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Juneau gets all decked out look at USS Ted Stevens, but not inner workings of Navy’s newest destroyer
Big weaponry makes big impression, but ship named after Alaska senator ‘is the most technologically advanced and there are things that we just need people not to see,’ master-at-arms says
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
Amy Lloyd’s simple — but strenuous — lesson plan for the five U.S. government classes she taught Thursday was taking her students, about 100 in all, aboard the USS Ted Stevens for a tour of the U.S. Navy’s new guided-missile destroyer.
"I mean, how often do you have a battleship in town?" she said after completing one of the tours at midday.
A group of students departing the ship with her offered rave reviews for field trip which offered a powerful learning experience.
"We got to go to the upper deck with all the missiles and everything," said Sonny Mazon, a senior at Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé, adding for him it was "the first time and probably the only time" aboard a military ship.
Riley Schultz, another student on the tour, said the most memorable part was the five-inch/54-caliber Mark 45 lightweight gun on the ship’s forecastle.
"It shoots like 13 miles or something," she said.
The 510-foot-long USS Ted Stevens was commissioned on Oct. 3 in Whittier and is making a five-day stop in Juneau on its way back to its homeport of Norfolk, Virginia. The ship is named after former longtime U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, a World War II veteran.
Public tours scheduled Thursday and Friday were fully booked by Thursday morning, with the community also showing support by hosting a downtown block party with live music and other activities Thursday evening.
Lloyd, in an email to the Juneau Independent after her day of tours, stated "I feel so very fortunate that we were able to get so many U.S. government and civic students on board the USS Ted Stevens because it really is a rare opportunity."
"Many students who do not have family or friends in the military think of elders when they hear about veterans, so it was especially cool to have them see so many young, active military servicemen and servicewomen," she wrote.
Lloyd said the tours also were a learning experience for her.
"My favorite thing that I learned is that several things are named after Alaskan themes such as the rescue boats are ‘Denal’ and ‘Kodiak,’" she wrote. "The two guns in the bridge area are named ‘Togo’ and ’Balto,’ and the mess hall is called the ‘Denali Diner.’"
One of the midday tours Thursday was led by U.S. Navy Master-at-Arms First Class Janessa Stallings, a 14-year Navy enlistee who told her tour group of about a dozen people she’s the only law enforcement officer aboard.
"I'm also the anti-terrorism force protection trainer," she said. "So I teach this ship and the crew how to defend themselves and the ship and each other."
While Stallings was able to show the topside of the ship and discuss details such as its weaponry, rescue boats and types of missions its 325 crew members will take part in, the interior of the ship was off-limits for what she said were security reasons due to the newness of the ship’s technology.
"Because we're the newest ship we are the most technologically advanced and there are things that we just need people not to see," she said.
Stallings said she has previously served aboard the USS George H. W. Bush, a Nimitz-class supercarrier more than twice the length of the USS Ted Stevens, but also was a "dirt sailor" who spent much of her time standing watch ashore "so it’s pretty cool having the opportunity to come back to a ship."
She said when she returned to duty after maternity leave she was offered the option of an aircraft carrier — which she’d already done — or one of two new ships including the USS Ted Stevens.
In addition to the five-inch deck gun that got plenty of attention for its front-deck prominence, the ship has seven other deck guns since the biggest one isn’t practical for close encounters, Stallings said.
"This is not going to be able to handle something that's 300 feet away," she said. "So we'll have smaller weapons to handle a small vessel that got too close. If we've got somebody that's getting that close we're going to be communicating with them continuously in every way we can think of until they have decided that they don't want to listen, and then we have to take very decisive action and put them in their place quickly."
The USS Ted Stevens also has two torpedo tubes and a Mark 41 vertical missile launching system which, when viewed from the deck, simply looks like a couple of rows of closed hatch doors.
"If you've never gotten to see one go off it's pretty extraordinary," Stallings said. "We did some testing this summer, which was pretty awesome to witness. I was right up there on the bridge when we got to shoot it off. See this red circle going all the way around? You do not want to be in that circle, or even on deck, when this thing is going off."
Among the questions visitors asked was what she thinks of the crews’ quarters.
They're smaller than what I expected coming from a carrier," she said. The reason for that is "we had to put a lot of equipment in here, so we pinched corners where we could and we took out a lot of the luxury."
Stallings said the ship has a larger number of female crew members, about 70, compared to 40 or less that is typical for a Navy destroyer.
"What I love about our operations department is about 30 females are in our operations department and most of them are female bosuns," she said. "So they're out here, these young ladies, working the men out of a job. And I think that's pretty awesome, that one of the harder physical labor jobs we've got a very heavy woman-dominated department here."
Also, the commanding officer of the USS Ted Stevens is Capt. Mary Katey Hayes and there are two junior officers who are women, Stallings said.
The tour ended at a table where three crew members were selling mementos such as travel mugs with the ship’s name, although they took a momentary break from that duty to pose for a picture in front of the five-inch deck gun with Jethro Salva, 9, taken by his mother.
"We thought it was a very good opportunity to see what the U.S. Navy is doing, especially since this is the latest ship they're launching," said Christian Salva, who escorted her son on the tour. She said his father was in the Philippine Army and "it's in our family to defend the country, so it always fascinates me to see what armies everywhere are doing."
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
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