MARINETTE, WIS. – The Navy's newest combat ship, named in honor of the Twin Cities, will launch Saturday — in Wisconsin, of all places.
The USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul, a steel-hulled combat ship a bit longer than a football field, is designed to be fast and agile enough to locate mines and disarm other threats near the shoreline. It includes a flight deck for helicopters and drones and a bay to launch smaller watercraft.
The ship will be christened at a shipyard in this city on the Wisconsin-Michigan border and then literally dropped sideways into the Menominee River near the churning waters of Green Bay.
U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum is scheduled to deliver the keynote speech during the ceremony at Fincantieri Marinette Marine, the only naval shipyard in the Midwest and about an hour north of the city of Green Bay.
"We are building Naval combat ships that travel around the world and we are building them right here in the Great Lakes," said Jim Murdoch, a retired Navy admiral who works as director of business development for shipbuilder Lockheed Martin. "We are proud to be part of the team building the next namesake of the Twin Cities."
Jodi J. Greene, a deputy undersecretary of the Navy and a Northfield native, has been selected as the ship's sponsor and will smash a bottle of sparkling wine against the ship's bow to christen it.
Then the ship will be plunged into the water, listing dramatically from side to side until it rights itself. Bystanders typically line the opposite banks of the river to see the ship splash down.
"It's exciting. It's one of the few times we get to put 300 tons of steel in the water," Murdoch said during a Friday morning tour of the shipyard.