There has been a ton of buzz about the USS Detroit currently sitting at a dock in the Detroit River. Public tours on Wednesday were so popular that many weren’t able to get on board.
Today, I got a chance to take a look around the USS Detroit and share some photos with you.
Having taken a few military ship tours in my life, including the USS Midway, one of the things that stands out is this ship is full of technology. Almost every crew member is trained to do every job on the ship. It only has a crew of 98 – the ship it is replacing required more than double that.
It’s flexible, with three different mission packages. Anti-surface, anti-mine, and anti-submarine. It’s also blazingly fast for a ship of this size, with a speed of 45 knots (that’s a bit over 50 miles per hour). To make that speed happen 1,976,000 gallons of water per minute can flow through the ship’s four waterjets. That would fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in about 20 seconds.
Let’s take a look around. Just so you know, they weren’t showing the personal quarters of the crew to the media, so don’t be disappointed if you wanted to see bunks or the kitchen.
The crew onboard was rehearsing for the commissioning this Saturday at 11 a.m.
This is the hangar where helicopters such as H-60 HELO and VTUAVs are stored. Let’s take a look around.
Pictured above is Commanding Officer Michael P. Desmond, and he was proud to represent Detroit.
“This is a fantastic community. It’s a city filled with so many hard working, patriotic, devoted, innovative Americans and the crew is so honored to be here to represent the city of Detroit. This crew, this ship, this city are meant to be together. I think this week has laid the foundation for a long term relationship. I think that this will be one of the best in the fleet. I think we have one of the best crews, best ships, and associated with one of the best cities in America.”
Here’s peeking out a giant door onto the flight deck. We’ll go out there in a bit.
A hatch leads below deck. But let’s head up to the bridge.
Next it’s to the bow of the ship…
Make sure to stay outside of the red circle to stay out of the way of the rotating gun. They were pretty clear on those warnings.
Now, through the ship..
And eventually out to the flight deck.
And with that, our little tour is almost over. But there are a couple more really cool things to see.
Do you see the size of those doors? And the DETROIT across the back is very cool.
And of course – had to do another DETROIT name check…
