Virginia-Class Submarine Homeports
Senator Inouye has confirmed that USS Hawaii (SSN 776) will be shifting homeports to Pearl Harbor next year, ahead of the planned arrival of USS Texas (SSN 775):
Officials hope the namesake submarine can take part in the 50th anniversary of Statehood Day, which is celebrated on the third Friday in August. On Aug. 21, 1959, Hawai'i became the 50th state in the union.With the Navy's emphasis on the Pacific, it's not surprising to me that 3 of the first 4 Virginia-class boats will go west. I expect we'll see the numbers end up about 60% for the Pacific and 40% in LANTFLT when it's all said and done.
Pearl Harbor is expected to receive three of the first four of the latest-generation subs to be built after the lead ship in the class, the USS Virginia.
The Hawai'i, Texas and North Carolina would be based here and augment and begin to replace the 15 older Los Angeles-class attack subs that operate out of Pearl Harbor.
The Texas was projected to arrive first in 2009, but the arrival of the Hawai'i has now been moved up ahead of the Texas. Officials said the flip-flop is a result of some political clout working to bring the USS Hawai'i to Pearl Harbor as fast as possible and the need for some work on the Texas.
Update 1405 05 Dec: Here's the official Navy announcement on the homeport change.
posted by Bubblehead at 1:44 PM
4 Comments:
Highly doubt that it was the pol's that did it. Probably some nuance in the schedules. Perhaps the N3's found that they could get more out of the ships by swapping the homeport changes.
12/05/2008 6:38 PM
Both ships are in PSA. Likely maintenance timelines are dictating the change of homeport schedule.
12/05/2008 9:14 PM
Politics, shipmates Navy politics, pure and simple!
Same thing happened with the USS Kamahamaha SSBN-642 in 1964-5? Instead of going directly to Guam following PSA, she went to Pearl Harbor for a big whoop-di-doo. Makes the locals love the Navy when they bring their namesake boats "home."
Keep a zero bubble.....
DBFTMC(SS)USNRET
12/06/2008 11:12 AM
Being a fine sailor on the Mighty War Canoe, thats the first we heared about this swap. After our PORSE for next week got cancelled, we were joking about who would roll out of EB first. Texas, Hawaii, or Virginia. Current issues with some hydraulic valves are plaugeing the Virginia class, and Hawaii is going back into the drydock to fix them.
12/06/2008 2:45 PM
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