My family and I were among the lucky few that got tickets for the tour. They sold out in
45 minutes. This is the newest class of Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). It is a 418 ft,
aluminum trimaran, with two conventional diesel engines, each driving a water jet, and
two gas turbines, each driving a second set of water jets. Yes, there are a total of four
water jet propulsion systems. Today they said she can reach speed in excess of 50 knots.

We were taken just about everywhere, bridge, CIC, advanced weapons, flight deck,
launch bay, in the chopper, the remote submersible, even small and large handheld
weapons.

My son sat on the pilots seat, in the chopper, sat in the captains chain on the bridge, sat at
a CIC station, and handled some rather large, 'small handheld' weapons.

I have about 100 pictures, here is the first one, many more to follow.



Check back regularly.

These are the ones with the corrosion problem in the jet drive system? Did they happen to mention whether they resolved that issue?

We love to see more pics.

What a wild design, love it.

Nice! Can't wait to see more.

The ship was amazing, and they treated us like I was a 5 star, fleet admiral.

We had a LCDR (Lieutenant Commander) escorting us through, and at each
station, they had various specialists to explain stuff (within reason). Just a
few times they smiled and said, sorry we can not answer that.

They did tell me not to take any pictures of the consoles in CIC.

This ship had a crew of only 43 persons on board, and at present 3 of them are female.

Many more pictures to follow, stay tuned.


click here for19 USS INDEPENDENCE photos so far


overview, so far


big gun on bow



four jet drives, center 2 are gas turbines, outer 2 are diesel



stern


click here for 19 USS INDEPENDENCE photos so far


Many more pictures to follow, stay tuned.

What are those tubes behind the jets for? I've never seen those before.

-----First off,,,I know nothing! Second,,,All that stuff hanging off the stern looks like a plumbers nightmare. To my uneducated eye there would be big corrosion problems as well as growth problems from waterline down. Its not like there are any in-and-out marinas for that thing. I must be wrong about my statements, so go ahead.......Bill S

-----Oh,,,I agree that the ship is cool!!!

Very cool! Thanks for posting those, Frank. Where were they taken?

Not sure, but perhaps part of the thrust reversers?


They checked our photo IDs, had us empty all of our
pockets, remove our belts, sent us through scanners,
x-rays all of the stuff we had removed from our pockets.

Next the put bags over our heads and drove us around
(sometimes I think in circles), so I have ho idea where we
were. Area 51-W I think. LOL. Well maybe not this last
part, but it did resemble an aliew space ship.

St. Pete docks.