Navy to replace 70-year-old berthing barges.

• Author: Ong, Peter

The Navy this year will begin to replace some of its berthing barges that date back to World War II.

Naval Sea Systems Command plans to award a contract to build a new auxiliary personnel lighter-small with the option of procuring five additional barges in the following years, according to a service official. Congress has allocated $39 million for the first craft.

An auxiliary personnel lighter, or "berthing barge," houses crewmembers when their ship is in port or drydock undergoing maintenance--which can last months, said Dan Shimooka, NAVSEA's program executive officer for ships and principal assistant program manager of service craft and seaborne targets. The lighter serves as a nearby and convenient berthing vessel for a ship's duty crew, who must stay close enough to respond to emergencies.

The Navy has two types of auxiliary personnel lighters--large and small.

Unlike ships, "the U.S. Navy procures service craft at a slower rate and on an as-needed basis," said Shimooka, adding that the new lighter will replace a 70-plus-year-old barge currently in service.

The Navy currently owns and operates about 70 berthing and messing barges, some of which, including auxiliary personnel lighters, were built during World War II, Shimooka said. Thirteen of the 17 auxiliary personnel lighters are entering their seventh decade in service.

"The old [lighters] are conversions of World War II-era personnel transport vessels and were originally designed for short-term transport and not to support crews of ships undergoing maintenance or modernization availabilities," a NAVSEA statement said.

Other variants such as the repair, berthing and messing barges were built in the 1980s, Matthew Leonard, a NAVSEA public affairs official, said in an email.

The new auxiliary personnel lighters-smalls will replace the older barges, which are located at various naval bases including Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia; San Diego; Bremerton, Washington; Mayport, Florida; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Yokosuka and Sasebo in Japan; and Guam, he added.

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The last two auxiliary personnel lighters procured by the Navy were placed on contract in August 1998 and delivered to the Navy in November and December 2000, respectively.

The small lighters are 269 feet long, with a 69-foot beam, a draft of 5.17 feet with a displacement of 2,744 tons. They can accommodate 600 personnel. The large variants are 360 feet long, with a beam of 90 feet, a draft of six feet and a...