Navy announces deployments from Everett, Whidbey Island

Three locally based Navy warships from Everett and a Navy air squadron from Whidbey Island will depart Mar. 13 for a six-month deployment to the Western Pacific, the Navy said Thursday.

The USS Abraham Lincoln, based at Naval Station Everett, will lead Carrier Strike Group nine, grow its own crew to nearly 5,000 as it takes on pilots and crews of nearly 10 air squadrons.

The guided missile destroyers USS Shoup and USS Momsen, also from Everett, are among the group, which includes more warships from San Diego.

Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, meanwhile, is contributing the Lancers, a squadron flying the EA-6B "Prowler" radar-jamming, electronic warfare jets. The Lancers will be among nearly 10 air squadrons of fighters, other planes and helicopters in the strike group.

A detachment from Whidbey's Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 11, a unit whose members also work on the ground in Iraq finding and defusing roadside bombs, will be aboard as well.

The 1,092 foot long Lincoln, essentially the size of a small city -- with its own zip code and enough electrical power to supply electricity to the equivalent of 100,000 homes -- last deployed for six months to the Western Pacific in 2006. It spent nine months afterwards in Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for scheduled maintenance work and upgrades.

In early 2003 the ship, a Nimitz-class, nuclear-powered carrier and its crew endured one of the longest deployments since the Vietnam War, when it was turned around en route home to participate in the invasion of Iraq. During a 2004 deployment the ship was again diverted, this time to render humanitarian aid after a devastating tsunami struck Southeast Asia.