Hometown pride bubbles over as USS Fort Worth is christened

Posted Saturday, Dec. 04, 2010

BY CHRIS VAUGHN

MARINETTE, Wis. -- Twenty-seven years in the Navy, and even Capt. T.D. Smyers had never seen anything like it.

Just seconds after the resounding thunk of a champagne bottle hitting the bow of the USS Fort Worth, a strike delivered left-handed and low by U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, the ship slid down its elevated pier-side moorings and hit the water for the first time, listing heavily to starboard before righting, just as designed.

"That was extremely cool," said Smyers, commander of Naval Air Station Fort Worth and an aviator unaccustomed to the traditions of the ship side of the Navy. "To have all these people of Fort Worth come to frigid Wisconsin brings both the Navy and the city closer together at a crucial time in both of their histories. This has brought them together in a way never done before."

He's right.

After 161 years of Fort Worth history and 235 years of the Navy, Saturday's christening at the Marinette Marine shipyards marked the first time a military vessel will bear the city's name.

"I have learned just how much pride there is in our city that we have come to be a part of the United States Navy fleet," said Mayor Mike Moncrief, who attended with about 60 civic and business leaders. "This ship will not only sail with the city's name, it will sail with our prayers for all those who serve our country and their families."

The littoral combat ship, 113 feet keel to mast and 389 feet long, is only the third of its kind and represents what Navy Rear Adm. David Lewis described as a "seminal shift" in building combat ships.

For 400 years, navies have built ships around weapons, he said, but the "littoral combat ship changes all that." Such ships were designed for speed, agility and flexibility, allowing crews to change weapons and mission packages within a day.

Because they can operate in water 20 feet deep, the ships also provide the Navy an option in coastal areas that it doesn't have with its larger blue-water vessels. The ship was launched into the Menominee River.

Built in Marinette by a Lockheed Martin-led contracting team at a reported cost of $480 million, the ship technically won't become the USS Fort Worth until it is commissioned in 2012. But it was already referred to as "Fort Worth" by Saturday's speakers, a blend of naval officials and representatives of Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan and the defense contractors.

Fort Worth resident and former Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, who pushed for the ships as Navy secretary after 9-11, said the ship represents close to 10 years of work for him. "For me personally, this is the culmination of a long journey."

After the first two littoral combat ships, the USS Freedom and USS Independence, were under construction, the Navy canceled future contracts because of spiraling costs and delays. Granger wasn't sure that Fort Worth would get a namesake ship.

But Assistant Navy Secretary Sean Stackley said that the Lockheed team and another led by General Dynamics, which is building a differently designed littoral, brought down costs and that the program was revived. The Navy, pleased with how the first two ships performed in testing, wants Congress to give it permission, by mid-December, to buy 10 ships from each company.

"We are working this every day on the Hill," Stackley said. Saturday's event took place on a breezy morning under gray skies with temperatures in the 20s. After hundreds of guests, including many workers who built the ship, heard more than an hour of speeches inside an assembly building, the activity shifted outside for Granger, the ship's sponsor, to do the honors.

"I christen thee 'Fort Worth,' and may God bless all the men and women who sail in her," she said before swinging the bottle.

Granger said Fort Worth is particularly proud of the ship because of its long relationship with the military, dating to Maj. Ripley Arnold's arrival with the 2nd Dragoons in the late 1840s.

"We deserve this honor because of our deep-rooted connection to our nation's armed forces in every chapter of our history," she said.

The future USS Fort Worth, as numerous naval officers noted, is nothing if not fast. It is powered by two diesel engines and two gas turbines that produce in excess of 100,000 horsepower that give it the ability to go from a standstill to 40 knots in a bit over a minute.

It doesn't have a propeller. Instead, it uses water jets that enable it to maneuver faster, said Joe North, director of the littoral program for Lockheed.

"It's easily the fastest surface combatant ship in the Navy today," North said. "This ship will keep up with a go-fast boat, and with its size, people won't know what to do about it."

Because the Navy wanted a crew of only 40, compared with a destroyer's crew of about 250, many jobs on the ship are automated. For instance, the engine rooms are unmanned, and the bridge can operate with only three people.

A small crew also means that sailors have a bit more privacy. The largest stateroom, for the most junior sailors, holds eight people.

Senior Chief Richard Henson, the ranking enlisted sailor on the "blue crew" and a 23-year Navy veteran, said the sailors selected for the ship are excited about the opportunities and responsibilities of being in a small crew.

USS Fort Worth to carry a bit of its namesake city

Posted Friday, Dec. 03, 2010

BY CHRIS VAUGHN

MARINETTE, Wis. -- When the future USS Fort Worth goes into service in two years, a small remnant of Fort Worth's beginnings will be aboard.

A button from a cavalry dragoon's uniform, found near the site of the original fort in the late 1840s and donated by a former councilman, was sealed in an aluminum container Friday with other Fort Worth-centric items in a tradition-steeped ceremony referred to as a "mast stepping."

Cmdr. Randy Blankenship, one of the ship's future commanders, could appreciate better than many the connection between the eras of the nation's military -- the past cavalrymen on the prairie and the present-day sailors in strategic shipping lanes.

"From Day One, ships take on a life of their own, and part of that reputation and life of a ship can be tied to the care you place in the traditions," Blankenship said. "The historical value and the heart put into the selection of items important to Fort Worth is a great start for this ship."

The mast-stepping, held at the Marinette Marine shipyards about an hour north of Green Bay, was the final piece before today's christening, the first ever for a Navy vessel bearing Fort Worth's name. The ship's sponsor, U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, broke a bottle of bubbly on the bow this morning, and the future USS Fort Worth was launched sideways into the Menominee River in a dramatic splash.

The ship, only the third of a new class of littoral combat ships, now will undergo months of trials and tests in the Great Lakes. The commissioning -- when it actually becomes the USS Fort Worth -- is scheduled for 2012.

Granger has told the Navy, however, that she would like the commissioning held on the Texas coast, probably at Galveston or Corpus Christi.

Even so, about 60 civic and business leaders made the trip to Wisconsin, including Mayor Mike Moncrief, Councilmen Carter Burdette and Danny Scarth, state Rep. Mark Shelton, Chamber of Commerce President Bill Thornton and former Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, who is credited with pushing the concept when he was Navy secretary.

Granger, who led the effort to have a ship named after Cowtown, got her first glimpse, inside and out, Friday.

"They kept saying to me, 'It's smaller than other ships you've seen,' but it's actually bigger than I thought it would be," she said. "The technology aboard is so amazing."

Littoral combat ships -- the word littoral means coastal -- are the Navy's newest generation of warship, designed to be light and fast, affordable (at least by Pentagon standards) and flexible in its mission sets. Each ship will have two crews -- a blue and a gold -- that will rotate on and off.

The littoral combat ships in service are the USS Freedom, designed and manufactured by a Lockheed Martin-led team, and the USS Independence, designed and manufactured by a General Dynamics-led team. Lockheed designed the USS Fort Worth.

The ship's 40-man crew can move "modules" on and off quickly, depending on the requirements of the Navy -- conducting anti-submarine patrols, clearing a minefield, stopping drugs or landing special-operations troops. And because of its size, the ship can go into coastal areas as shallow as 20 feet, where larger war vessels cannot maneuver.

The Navy originally intended a winner-take-all competition between the vastly different designs but is now asking Congress for the authority to buy 10 ships from each company because the bids came in lower than the service expected. Congress, though, has only about two weeks left to decide before the bids expire.

Under clear skies and below-freezing weather in the shadow of the ship Friday, the container with the symbols of Fort Worth was welded shut and prepared to be welded at the base of the mast in the coming days.

Inside are two coins from Army units -- the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, to which Maj. Ripley Arnold and his men belonged when they founded Fort Worth, and the 2nd Infantry Division, the modern name for the division commanded by Gen. William Worth in the war with Mexico. Arnold named the city after his former commanding officer.

As a nod to the future of Fort Worth, Granger placed a small piece from the F-35 Lightning II jet inside.

Three of the items were personally significant for Granger -- her congressional pin, a small key to the city and a commemorative pin from the All-America City Award from 1993 when she was mayor.

But of most interest, particularly to those who treasure Fort Worth's history, was the button from the dragoon's uniform, one of the few artifacts remaining from that period and donated by Fort Worth lawyer Jim Lane.

When Lane found out that Granger -- whom he served with on the City Council in the mid-1990s -- was looking for items, he instantly thought of the button, one of several he owns as part of a collection related to early Fort Worth.

The button was found by a "treasure hunter" near the site of the original fort on the banks of the Trinity River, he said.

"I thought, 'What would be more meaningful to the ship than a button that came from the original unit in Fort Worth?'" he said.

Lane then asked Eddie Sandoval, an Apache sun dancer who lives in Fort Worth, if he would be interested in "blessing" the button. Sandoval did more -- he made an arrowhead and blessed both. The arrowhead now sits next to the button inside the container.

Mast-stepping dates as far back as the ancient Romans and Greeks and may well be the "longest-lived of the ancient maritime traditions," said Cmdr. Matt Kawas, one of the ship's future executive officers.

In ancient times, sailors placed coins at the bottom of the mast to ensure their passage across the River Styx should they die at sea. Today, it is continued, albeit differently, but the superstition remains the same.

Local dignitaries including J. Wayne Trimmer will help launch USS Fort Worth in Wisconsin

Posted Saturday, Nov. 27, 2010

BY CHRIS VAUGHN

FORT WORTH -- The countdown for the champagne-bashing has begun.

Next Saturday, on the banks of the Menominee River north of Green Bay, Wis., U.S. Rep. Kay Granger will swing a bottle of bubbly against the bow of what will become the USS Fort Worth, the first time a Navy warship will have ever borne this prairie city's name.

"Standing on the platform 35 feet up waiting to hear the charge so I can swing, I'm sure there will be some butterflies," said Granger, who is the ship's "sponsor," who by tradition is always a woman.

More than 60 civic, political and business leaders are flying on a chartered jet to Wisconsin for the festivities, which also include a centuries-old ceremony to place items symbolic of the city at the base of the mast.

The group includes Mayor Mike Moncrief, former Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Chamber of Commerce President Bill Thornton, Chesapeake Vice President Julie Wilson, lawyers Albon Head Jr. and Rice Tilley Jr., J. Wayne Trimmer and former Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, who is chairman of the commissioning committee.

"This is literally a once-in-a-lifetime experience," Williams said.

The 389-foot ship, reportedly costing $480 million, will be the third littoral combat ship to enter the Navy's inventory and the second produced by Lockheed Martin and its contracting partners, including the shipbuilder, Marinette Marine Corp.

Littoral combat ships, a new post-9-11 concept envisioned by England, are comparatively small and light ships, designed for speed and agility around coastal areas and strategic shipping points. The littoral ships displace 3,100 tons, compared with a cruiser and a destroyer, which displace more than 9,000 tons.

Staffed by small, 70-person crews relying on extensive automation and technology aboard, the ships can be used for a variety of missions -- anti-piracy, mine warfare, insertion of special operations troops ashore and narcotics intercepts.

More than 70 percent complete, with only some interior work and outfitting remaining, the future USS Fort Worth will begin sea trials on Lake Michigan for several months as the company tests components, electronics and other features. Then the ship will be delivered to the Navy for more testing.

In the spring of 2012, the ship will be commissioned at another ceremony, when it formally earns its USS Fort Worth title. The Navy plans for the ship to be based on the West Coast after commissioning.

The ship, whose new motto is "Grit and Tenacity," will be commanded by two officers, Cmdrs. Warren Cupps and Randy Blankenship. Unlike most naval vessels, the ship will have two crews, and those crews will rotate every few months while the ship stays forward-deployed.

"The new technology aboard the LCS, the way the modules are designed to go on and off the ship for missions, the way it can move in shallow waters makes these ships important to our nation's future," Granger said. "All of that is even more important than getting a ship named after our city."

Other Texas ships

Fort Worth may be 300 miles from an ocean, but that rarely matters in ship-naming.

The nation already sends the USS Dallas, USS Houston, USS San Antonio and USS City of Corpus Christi across the globe, and Granger noticed what was missing from the naval lineup.

She started a public relations campaign in 2006 to persuade then-Navy Secretary Donald Winter to name a littoral combat ship after Fort Worth, and thousands of people in Cowtown supported it with letters, e-mails, cards and phone calls. Winter granted the wish in March 2009, even though the first two names of the littoral combat ships -- USS Freedom and USS Independence -- suggested concepts, rather than city names. (Each ship classification carries different naming principles.)

The first littoral combat ship, the USS Freedom, also built by the Lockheed Martin team, is in service in the Navy and completed its first deployment this year. The USS Independence, a markedly different-looking version produced by a team led by General Dynamics, was also commissioned this year.

The Navy originally intended to try both the Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics versions and then choose a single winner for the long-term contract for as many as 55 littoral combat ships.

But this month, the service signaled to Congress that it would now prefer to award a six-year contract to both companies to produce 10 vessels each because bids for both came in under what was expected. But the Navy must have an answer from the lame-duck Congress by mid-December.

"This option is good for the taxpayers because it enables us to buy more ships for the same money and allows us to lock in a lower price for all 20 ships," Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a news release.

Fundraising efforts

Saturday's christening of the ship is largely paid for by the shipbuilder. But the commissioning ceremony budget in 2012 will largely come from what Williams can raise from the Fort Worth area.

He's been out selling the ship locally in an effort to "front-load" his fundraising efforts, which he has not publicly pinned a number on. "If Roger Williams calls you, you can pretty much guarantee he's going to want money," he joked.

The money will not pay for just the commissioning ceremony, Williams said.

The group is also going to fund a college scholarship in the names of the three former Fort Worth men who served as Navy secretaries -- John Connally Jr. and Fred Korth during the John F. Kennedy administration and England during the George W. Bush administration.

The funds will also pay to bring USS Fort Worth officers and sailors to the city for special events and will pay for upgrades to the ship's recreation facilities.

"This is going to be their home away from home," Williams said. "We want to include them in as many things as possible -- throwing out a first pitch somewhere, going to the Stock Show rodeo, riding in parades."