USS Winston S. Churchill returns home after 9-month deployment

March 19 (UPI) -- The destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill returned to Norfolk, Va., its homeport, on Friday after a nine-month deployment with the U.S. 5th and 6th Fleets.

"We left for pre-deployment requirements on 22 JUN 2020, and today marks the return of our ship and crew after nearly nine months away from home," Cmdr. Tim Shaley wrote on Friday in a Facebook message. "We were able to accomplish so much."

The guided missile destroyer traveled over 60,000 miles during the deployment, and transited Arabian Gulf chokepoints, as an escort ship, numerous times, the Navy said.

It also was the first U.S. Navy warship to visit Sudan in 30 years, arriving in Port Sudan on March 1 after normalization of U.S.-Sudan diplomatic relations.

The ship also conducted counter-smuggling operations with U.S. Coast Guard, Army and Navy personnel, confiscating a large cache of weapons off the coast of Somalia, and practiced exercises in the Mediterranean Sea with the Tunisian navy.

It also conducted maneuvering exercises with the British Royal Navy Offshore Patrol Vessel HMS Trent in September 2020, a precursor to a planned joint United States-United Kingdom strike group, led by the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, in the summer of 2021.