Hundreds greet Navy's newest warship
Shallow-draft vessel can outrun a speedboat
The USS Freedom (LCS-1), the future of American naval warfare, steamed into the Buffalo harbor Sunday on a bitterly cold afternoon that failed to keep hundreds of spectators away.
As the Freedom entered the harbor near the Buffalo Lighthouse, the sun broke through the clouds and showed the new warship to its best advantage.
“We wound it up a little coming across the lake,” Cmdr. Donald Gabrielson, the ship’s captain, said of the ship’s voyage from Cleveland.
If Gabrielson sounded boastful of his ship, he’s got a lot to brag about:
• The Freedom is longer than a football field — 378 feet — but it’s faster than a speedboat, with a top end of more than 50 mph.
• It can operate in as little as 14 feet of water, making it ideal for chasing the small gunboats used by pirates that have plagued ships near the coast of Africa.
• It carries a helicopter, unmanned drones and a submarine.
• It has three interchangeable packages that allow it to switch from antisubmarine, mine warfare or surface missions.
• It carries a crew of 40 sailors, compared with as many as 300 that once operated the heavier, slower World War II destroyer USS The Sullivans, berthed nearby in the Buffalo & Erie County Naval and Military Park.
• It has no wheel, rudder or propeller. It’s controlled by joysticks.
• It is powered by two diesel engines and two Rolls-Royce gas turbines that pump water out of four water jets, much like a personal water craft.
Built at a cost of $350 million in Lockheed Martin’s shipyard in Wisconsin, the Freedom is on a tour of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway ports on its way to Norfolk Va., for a year’s worth of testing.
Once that is complete, it will be part of the Pacific Fleet and will call San Diego home port.
Freedom’s crew will lead tours of the new ship from 12:30 to 4:30 p. m. today. It’s berthed in the Miss Buffalo dock space across from Shanghai Red’s restaurant. The tours are free, and no tickets are necessary.
The trip from Cleveland, where Freedom was docked near the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, was delayed by a few hours for reprovisioning.
Once under way, it was a quick trip across Lake Erie.
But it has not been an easy journey for the Freedom, known as a Littoral Combat Ship because it’s designed to travel in littoral, or coastal, areas.
First envisioned in 2004, the ship’s keel was laid in June 2005 at Marinette Marine in Marinette, Wis.
The Navy planned to build 55 to 60 of these small, versatile ships, but Freedom came in at 50 percent above its original estimated cost, and the Navy canceled the contract with Lockheed and another with General Dynamics last year.
In April, the Navy announced a new round of bidding, and realizing it had underestimated the cost, Congress set a cap of $460 million per ship.
There are two crews, gold and blue, which will sail the Freedom, and the Navy has seen to it there are no rookies aboard.
The lowest-ranked sailor aboard the ship is an E5 petty officer, and everyone has to have previous experience aboard a warship.
Gabrielson, the ship’s captain, is a 1989 graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy. His female executive officer, Cmdr. Kris Doyle, will become the ship’s captain in the spring.
The Freedom’s crew is much like that of a submarine. All crew members eat in the same galley, everyone buses his own table and washes his own tray, including Gabrielson, the captain.
Gabrielson grew up in Minnesota and said his proudest moment as a sailor came when he took the Freedom to Duluth.
“To me, to be able to sail a Navy warship in the Great Lakes,” he said, “was beyond description.”
It was liberty for the crew Sunday night, and they celebrated by going to the Anchor Bar for chicken wings. Tonight, the crew will be in Ralph Wilson Stadium for the game between the Buffalo Bills and Cleveland Browns.
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