USS Sterett (DLG/CG-31) was a Belknap class destroyer leader/cruiser. She was the third ship to be named for Master Commandant Andrew Sterett, who served during the Quasi-War with France and the Barbary Wars. She was laid down on September 25, 1926 at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard; launched on June 30, 1964; and commissioned on April 8, 1967.

Sterett spent the rest of 1967 operating off the west coast undergoing various post-acceptance tests and trials, participating in shakedown training, and generally preparing for her final acceptance trials held between December 18 and 20. On June 19, 1968, she departed San Pedro Bay for her first West Pacific tour. After stops at Pearl Harbor and Midway, she arrived in Yokosuka, Japan on July 5 and began preparations for her first line period in the Tonkin Gulf.

One month to the day after her departure from the United States, Sterett got underway again, this time via Subic Bay in the Philippines, en route to PIRAZ duty in the gulf. She put in at Danang, South Vietnam, for briefings on the 30th and departed immediately thereafter. She plied the waters off North Vietnam until August 5. From March 23, 1969 to mid-May, she sailed along the coasts of Korea, both in the Sea of Japan and in the Yellow Sea, providing protection for Peacetime Aerial Reconnaissance Program flights, one of which had recently been downed by the North Koreans.

On January 7, 1972, Sterett pointed her bow westward for her second tour of duty off the Vietnamese coast. She arrived in Subic Bay on the January 29, and after eight days, departed for the Tonkin Gulf. From February 10 to March 3, she remained on PIRAZ station and, on February 21, became the first Navy ship to direct the downing of a MiG-21 by Air Force Civil Air Patrol. En route to Subic Bay, the frigate participated in anti-submarine warfare exercises with submarine Sculpin.

Sterett earned nine battle stars for her service along the coast of Vietnam. Reclassified as guided missile cruiser CG-31 on June 30, 1975, she was decommissioned and stricken from the Navy Register on March 24, 1994 at San Diego. Transferred to the Maritime Administration on May 12, she was laid up at the Suisun Bay, California, reserve pending disposal.

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