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Nineteenth HFC Leasing Corporation in Prospect Heights, IL received $48.6 million under a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract (N00033-82-C-1028) to exercise an option to purchase Maritime Prepositioning Ship 2nd Lt. John P. Bobo [T-AK 3008]. The ship has been under long-term charter to Military Sealift Command since 1985, and is one of 16 Maritime Prepositioning Ships that strategically place U.S. Marine Corps cargo at sea around the world, in order to make it quickly available to US forces who are flown into a theater of operations. The ship will remain crewed by about 30 civilian mariners employed by American Overseas Marine Corporation of Quincy, MA. She will transfer to U.S. government ownership on Jan. 16, 2007, and will continue to operate worldwide. Military Sealift Command in Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity.
Here’s the posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor citation for 2nd Lt. John P. Bobo. It was earned in Vietnam for, among other things, staying behind to cover his command group’s retreat with ferocious machine gun fire after a mortar round blew off his leg.