Navy ship-naming ceremony honors Air Force
hero
by Lt. Col. Ed Memi
437th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
12/03/01 - CHARLESTON, S.C. (AFPN) --
Air Force war hero and Medal of Honor recipient,
Airman 1st Class William Pitsenbarger, was
honored at a Navy ship-naming ceremony Nov. 28,
at Detyens Shipyard here.
Pitsenbarger, a pararescueman, was
posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for
treating and protecting scores of wounded
infantrymen while under intense enemy fire after
being mortally wounded himself, in a rain forest
stronghold near the Vietnamese capital of Saigon
in 1966.
Pitsenbarger’s heroism was honored when a
chartered ship operated for the Navy’s
Military Sealift Command -- the ocean
transportation provider for the Department of
Defense -- was named MV A1C William H.
Pitsenberger. The ship will preposition Air
Force ammunition at sea near potential war or
contingency sites.
Air Force Gen. John W. Handy, commander in
chief of U.S. Transportation Command and
commander of Air Mobility Command, was the
keynote speaker for the ceremony.
A pair of F-15E Strike Eagles from Seymour
Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., flew over the ship
when Richardene Brewer, wife of Navy Rear Adm.
David L. Brewer III, commander of Military
Sealift Command, broke the ceremonial bottle of
champagne officially naming the ship.
“This ship will live up to its heroic
namesake, going into harms way if necessary to
deliver the ammunition that the Air Force needs
to carry out its worldwide mission,” said the
admiral during the hourlong ceremony. “We
welcome this outstanding ship to the Military
Sealift Command fleet.”
Handy spoke of the tremendous heroism
Pitsenbarger demonstrated repeatedly. He told of
one mission where Pitsenbarger had figured out a
way to extract a wounded soldier in a minefield
at great risk to himself, earning him the Air
Force Airman’s Medal afterward.
“Freedom does not come without a price,”
Handy said. “Like William H. Pitsenbarger,
this ship will carry the essence of America’s
warfighters. Every single steel plate is a
symbol of the American hero for which she is
named and the iron resolve that he displayed
that bitter day. Her cargo will be used to
defend freedom around the world.”
The Pitsenbarger will carry Air Force
containerized ammunition. Air Force munitions
are loaded into side-loaded 20-foot
International Standardization Organization
containers that are carried on these ships. The
ship can hold containers with a net explosive
weight of about 6 million pounds, which can
weigh about 7 to 8 million short tons. About 720
containers fit under the deck and 135 in
compartments above deck. Both cargo areas will
be air-conditioned and dehumidified to protect
the ammunition.
The Pitsenbarger has five cranes on the deck
that allow the ship to on- and off-load
ammunition without shoreside cranes. This
critical feature gives Pitsenbarger the
flexibility to off-load in undeveloped ports.
First Lt. Mike Lenehan, program manager for
the Air Force Afloat Preposition fleet at Hill
Air Force Base, Utah, oversees the three
container ships for the Air Force. The
Pitsenbarger is the newest container ammunition
ship. Military Sealift Command obtains the ships
for the Air Force.
“A typical ship has a crew of about 20
people, but there is constant maintenance
required and everything is on a time schedule
just like your car,” Lenehan said. “The ship
will go to a designated port and will
occasionally slow steam and operate all the
cranes to maintain a certain state of
readiness.”
“During Enduring Freedom, we’ve already
had to use ship cranes to download some of these
containers (on the other two container
ammunition ships) at some austere ports,” he
said.
The Pitesenbarger is owned by RR & VO
L.L.C. and operated by Red River Shipping Corp.
of Rockville, Md., for MSC. MSC charters the
ships for five years.
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