Newest phib set to commission

From Navy Times

Newest amphib set for commissioning Saturday

By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer

Posted : Thursday Jan 22, 2009 15:47:35 EST

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Escorted by tugboats and heavy security, the Navy’s newest amphibious transport dock, the Green Bay, glided into a berth here Tuesday afternoon, a few days ahead of its official commissioning into the Navy’s fleet.

The 684-foot, 25,000-ton ship, with its distinctive silhouette framed by a pair of covered masts, will be formally commissioned Saturday morning.

The fourth ship in the LPD 17 San Antonio class, Green Bay will be the first one commissioned on the West Coast. The Navy is holding the ceremony at the shuttered naval shipyard in Long Beach’s middle harbor, two hours north of San Diego, where the ship will be homeported.

Green Bay and its precommissioning crew of 365 arrived Dec. 17 in San Diego after traveling through the Panama Canal from builder Northrop-Grumman’s shipyard in Avondale, La., with a refurbished air-cushioned landing craft and 132 crew members’ vehicles in its spacious stowage decks.

“It’s starting to become a real Navy ship,” said Engineman 1st Class (SW/AW) Stefany Hammond, 27.

After commissioning, the ship will go to a San Diego shipyard for a month before beginning its unit level training and eventually predeployment training before its first operational deployment next year.

“We want to be a warship ready for anything,” said Cmdr. Joseph Olson, Green Bay’s skipper and a Wisconsin native. “The crew did a great job coming around.”

Named for the Wisconsin city that’s home to the NFL’s Green Bay Packers, the ship is decked out with city and team paraphernalia, including team logos affixed to a pair of capstans, on sofa pillows in the chiefs’ lounge and on crew members’ official ballcaps. There’s even a life-size photo of famed former Packers quarterback Brett Favre, on a bulkhead by the enlisted mess.

The crew named the main passageway leading from the ship’s large flight deck as the “Hall of Heroes,” and plaques detail the story of Wisconsin-born sailors and Marines killed in combat.

Green Bay is among the first ships with medical care and support as one of the primary missions. The 18-member medical department oversees two full operating rooms, laboratory, pharmacy, blood bank and a large triage space with direct access from the flight deck.

Lab spaces are larger and packed with new equipment, including digital X-rays and digital records. Hospital Corpsman 1st Class (SW) Agnes Salas, a lab technician, works in a space with automated machines that get faster lab results. “You get to do a lot more, way more,” Salas said. Now she can do blood work on as many as 20 patients an hour, instead of one or two.

Living spaces are roomier, with L-shaped “sit up” bunks for enlisted personnel. “What’s cool about it is you can sit up and read or work on a laptop,” Salas said. “It’s like an extension of your workspace. It’s more comfortable.” Each bunk includes a light, magazine rack and ventilation, and more lockers and drawers, fewer bunks in larger berthing areas and six-bunk staterooms with private baths for chief petty officers.

While in Avondale, the precommissioning crew sweated through weeks loading mattresses, boxes, books, computers, even exercise equipment, as they turned bare open rooms into their workspaces. “We brought the ship to life together,” said Senior Chief Hospital Corpsman (SW/AW/FMF) Melissa Haskins. “We put our heart into this ship.”

Workdays stretched as long as 16 to 18 hours as the crew trained and prepared for a series of certifications before arriving in San Diego.

“I think I know just about everybody on the ship,” said Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class (FMF) John Hammersla, 26.

Ship chaplain Lt. Gary Foshee helped set up the library next to the chapel in a quiet forward space on the fourth deck. Shelves, cabinets and drawers are loaded with thousands of music CDs, movie DVDs, books and books on tape, Japanese comics, portable music players and handheld games, and 10 computer stations are planned. “I have probably 30 boxes in storage that I haven’t yet put away,” he said. “It’s still a brand-new ship. Eventually, it’ll get set up.”

The ship plans to set up a crew-served laundry with washers and dryers for sailors to use for their own clothes. “For our class of ship, it’s got a lot of promise,” said Chief Hospital Corpsman Aaron Burke, the ship’s independent duty corpsman. “For a lot of it, we’re going to have to be patient.”