Public invited to Saturday night launching of Navy ship...

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Public invited to Saturday night launching of Navy ship...


By Robert J. Hawkins

The public is invited to the launch of the 41,000 metric ton Navy ship William McLean at the general Dynamics NASSCO shipyard on Saturday evening. Above is the most recent ship of the same class, the USNS Washington Chambers on its christening day, Sept. 11, 2010.
SAN DIEGO — Guaranteed, this opportunity doesn’t come around every day: The public is invited to a ship launching at the General Dynamics/NASSCO shipyard in San Diego.

The Navy’s newest resupply ship, the 689-foot-long William McLean, will be christened and launched into San Diego Bay at a ceremony on Saturday evening. There’s even fireworks planned right after the ceremony, said NASSCO spokesman Jim Gill.

The shipyard’s last launching was in September but “as the technology improves, it is getting rarer and rarer to see a slide-out of this type,” said Gill. “It is a dramatic sight.”

Watching a 41,000 metric ton ship like the William McLean slide down the rails into the bay is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.
The free, public ceremony is scheduled for the evening to take advantage of the high tide, said Gill. The shipyard’s main gate (28th Street and East Harbor Drive) will open at 7 p.m. and will close at 8:30 p.m. There is a Blue Line trolley stop across the street from the entrance.
Principle speaker for the 8 p.m. ceremony will be Vice Admiral Venlet. Margaret Taylor, eldest niece of the ship’s namesake, will name the ship and smash the traditional bottle of champagne against the hull.

Also speaking will be Rear Admiral Mark Buzby; Art Divens, a key civilian executive in the Navy’s amphibious and auxiliary ships division; and General Dynamics/NASSCO President Fred Harris. (Speeches are likely to be brief because, as we know, “time and tide wait for no man.”)

William Burdette McLean (1914–1976) was a U.S. Navy physicist and father of the heat-seeking Sidewinder missile. The USNS William McLean is the twelfth ship of the T-AKE class of dry cargo-ammunition ships that NASSCO is building for the Navy. Two more are under construction, the Medgar Evers and an as-yet unnamed 14th ship.
The William McLean is expected to join the fleet in the third quarter of 2011. Its mission will be to deliver more than 10,000 tons of food, ammunition, fuel and other provisions to combat ships at sea, according to the shipyard.