The nation’s largest and most technologically sophisticated destroyer will visit Newport, RI on Thursday. The USS Zumwalt, the stealthy 610 foot destroyer set off from Bath, ME on Wednesday en route to its commissioning in Baltimore on October 15th.
It weighs in at nearly 15,000 tons, about 50 percent heavier than current destroyers. But the crew size is half of the 300 personnel of those destroyers.
According to the US Naval Institute, the USS Zumwalt is designed to operate close to shore, shares several features with stealth aircraft – like avoiding curves in the design — to keep its radar cross section low.
That effort also involves keeping ship functions that would ordinarily occur on deck hidden below low-profile hatches in the ship’s tumblehome hull.
Ship designers traded the flow and curves of traditional ship hulls for stark angles that give the ship a jagged profile as it cuts through the water to reduce the ship’s size on radar screens – down from a 610-foot warship to the size of a 50 foot fishing boat, according to an April report in The Associated Press.
The USS Zumwalt boasts a powerful new gun system that fires rocket-powered shells up to 63 nautical miles.
The USS Zumwalt is in honor of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, a veteran of WWII and the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam.
Zumwalt later became the youngest man to serve as the chief of naval operations.
* You can watch the Zumwalt pass under the Newport Bridge at around 3pm.
