Orange County Register

The bow of the USS Curts (38) is visible just ahead of the stern of the USS Gary (51). Image by Gary Robbins, The Register

The Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station has such a small, shallow bay, it rarely hosts more than one warship at a time. But the California base is on double duty at the moment, serving two Perry-class frigates, the USS Curts (38) and the USS Gary (51), which are docked stern-to-stern in Anaheim Bay. It’s an unusual sight for motorists passing nearby on Pacific Coast Highway. Frigates are the smallest surface ships serviced at Seal Beach, so the base can handle two at once. The Navy sometimes have schedule overlaps and needs to handle two vessels at once. It’s not a regularly thing. These ships, which were built by Todd Shipyards in San Pedro during the height of the Cold War, are each 453 feet long. And while they have very sophisticated equipment, especially for tracking submarines, searching for mines and knocking down short-range missiles, they represent the past instead of the future. The Navy has been building dozens of Arleigh Burke-class guided missiles destroyers, ships that stock up to 96 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Frigates of this kind are slowly being decommissioned to make room for more technologically robust ships.

The frigates are not open to the public, and boaters are prohibited from approaching the vessels.

Quiz corner: In the movie, “The Hunt for Red October,” an American frigate fires on the submarine. What was factually wrong with the scene? Email answers to grobbins@ocregister.com. I’ll give a book to the reader with the best answer.

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