retiring a lieutenant general in 1988. He flew in more than 350 combat missions, and had over 4,000 hours in various fighter planes, according to the Navy.
Petersen’s ferocious fighting spirit is captured in his catchphrase, which was emblazoned on a banner at the ceremony: “Into the Tiger’s Jaw.”
In an emotional speech, his longtime friend and fellow Naval aviator Carlos Campbell spoke of the prejudice he and Petersen, as well as other Black servicemen, had to overcome in breaking the military’s racial barriers.
Campbell said Petersen was told he would make a good mess steward, a low-ranking service position, when he first enlisted in the Navy. Later in his career, he was arrested on suspicion of impersonating an officer by police, who apparently did not believe a Black man could be a high-ranking serviceman.
Petersen learned from an early-morning phone call in 1979 he had been promoted to brigadier general, Campbell remembered. Petersen vomited over the side of the roiling ship upon learning the news.
Petersen died in 2015 at the age of 83. Fighting back tears, Campbell said it was “surreal” to see so many Black officers in the crowd at the ceremony.
Campbell said he has been to 55 countries, but when he returns to America, he “wants to kiss the ground.”
“Because this is the greatest country in the world,” he said. “And the best thing I ever did in my life was serve in the Navy.”
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace noted in a speech the significance of the ship’s commissioning in the Charleston Harbor. Almost 160 years ago to the day, Robert Smalls and several other Black slaves commandeered a Confederate ship from the harbor’s dock and delivered it to the Union Navy.
“I can think of no better place to recognize a man, a legend, and an American war hero like Lieutenant General Petersen,” Mace said.
The USS Frank E. Petersen Jr. is the third ship to be commissioned in Charleston in recent years.
The USS Charleston and USS Ralph Johnson were commissioned in 2019 and 2018, respectively. The USS Ralph Johnson was named in honor of a Black Marine killed after he jumped on a grenade to save fellow soldiers in Vietnam.
