SecNav: 4th JSHV will be Fall River - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

SecNav: 4th JSHV will be Fall River

The fourth Joint High Speed Vessel will be named “Fall River,” in honor of the Massachusetts town that is home to the state’s eponymous retired battleship, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced Thursday.

In a first for a ship-name announcement, Mabus broke the news in posts on his Twitter and Facebook pages, as well as though an official Defense Department press release.

Tweeted Mabus: “Just named Navy’s 4th JHSV USNS Fall River in honor of the thousands of sailors and Marines from its patriotic namesake in Mass.”

Mabus also announced the name in person in a visit to Fall River, Mass., in a park overlooking the battleship Massachusetts and other historic Navy ships at the Battleship Cove museum, said his spokeswoman, Capt. Beci Brenton.

Although Fall River will be the fourth JHSV overall, it’s the Navy’s second ship: The first, Fortitude, and third, Spearhead, will belong to the Army. The first Navy JHSV will be the second built, named Vigilant.

Although the JHSV Fall River will be operated by Military Sealift Command — which is why it takes the “USNS” prefix — it will be the second naval ship to bear the name. The first was a Baltimore-class cruiser that served in World War II, commissioned in 1944 and decommissioned only three years later.

“Fall River” makes JHSV the latest U.S. ship class to break with its initial naming convention: Last week, the Coast Guard announced it was ditching names such as “Sentinel” for its new class of fast response cutters, in favor of historic Coast Guard heroes. Other changes have come in the littoral combat ship program, which began with names intended to capture both inspirational notions and specific places: “Freedom” and “Independence” are supposed to honor those concepts as well as every town in America so named, the Navy said, but the subsequent ships were named “Fort Worth” and “Coronado,” specifically for the cities in Texas and California.

If both classes’ “town” convention continues, the Navy apparently will have JHSVs and LCS ships drawing from a similar pool of names.

Mabus’ predecessor, Donald Winter, last year broke with the most recent convention of naming Virginia-class attack submarines for states when he decided the 12th boat, SSN-785, would be named for retired Virginia Sen. John Warner.