Sideways launch? Check. “Anchors Aweigh” in the background? Check. Big splash? Double check. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgjzbhJXANs[/youtube] The future littoral combat ship Milwaukee, what will be the Navy’s fifth LCS and the third Freedom-class variant, hit the water Wednesday in a ceremony at the Marinette Marine shipyard in Marinette, Wis. Sylvia Panetta, wife of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, performed the christening honors prior to launch. The LCS will be the fifth Navy ship named for the largest city in Wisconsin, according to a Navy news release issued before the ceremony. The most recent, an oiler, was decommissioned in 1994; its crew was…
Browsing: Littoral Combat Ship
From eagle attacks to life-saving boots to new uses for littoral combat ships — maybe — here’s a round up of recent Coast Guard odd news. Let’s start with a report from Alaska: Coasties were attacked by an eagle in the Dutch Harbor Post Office in Unalaska. Eagle attacks are apparently not that rare for people living up there, see here. Then there was the man charged with allegedly attacking a Coast Guard boarding officer in San Francisco. The man was also charged with allegedly making a false distress call. He claimed that a Coast Guard boarding team would be…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb-mWG4uSek[/youtube] As Navy Times Prime members knew in January, the littoral combat ship Freedom became the first U.S. warship in recent memory to get a “dazzle camouflage” paint job — a four-color pattern that could confuse an adversary by creating a false bow wave and will help hide exhaust smudge with some strategically deployed black paint. Freedom left for its maiden deployment last week, paint in place, en route to the Asia-Pacific region to partner with allied navies in security operations. But how, exactly, did LCS 1 get from this to this? Thankfully, the folks at Naval Surface Force Pacific…
OK, folks. Scoop Deck doesn’t want to get into a whole thing here, but there’s something we have to say. Now that littoral combat ships are getting named, launching, deploying and being celebrated at baseball games, it’s time to get used to the word “littoral.” It’s pronounced “literal,” not “lit-TOR-al.” So the next time you see, say, an admiral saying it wrong, do the right thing and correct him or her. OK, maybe that’s not a good idea. You could, however, tell the admiral’s aide. Give the two of them something fun to talk about in the back of the…
The Navy’s top official visited the National League Central Division’s top team Tuesday as Navy Secretary Ray Mabus threw out a ceremonial first pitch before a baseball game at Miller Park, part of a day-long celebration of Littoral Combat Ship 5 being given the name Milwaukee. The original announcement was made March 18. The Navy didn’t supply a pic of Mabus rifling a fastball off the Miller Park mound. But it did snap the secretary chatting on the field with former not-so-great-but-he-admits-it baseball player Bob Uecker, the longtime and beloved Brewers radio broadcaster who graced the movie “Major League” with…
