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CO: LPD 17 performing well on 1st cruise

After a torturous journey from the shipyard to its first deployment in August, the amphibious transport dock San Antonio has successfully performed so far on its maiden cruise, the ship’s captain said Friday.

“The ship is doing very well ... and the crew is doing even better. It’s operating as we were designed to operate,” said Cmdr. Kurt Kastner.

Kastner spoke from aboard the San Antonio, at sea in the 5th Fleet area of operations, in a conference call with reporters that was intended to make the case that the gator left behind its problems at Naval Station Norfolk, Va. The San Antonio has had no major difficulties since its crew repaired its broken stern gate, which delayed the ship’s departure by two days.

“The weekend before we sailed, we were conducting some routine maintenance, which we thought was prudent to do to prolong the life of the stern gate, and we found some issues,” Kastner said. “They’ve been fixed, and the stern gate has operated smoothly and efficiently since we’ve gotten under way.”

The ship used its well deck to take aboard elements of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp Lejeune, N.C., soon after it sailed, but hasn’t used it again so far on this cruise. Kastner said the ship will next use its well deck in a few weeks to offload some of the 4.9 million pounds’ worth of Marine Corps gear it’s carrying.

The San Antonio is the first in a new class of amphibious ships designed to incorporate the features from several different earlier varieties; it was planned with better sensors, a bigger well deck, and more comfortable crew accommodations. But poor workmanship in the shipyard and constant changes by Navy overseers earned the San Antonio a reputation as the most troubled ship in the fleet. The Navy took delivery of the gator in 2005, still unfinished, and has struggled since then to make it right.

The second ship in the class, the New Orleans, also was accepted unfinished and panned in an August report by the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey.

But the San Antonio is finally complete, Kastner said.

“Since we got underway, we’ve had no major mechanical problems, no control problems. The amount of work that was put into this ship by the maintenance community, by the [Surface Force], is just mind-boggling, when you think about it,” he said.

The San Antonio deployed as part of the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group, which sailed east from Norfolk, across the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and is now on a maritime security mission in the northern Indian Ocean. It arrived after two weeks’ worth of pirate activity off the Horn of Africa, which has included the seizure of a cargo ship carrying 30 Russian tanks and other arms.