In what is fast becoming a regular news item, a Littoral Combat Ship–in this case the freshly commissioned Independence-class USS Montgomery (LCS-8) suffered engineering casualties during a transit in the Gulf of Mexico and is heading to Florida for repairs.
As reported by USNI News:
[Montgomery] was bound for the Panama Canal when Montgomery suffered two engineering failures. Now the ship is headed to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba under its own power but under propulsion restrictions before returning to Naval Station Mayport, Fla. for repairs, Naval Surface Forces confirmed to USNI News.
“The first casualty happened when the crew detected a seawater leak in the hydraulic cooling system. Later that day, Montgomery experienced a casualty to one of its gas turbine engines,” read a late Friday statement.
“The built-in redundancy of the ship’s propulsion plant allows these ships to operate with multiple engine configurations. However, with the two casualties resulting in the loss of both port shafts, it was determined that the best course of action would be to send the ship to Mayport to conduct both repairs.”
It’s the fifth engineering casualty suffered by an LCS within the last year. Montgomery was commissioned 10 September at Mobile at her builder’s yard and was on her maiden voyage to her home port, which will be put off for a time.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
About laststandonzombieisland
Let me introduce myself. I am a bit of a conflict junkie. I am fascinated by war and warfare, assassination, personal protection and weaponry ranging from spud guns and flame throwers to thermonuclear bombs and Soviet-trained Ebola monkeys. In short, if it’s violent or a tool to create violence it is kind of my thing.
I have written a few thousand articles on the dry encyclopedia side for such websites as Guns.com, University of Guns, Outdoor Hub, Tac-44, History Times, Big Game Hunter, Glock Forum, Firearms Talk.com, and Combat Forums; as well as for print publications like England Expects, and Strike First Strike Fast. Several magazines such as Sea Classics, Military Historian and Collector, Mississippi Sportsman and Warship International have carried my pieces. Additionally I am on staff as a naval consultant and writer for Eye Spy Intelligence Magazine.
Currently I am working on several book projects including an alternative history novel about the US-German War of 1916, and a biography of Southern gadfly and soldier of fortune Bennett Doty. My first novel, about the coming zombie apocalypse was released in 2012 by Necro Publications and can be found at Amazon.com as was the prequel, Chimera-44. I am currently working on book two of that series: "Pirates of the Zombie Coast."
In my day job I am a contractor for the U.S. federal government in what could best be described as the ‘Force Protection’ field. In this I am an NRA-certified firearms, and less-than-lethal combat instructor.
Seems that the quality of our naval vessels has suffered lately. I was on a Spruance Class ship, USS FLETCHER DD-992. In the time I was on it as the ship’s “Doc”, we only had one major engineering causality. And that was to hide the fact that we covertly went somewhere and to account for the fuel usage. Times must be hard for those Alabama shipyard workers. Hiring all those guys who need training on how to build a Naval vessel. (heheh)
LCS= POS. They took civvie designs and tried to kludge them up to milspec. Bad idea.
LCS was supposed to be both cheap to buy and available in quantity. It has not been either. Bath and Ingalls have put more DDGs in the water in the time it has taken the LCS shipyards to do what they’ve done.
Fucking pitiful.