There’s an interesting story that’s been going through the emails for a couple of months, but I haven’t read any accounts of it in the blogs. I got around to checking it out and I found out that not only is the story true (and pretty neat), there’s another eerie detail as well.
The main part of the story is that construction is about half-completed on the USS New York, a new amphibious assault ship for the Navy that will be launched next year. There are a couple of details that make this noteworthy: the ship is one of three such craft made to support special operations missions against terrorists, and all three ships bear a name associated with 9/11. The other two ships are the USS Arlington (for the Pentagon) and the USS Somerset (for the county were Flight 93 crashed). The coolest detail is that the New York’s bow is made from 24 tons of scrap steel salvaged from the Twin Towers and reforged. You can read the touching story here.
Artist rendering of USS New York (Northrop Grumman)
While the Navy used to name battleships after states of the union this practice is currently reserved for nuclear submarines, so resurrecting the name for an amphibious assault ship required an exception. In fact, there have been at least seven ships named the USS New York, and the last one was a sub (I know, a sub is really a boat, not a ship).
Here’s the eerie twist: after googling the name of the ship I discovered that prior to the submarine the last USS New York (BB-34) had been a battleship that had seen action in both World Wars. The keel of that battleship was laid on a very interesting date:
