With
a year to go before it even touches the water, the Navy's
amphibious
assault ship USS New York has already made history.. It was
built
with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade
Center
USS
New York is about 45 percent complete and should be ready for launch
in
mid-2007. Katrina disrupted construction when it pounded the Gulf
Coast
last summer, but the 684-foot vessel escaped serious damage, and
workers
were back at the yard near New
Orleans two weeks after the
storm.
It
is the fifth in a new class of warship - designed for missions that
include
special operations against terrorists. It will carry a crew of
360
sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by
helicopters
and assault craft.
"It
would be fitting if the first mission this ship would go on is to
make
sure that bin Laden is taken out, his terrorist organization is
taken
out," said Glenn Clement, a paint foreman. "He came in through the
back
door and knocked our towers down and (the New York ) is coming right
through
the front door, and we want them to know that."
Steel
from the World
Trade Center
was melted down in a foundry in Amite,
La.,
to cast the ship's bow section. When it was poured into the
molds
on
Sept. 9, 2003 , "those big rough steelworkers treated it with total
reverence,"
recalled Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing, who was there. "It was a
spiritual
moment for everybody there."
Junior
Chavers, foundry operations manager, said that when the
trade
center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand and the
"hair
on my neck stood up." "It had a big meaning to it for all of us,"
he
said. "They knocked us down. They can't keep us down. We're going to
be
back."
The
ship's motto? - 'Never Forget'
