Destroyer Involved in Wreck to Return to S.D. : The Navy: The Kinkaid will undergo more repairs after collision that led to stand down of all Navy ships last fall.

The U.S. Navy destroyer Kinkaid will return to its San Diego home port Saturday, after crashing into a merchant ship in the Strait of Malacca last fall and undergoing $7 million in repairs.

The collision killed the ship’s navigator, injured five sailors, led to the court-martial of the duty officer and derailed the career of its then-commanding officer. It was also the last in a string of mishaps that led to the first Navywide safety stand-down last fall.

The Kinkaid’s commanding officer, Cmdr. John M. Cochrane, was relieved of duty five months ago by Vice Adm. H. H. Mauz, head of the Seventh Fleet, who said at the time that he “had lost confidence” in Cochrane’s “ability to serve.”

Cochrane, a San Diego resident, is scheduled to be court-martialed later this month, said Lt. Ken Wensing, a spokesman for the Seventh Fleet. Navy officials declined to explain the reasons for Cochrane’s court-martial.

The duty officer, Lt. (j.g.) Steven M. Williams, 25, was dismissed from the Navy in a court-martial after receiving a punitive letter of reprimand in February, Wensing said. Williams, the officer of the deck, was found guilty of dereliction of duty and negligently hazarding a vessel in charges associated with the collision. Navy officials declined to explain what Williams had done that resulted in those findings.

Williams was found not guilty of willful failure to obey a lawful command with regard to notifying Commanding Officer Cochrane of a navigational situation.

When the Kinkaid smashed into the merchant ship in the predawn darkness in November, Lt. Sean Michael McPhee, 24, was killed as he slept in his bunk. His death brought the year’s toll to 102 Navy personnel killed in training and operational procedures--the highest in the decade.

Although the collison occurred almost six months ago, officials say they don’t know what caused it. They are still reviewing the investigation of the collision, which punched a 56-foot-by-15-foot hole in the Kinkaid’s side, said Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Smallwood, a Navy spokesman.

The Kinkaid, manned by 330 officers and sailors, will pull into Pier 7 at the 32nd Street Naval Station Saturday morning--having completed the 8,000-mile, 19-day voyage from Singapore. The vessel was scheduled to return to San Diego four months ago, but the crash made it unfit for the trip.

About $6 million in repairs were done on the destroyer at the Navy’s Subic Bay base in the Philippines, Smallwood said. The vessel sailed to Singapore from the Philippines, where a private company placed a $1-million patch on the ship’s gaping hole.

But the repairs are not yet complete. In San Diego, the Kinkaid will undergo another estimated $2 million of work that will take place over seven weeks, Smallwood said. The Navy will soon be asking companies to bid on the project, he said.

At the time of the accident, the Kinkaid was on its way from the Indian Ocean for a port call in Singapore. About 240 miles northwest of Singapore, the 563-foot Kinkaid collided with the Kota Petani, a 493-foot Panamanian freighter that was leaving Singapore for the Middle East. No one aboard the Kota Petani was injured.