A littoral combat ship is rolling down the streets of San Diego armed with confetti — thanks to two sailors' ingenuity.
The 21.5-foot-long parade float debuts Veteran's Day, a mock warship of reclaimed materials that's complete with whirling radar, rotating deck gun, a public announcing system and a pilothouse from which to control them. From its plywood hull to metal pipe framing, the do-it-yourself ship personifies the less-is-more culture of 100-man littoral combat ship crews.
Fire Controlman 1st Class (SW) Bryan Wells scrounged plywood from discarded pallets for the hull and salvaged scrap pipes from construction sites. The ship's mast is a smoking receptacle that he rescued from a recycling truck.
Unlike the $360 million Independence-class warship upon which it's modeled, Wells' LCS tribute cost a total of about $20 — for drywall to fill some holes — and took two months for two sailors to weld, frame, hammer and wire together with junk scraps.
The inspiration came last year, when Wells and his command master chief spotted a big inflatable of the Midway aircraft carrier in the Veteran's Day parade.
"My CMC looked at me and said, 'Wouldn't it be cool if we had a float like that for LCS?' " Wells recalled.
Wells, 33, who is assigned to LCS Squadron 1 based in San Diego, said the task seemed pretty tough at first given they couldn't raise money or use Navy funds.
"I wanted to make this happen," he said in a phone interview the day before the parade. "We started off with a boat trailer. I found a boat trailer that someone was getting rid of on Craigslist."
Wells said he found disused pallets on base, pried out the nails and then used them for the hull with the help of his buddy, Electronics Technician 1st Jody Voss, who’s a skilled woodworker. The metal pipes came from scrap yards at construction sites on base, where officials allowed them to take junk.
The mock-up of the 57mm deck gun took some engineering chops. Wells found an old motor to control the turret's movements, relays to train it port or starboard left or right and borrowed a 12-volt battery to power it. The barrel is rigged to blast confetti via a button in the command-and-control center, a space inside the boat with just enough room for one or two sailors to stand up.
As any gunner's mate or fire controlman knows, deck guns can be finicky when it's time to fire.
Asked whether the gun would work at the parade, Wells replied, "Oh yes, we've op-tested many times."
The boat is also defended by .50 caliber machine guns, manned by muscled action figures.
And then there's the comms suite. The hobby ship also features a working PA, taken off an out-of-action boat; Wells said he plans to pipe out "Anchors Aweigh" and marching music via the USB cable that he ran from the amplifier to his smart phone.
The parade float may not be a 418-foot water-jet propelled monohull behemoth, but it’s still bigger than a food truck at 12-feet wide and 14-feet tall, which Wells will that will be pulled behind a pick-up truck.
"We had to work a special request out to get it off base because it's bigger than one lane," Wells said.
On Tuesday afternoon, Wells was touching up paint on the LCS' stern and putting on streamers. He said he was jittery to present it before the thousands of parade goers, but said he also feels vindication that he and Voss accomplished so much on their own.
"They told me from the beginning that I couldn't do it. They said you're not going to be able to do that. You're not going to be able to get funding," Wells said. "We found a way, we got what we needed from where we needed it and hopefully residents of San Diego and the World War II veterans that show up [Wednesday] will have something to smile about."
On Thursday, Wells said the parade went great. The deck gun and chaff launchers fired confetti, the 1MC played music, the ship didn't break down and need a casualty report. Local TV stations interviewed the builders.
So what's next for the fleet's best land-based LCS?
"We're going to put it into kind of a lay-up state," Wells said Thursday, noting that his command wants to keep using it. "They're talking about some retirements and reenlistments. And we have Christmas parties that we do, so we can bring it out for that."
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the LCS variant upon which the parade float is based. The float, hull number 2.5, is based on the Independence-class, a trimaran hull propelled by water jets that's been clocked at speeds of 44 knots.
