In 2010, I spent part of a Navy deployment aboard USS Klakring (FFG-42), an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate. It was a place I lived, worked, ate, slept, and made memories that have stayed with me to this day. Likewise the shipmates I knew. This week, I watched footage of that same ship being destroyed during Exercise Atlantic Thunder 2026. The decommissioned hulk of the Klakring was used as the target ship for a joint US-UK live-fire sinking exercise in the North Atlantic off northwest Scotland. During the exercise, USS Paul Ignatius fired an anti-surface SM-6, HMS Portland launched a Naval Strike Missile, a Royal Navy Wildcat helicopter fired Sea Venom missiles, and the sub USS Massachusetts ultimately delivered the final blow with a Mk 48 torpedo. Modern torpedoes being extremely devastating in their method of delivery, especially the heavyweight MK 48. But this isn't really a video about the weapons or the exercise. It's about what it felt like seeing something with so much personal history for myself and many others serving to the end and disappearing in moments through that service. Some of the footage and pictures in this video are my own from those months I spent on her. Some of the original footage I shot back then has since been lost, so portions of my old 2011 YouTube video are also being used as an archive of that time. This actually brings things full circle for me: the first video I ever uploaded to YouTube was a montage of that deployment aboard Klakring. Fifteen years later, I'm using some of that same footage to tell the story of watching the ship’s final journey. It's somber yet prideful at the same time. Exercise Atlantic Thunder 2026
Source: The US Navy Just Sunk the Ship I Served On | USS Klakring FFG – 42
