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Posted by James Ewinger/Plain Dealer Reporter
November 13, 2008 23:51PM
Cleveland.com

The USS Freedom could be the punch line for a great riddle, because no one would ever guess that a 3,100-ton, 377-foot warship could go more than 50 mph.

But it can, and did Thursday when it steamed into the Port of Cleveland after a high-speed pirouette around the five-mile crib. It remains through Saturday and is open for public tours today.

The Freedom resembles no warship on the water today, with a matte-aluminum superstructure that looks like a very large piece of origami.

It is the first of the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ships — vessels designed to carry the fight right up to someone else’s shoreline.

It draws 14 feet of water, a bit less than the old Fletcher-class Destroyers of World War II. But the Fletchers and most surface vessels have displacement hulls, which plow through the water.

At speed, it skims the water, said the Freedom’s executive officer, Commander Kris Doyle. “You hardly feel it.”

Traditional warships have been adapted for new kinds of warfare, but that usually has required extensive, costly retrofitting.

The Freedom class and competing Independence class of LCS vessels are more like nautical Game Boys. With modular mission packages, they can quickly change from minesweepers to sub chasers to a launch platform for remotely piloted aircraft and boats.

And they can do all that on a vessel roughly the length of the old Fletchers, but with a crew of 40 instead of the 300 on an older destroyer.

Building began in Marinette, Wis., in 2005; it was christened in 2006 and commissioned last week in Milwaukee. The Freedom is making her way through the Great Lakes, up the St. Lawrence and then on to a year of testing and evaluation in Virginia. Along the way the ship is stopping at about a dozen U.S. and Canadian cities.

Her captain, Commander Donald Gabrielson, said the program is remarkable because ship-development programs usually take 20 years from conception to final product. “Five years ago, this ship was just a rough sketch,” he said with quiet Midwestern pride.

There is no wheel, binnacle, rudder or propeller. Control is through joysticks. Power comes from two diesel engines the size of railroad locomotives and two gas turbines of the sort that power airliners. Using either system, or both in tandem, water is pumped out of four water jets at the rate of 12 million gallons a minute, making the vessel into a giant Jet Ski.

The fighting heart of the Freedom is composed of three large empty chambers called reconfigurable space 1, reconfigurable space 2, and the waterborne mission space in the stern. The first two receive the large mission modules that allow the Freedom to shape-shift - what Doyle calls the plug-and-play ability. The stern chamber is for small manned and unmanned watercraft that could launch from the stern or starboard side.

But for all of its starship flourishes, there are enough details on board to remind that this is a Navy warship: From the deckline to the water, it remains haze gray. The Freedom’s watertight doors, the companionways and hatches, draped fire hoses, and even the Aldis signal lamps could be found on Navy ships throughout much of the 20th century.

The food also remains great, according to Doyle - a longstanding point of pride on all Navy and Coast Guard vessels. But there is one concession to the reduced work force.

“Everyone eats out of the same galley, and everyone busses his own table and washes his own tray, including the captain,” Doyle said. When she becomes the Freedom’s captain next spring, she’ll step right into that new tradition.

USS Freedom
It’s capable of various missions including mine and anti-submarine warfare, surface combat and humanitarian missions.

Specs

Weight: 3,100 tons
Length: 377 feet
Beam: 58 feet
Draft: 13 to 14 feet
Speed: More than 40 knots (46 mph)

Propulsion
2 Rolls Royce MT-30 gas turbines
2 Fairbanks Morse 16PA6B diesels
4 Rolls Royce waterjets

Weapons
Mk 31 Rolling Airframe anti-missile Missile System
Mk 110 United Defense 57-mm gun
Multiple M2 .50-caliber machine guns

Crew
60 sailors, 20 with an aviation detachment

SOURCE: U.S. Navy