LCS 2: We’ll give it another shot tomorrow
June 29th, 2009 | Science and technology Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
Engineers postponed starting the littoral combat ship Independence's builder's trials by a day after an "anomaly" with the ship's engines // General Dynamics
As we’ve written before, the COmbined Diesel And Gas power plants in the Navy’s littoral combat ships mean they can outrace anything else in the fleet; the Freedom has made 47 knots at full CODAG power. But, as we’ve also written, one price of that speed is complicated engineering arrangements, including two main diesels; two gas turbines; splitter gears; reduction gears; amidships impellers that suck in water; and four jets that spit it out, two of which turn to steer the ships. The Navy’s vision is for LCS’ engineering spaces to be unmanned under normal cruising, but there are a lot of potential wrinkles to be smoothed out before that happens.
After lighting off its propulsion plant in early June, the second LCS, Independence, was all set to set off for four days of builder’s trials on Monday, but an engineering hiccup kept the ship at its dock for another day. Because Independence hasn’t been delivered to the Navy it still has a shipyard crew of technicians from Austal, the Mobile, Ala. yard where it was built, and Bath Iron Works, part of the General Dynamics-led team building the ship. They heard a noise they didn’t like in one of the ship’s main propulsion diesels, and decided it was wiser to stay at the pier for another day instead of taking Independence out.
Bath Iron Works spokesman Jim DeMartini said Independence’s builder’s trials would include “a full-power run, quick-asterns, quick-aheads, all the maneuvering events typical of what you would find in a new ship.”
We’ll be watching to see not only how Independence does with standard early-ship evolutions, but also to see if it can match the speeds Freedom hit on its builder’s trials last summer, which included runs at more than 40 knots.