Littoral Combat Ship Launch

Lockheed Martin has just finished building the brand new Littoral Combat Ship Detroit and launched it into the Menominee River on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2014. This video demonstrates the mind-blowing way they launched it into the water.

The Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT]-led industry team launched the nation’s seventh Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), Detroit, into the Menominee River at the Marinette Marine Corporation (MMC) shipyard.

The ship’s sponsor, Mrs. Barbara Levin, christened Detroit with the traditional smashing of a champagne bottle across the ship’s bow just prior to the launch.

“It is a privilege to serve as the sponsor of the future USS Detroit and to participate in the major milestones along the way to her assuming her place as part of the great U.S. Navy fleet”, said Mrs. Levin. I also look forward to an ongoing relationship with her courageous crews and their families throughout the ship’s lifetime.”
Following christening and launch, Detroit will continue to undergo outfitting and testing before delivery to the Navy in 2015.

“It is an honor to continue supporting the U.S. Navy with these capable and flexible warships,” said Dale P. Bennett, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin’s Mission Systems and Training business. “The Lockheed Martin-led team’s LCS design is lethal, survivable, and affordable.These ships will help the Navy achieve its goal to increase forward presence, and can be upgraded or modified quickly to meet future missions.”

The U.S. Navy awarded the contract to construct Detroit in March 2011. The ship is one of five LCS currently under construction at Marinette Marine.

“On behalf of Marinette Marine, we are incredibly proud to build these ships for the U.S. Navy,” said Jan Allman, MMC president and CEO. “We continue to streamline our processes and leverage the craftsmanship and skills of our employees in producing these high quality vessels for our warfighters.”

The Lockheed Martin-led industry team is building the Freedom-variant ships, and has already delivered two ships to the U.S. Navy. USS Freedom (LCS 1) completed a successful deployment to Southeast Asia in 2013. USS Fort Worth (LCS 3) will deploy to Southeast Asia in 2014. Milwaukee (LCS 5) will be delivered to the U.S. Navy in 2015. Detroit (LCS 7) was christened and launched on Oct. 18, 2014. Little Rock (LCS 9), Sioux City (LCS 11) and Wichita (LCS 13) are under construction. Billings (LCS 15) will begin construction this year.

Earlier this year, the Navy funded Indianapolis (LCS 17) and LCS 19, which is yet to be named.

Source…

 

Littoral Combat Ship Launch

 

via

Who The Heck Was Kilroy?

In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, ‘Speak to America,’ sponsored a nationwide contest to find the REAL Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article. Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax, Massachusetts had evidence of his identity.

Kilroy was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war. He worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet.

Kilroy would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn’t be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark.

Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.

One day Kilroy’s boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then that he realized what had been going on.

The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn’t lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his checkmark on each job he inspected, but added KILROY WAS HERE in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message. Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks.

Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn’t time to paint them.

As a result, Kilroy’s inspection ‘trademark’ was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced. His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific. Before the war’s end, ‘Kilroy’ had been here, there, and everywhere on the long haul to Berlin and Tokyo.

To the unfortunate troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that some jerk named Kilroy had ‘been there first.’ As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing g the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.

Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always ‘already been’ wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arch De Triumphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.)

And as the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for the coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI’s there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo! In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosvelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference.

To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave it to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy front yard in Halifax, Massachusetts.