USS Knox (FF-1052)
USS Knox was the lead ship of her class of destroyer escorts in the United States Navy. Knox was named after Commodore Dudley Wright Knox, and was the second US Navy ship named Knox. In 1975, she was redesignated a frigate. She served from 1969 to 1992 and was sunk as a target in 2007.
Design and description
The Knox-class design was derived from the modified to extend range and without a long-range missile system. The ship had an overall length of, a beam of and a draft of. It displaced at full load. Its crew consisted of 16 officers and 211 enlisted men.The ship was equipped with one Westinghouse geared steam turbine that drove the single propeller shaft. The turbine was designed to produce, using steam provided by two C-E boilers, to reach the designed speed of. The Knox class had a range of at a speed of.
The Knox-class ship was armed with a single /54 caliber Mark 42 gun. It mounted an eight-round ASROC launcher between the 5-inch gun and the bridge. Its close-range anti-submarine defense was provided by two twin Mk 32 torpedo tubes. The ship was equipped with a torpedo-carrying DASH drone helicopter; its telescoping hangar and landing pad were positioned amidships aft of the mack. Beginning in the 1970s, the DASH was replaced by a SH-2 Seasprite LAMPS I helicopter and the hangar and landing deck were accordingly enlarged. Most ships had an eight-cell BPDMS missile launcher added in the early 1970s.