MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

New US Navy ship being built with World Trade Center steel

With a year to go before it even touches the water, the US Navy's amphibious assault ship USS New York has already made history ? twice. It was built with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center, and it survived Hurricane Katrina.

That combination of disasters gives the ship a unique standing among the 500 or so Avondale, Louisiana, shipyard workers building it, said Tony Quaglino, a crane superintendent who postponed retirement to have a hand in the New York's construction.

??I think Katrina made us more aware of the tragedy in New York,'' said the 66-year-old Quaglino. ??One was manmade, one was natural, but they're both a common bond.'' 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 208 metres vessel escaped serious damage, and workers were back at the yard near New Orleans two weeks after the storm.

The ship was an impetus for many of the yard's thousands of workers to return to the job, even though hundreds lost their homes, Quaglino and others said.

Northrop Grumman employed 6,500 at Avondale before Katrina. Today, roughly 5,500 are back on the job, working on the New York and three other vessels. More than 200 employees who lost their homes to Katrina are living at the shipyard, some on a Navy barge and others in bunk-style housing.

??Their dedication and devotion to duty has been, to say the least, epic,'' Philip Teel, a vice president for Northrop Grumman Corp. and head of its ship systems division, told a Navy League dinner audience in New York on March 22.

??It sounds trite, but I saw it in their eyes,'' Teel said in a separate interview. ??These are very patriotic people, and the fact that the ship has steel from the trade center is a source of great pride. They view it as something incredibly special. They're building it for the nation.''

USS New York 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.

When terrorists crashed two jetliners into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, destroying the twin towers and killing nearly 2,800 people, the US$700 million ship was already on the drawing board but had not been assigned a name.

Months later, New York Gov. George Pataki asked the Navy to commemorate the disaster by reviving the name New York for a ship whose role would include fighting terrorism.

Then-Navy Secretary Gordon, in announcing the decision, said the New York would ??project American power to the far corners of the Earth and support the cause of freedom well into the 21st century.'' Its motto is ??Never Forget,'' a slogan among New Yorkers since Sept. 11.