Damaged Navy ship to arrive Friday at Mississippi shipyard
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/01/19/damaged-navy-ship-to-arrive-friday-at-mississippi-shipyard/
Damaged Navy ship to arrive Friday at Mississippi shipyard
By: Jeff Amy, The Associated Press 1 day ago
JACKSON, Miss. A U.S. Navy destroyer damaged in a June collision that killed seven sailors is expected to arrive at a Mississippi shipyard Friday. Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula announced the USS Fitzgeralds arrival Thursday, inviting area residents to wave flags as the ship is carried up the Pascagoula River aboard a transport ship.
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The ships arrival comes only days after the Navy announced Tuesday that it was seeking negligent homicide charges against four officers of the Fitzgerald at the time of the collision, including the then-commanding officer, Cmdr. Bryce Benson. A hearing has not yet been held to determine whether theres enough evidence for those and other charges to go to a trial by court-martial. Other charges could include dereliction of duty and endangering a ship.
The June 17 collision with a Philippine-flagged container ship off Japan caved in parts of the Fitzgerald above and below the waterline. Water gushed into berthing compartments, killing the sailors. Its hull was punctured twice more in November as it was loaded aboard a transport ship. The transport ship sailed Dec. 9.
Ingalls, a unit of Virginia-based Huntington Ingalls Industries, was chosen by the Navy to repair the ship in August and awarded an initial $63 million contract in December. The Navy said it chose Ingalls because it determined that it was the only shipyard that builds destroyers and also has available capacity to fix the damage. Only Ingalls and the Bath Iron Works unit of General Dynamics Corp. in Maine build American destroyers.
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