Career
Ordered:
Laid down:	1 July 1974
Launched:	23 June 1975
Commissioned:	1 October 1977
Decommissioned:	15 October 2001
Fate:	Accidentally sunk in the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Area on 4 December 2002.
Struck:	15 October 2001
General Characteristics
Displacement:	8,040 tons full load.
Length:	529 feet waterline; 563 feet overall.
Beam:	55 feet.
Draught:	29 feet.
Propulsion:	4 × General Electric LM2500-30 gas turbines; 80,000 shp (60 MW); 2 x shafts.
Speed:	32.5 knots (60 km/h)
Range:	6,000 nautical miles at 20 knots; 3,300 nautical miles at 30 knots (56 km/h).
Complement:	19 officers, 315 enlisted
Armament:	2 x 5 inch (127 mm) 54 calibre Mark 45 dual purpose guns; 2 x 20 mm Phalanx CIWS Mark 15 guns; 1 x 8 cell NATO Sea Sparrow Mark 29 missile launcher; 2 x quadruple Harpoon missile canisters.
Aircraft:	2 x SH-60B Seahawk LAMPS III helicopters.
Motto:

USS Caron, named for Hospital Corpsman Third Class Wayne Maurice Caron (1946-1968), assigned to Headquarters and Service Company, Third Battalion, Seventh Marines, First Marine Division, killed in action at Quang Nam Province in the Republic of Vietnam on 28 July 1968, and posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, was a Spruance class destroyer laid down by the Ingalls Shipbuilding Division of Litton Industries at Pascagoula in Mississippi.

External Links

• USS Caron webpage (http://www.navysite.de/dd/dd970.htm)

Spruance-class destroyer

Spruance | Paul F. Foster | Kinkaid | Hewitt | Elliot | Arthur W. Radford | Peterson | Caron | David R. Ray | Oldendorf | John Young | Comte de Grasse | O'Brien | Merrill | Briscoe | Stump | Conolly | Moosbrugger | John Hancock | Nicholson | John Rodgers | Leftwich | Cushing | Harry W. Hill | O'Bannon | Thorn | Deyo | Ingersoll | Fife | Fletcher | Hayler

Kidd (Modified Spruance)-class destroyer Kidd | Callaghan | Scott | Chandler

List of destroyers of the United States Navy List of destroyer classes of the United States Navy