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New amphib to be named America

Navy Secretary Donald Winter announced Friday that the new amphibious assault ship known as LHA 6 would be named America, granting the wish of veterans of the aircraft carrier America, who have lobbied for another ship to take the name after theirs was sunk as a target in 2005.

Winter made the announcement in Jacksonville, Fla., at a reunion of the America Carrier Veterans Association.

The new America is planned as a 45,000-ton, gas-turbine big-deck gator that has been dubbed “a Marine Corps aircraft carrier.” It has an axial flight deck like a Wasp-class amphib, but no floodable well deck for landing craft. The Marine Corps wants two such ships — one each for the East and West coasts — to carry helicopters, V-22 Osprey tiltrotors and the Marine Corps’ short takeoff, vertical landing version of the new F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter.

The new America would be the sixth ship in Navy service to bear the name, although three of the predecessors were not traditional warships — one America was part of the Civil War “Stone Fleet” deliberately sunk to block the harbor in Charleston, S.C.; one was a yacht pressed into naval service in the Civil War; and another was a German liner seized and used as a U.S. troop transport in World War I. The first commissioned warship named America was a 74-gun ship of the line that served briefly in the French navy at the end of the 18th century; the second was the Kitty Hawk-class carrier commissioned in 1965.

After a long career, the carrier America was pummeled by explosives, torpedoes and naval gunfire in the Atlantic in 2005, before being scuttled to show Navy observers how such a large ship behaved in battle.

Its veterans have lobbied ever since for another carrier to be named America, first calling for the ship that bears hull number CVN 78. But that carrier was named Gerald R. Ford, so the America veterans began focusing on the LHA 6, according to an announcement from Brian Skon, who works with the veterans association.

The LHA 6 is to be built at the Northrop Grumman shipyards in Pascagoula, Miss., where the amphibious assault ship Makin Island is already under construction. Although the Makin Island and the new America fall numerically into existing classes of ships — Wasp class for Makin Island and Tarawa class for America — the Navy considers each one a “first in class,” with different propulsion plants, electrical systems and other improvements over existing gators.

DISCUSS: The new amphib