Navy to name LPD 26 for Rep. John Murtha - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Navy to name LPD 26 for Rep. John Murtha

The Navy’s 10th San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock will be named for Rep. John Murtha, the long-serving Pennsylvania Democrat who chaired the powerful House appropriations defense subcommittee before he died in February.

According to a Navy memorandum obtained by Navy Times, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus notified Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead that he had selected “John P. Murtha” for the previously unnamed LPD 26. It’s the latest example of the Navy breaking a convention for naming its warships; the previous ships in the San Antonio class have been named for American cities.

Capt. Beci Brenton, a spokeswoman for Mabus, who is traveling on the West Coast, said she had no comment on the memo.

The choice of Murtha as the namesake for an LPD appeared to reflect both his support in Congress for more of the gators and his service in the Marine Corps, which included time in Vietnam. San Antonio-class ships can carry about 700 Marines, their equipment and vehicles.

But Murtha might also prove to be a controversial pick: He was accused of ethics violations several times over the course of his career and he caused outrage among Marines in 2005 when he accused troops of 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, of “killing innocent people” in a shooting in Haditha, Iraq.

The John P. Murtha is not just the latest Navy warship to break with its class naming convention, it’s also the latest amphibious ship to do so. In 2008, Mabus’ predecessor, Donald Winter, named the amphibious assault ship LHA 6 the “America,” bucking the tradition of naming big-deck gators for Marine battles, such as “Makin Island” and “Bataan.”

Mabus’ decision does keep with a Navy tradition of naming warships for friendly politicians. The fast attack submarines Glenard P. Lipscomb and John Warner, the ballistic missile sub Henry M. Jackson, and the carriers Carl Vinson and John C. Stennis all were named for political friends of the Navy in their eras. Like Murtha, some of those figures were controversial — Georgia Rep. Carl Vinson, and Mississippi Sen. John Stennis, both Democrats, supported racial segregation in the South, opposed civil rights legislation and signed the 1956 “Southern Manifesto.”