USA — Navy to Christen Amphibious Transport Dock Ship San Diego

The Navy will chris­ten the newest amphibi­ous trans­port dock ship, San Diego, Sat­ur­day, June 12, 2010, dur­ing a 10 a.m. CDT cer­e­mo­ny at Northrop Grum­man Ship­build­ing inPascagoula, Miss. The ship is named for the city of San Diego, prin­ci­pal home­port of the Pacif­ic fleet, and hon­ors the peo­ple of “America’s Finest City” and its lead­ers for their con­tin­u­ous sup­port of the military. 

Gen. James Amos, assis­tant com­man­dant of the Marine Corps, will deliv­er the ceremony’s prin­ci­pal address. Lin­da Win­ter, wife of for­mer Sec­re­tary of the Navy Don­ald Win­ter, is the spon­sor, and in accor­dance with Navy tra­di­tion, will break a bot­tle of cham­pagne across the bow to for­mal­ly chris­ten the ship. 

Des­ig­nat­ed LPD 22, San Diego is the sixth amphibi­ous trans­port dock ship in the San Anto­nio class. As an ele­ment of future expe­di­tionary strike groups, the ship will sup­port the Marine Corps “mobil­i­ty tri­ad,” which con­sists of the land­ing craft air cush­ion vehi­cle, the Expe­di­tionary Fight­ing Vehi­cle and the Osprey tilt-rotor air­craft. San Diego will pro­vide improved warfight­ing capa­bil­i­ties, includ­ing an advanced com­mand-and-con­trol suite, increased lift-capa­bil­i­ty in vehi­cle and car­go-car­ry­ing capac­i­ty and advanced ship-sur­viv­abil­i­ty fea­tures. The ship is capa­ble of embark­ing a land­ing force of up to 800 Marines. 

Three pre­vi­ous ships have car­ried the name San Diego — an armored cruis­er (ACR 6) named in 1914, a World War II-era cruis­er (CL 53) com­mis­sioned in 1942, and a com­bat stores ship (AFS 6) that served from 1969 to 1997. 

Cmdr. Jon Hay­del, of Hous­ton, is the prospec­tive com­mand­ing offi­cer and will lead a crew of 360 offi­cers and enlist­ed Navy per­son­nel and three Marines. The 24,900-ton San Diego is 684 feet in length, has an over­all beam of 105 feet, and a nav­i­ga­tion­al draft of 23 feet. Four tur­bo-charged diesels pow­er the ship to sus­tained speeds of 22 knots. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →