Callaghan at the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, aboard . was named after Rear Admiral Theodore Chandler, who died on 7 January 1945, as a result of burns received from a kamikaze crashing into his flagship, , the previous day. Because they were equipped with heavy-duty air conditioning and other features that made them suitable in hot climates, they tended to be used in the Middle East, specifically the Persian Gulf itself. During their service with the U.S. Navy from the 1980s to the late 1990s, the ships were popularly known as the "Ayatollah" class. In 1988–90, the Kidds received the "New Threat Upgrade", which allowed cooperative engagement with Aegis cruisers, enabling the cruisers to control the Kidds surface-to-air missiles in flight while the destroyers remained electronically silent. However, the arrival of the Aegis-equipped destroyers led to the accelerated retirement of the Kidd class. All four ships were decommissioned from the U.S. Navy in the late 1990s and were initially offered for sale to Australia in 1997 for A$30 million each. The Royal Australian Navy was a strong supporter of buying the Kidd-class destroyers to replace the Perth-class as their air warfare ships. In 1999, the offer was rejected, based on extensive problems the Royal Australian Navy had encountered during the acquisition of two surplus s from the U.S. Navy in 1994. In the early 1990s the Labor government of Paul Keating chose to maintain the Royal Australian Navy's existing Adelaide-class frigates instead of replacing them with the more expensive and much more labour-intensive, but more capable Kidd-class destroyers. Under the succeeding Liberal government of John Howard, in the mid-1990s they commenced the SEA 1390, also known as the FFG Upgrade Project, to improve the Adelaide frigates' capabilities; however, this project ran over costs and was behind schedule.McPhedran, Frigates 'can't go to war' despite $1.4bn upgrade After the Australian refusal, the four ships were offered to Greece, which also refused. Sale and reactivation In 2001, the U.S. authorized the reactivation and sale of all four ships to Taiwan (Republic of China). All four have been transferred to the Republic of China Navy under the Kuang Hua VII program. They were sold for a total price of US$732 million with upgraded hardware, overhaul, activation, and training, and included a reduced missile loadout of 148 SM-2 Block IIIA and 32 RGM-84L Block II Harpoon anti-ship missiles. The reactivation was done in Charleston,