Mississippi's Ingalls Shipbuilding​ To Repair USS Fitzgerald After Collision

JACKSON, MS — Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi will be tasked with repairing the USS Fitzgerald, a U.S. Navy destroyer that was damaged in a June collision that left seven sailors dead, the Navy announced Wednesday.

Details including how long the repairs will take, how much they'll cost and when they'll begin weren't immediately known, Naval Sea Systems Command said. The command said it chose Ingalls because only a shipyard that builds destroyers could fix the damage from the June 17 crash with a Philippine-flagged container ship. Parts of the Fitzgerald caved in above and below the waterline. Water gushed into berthing compartments, killing the sailors.

Ingalls Shipbuilding is part of Huntingdon Ingalls Industries of Newport News, Virginia. Only Ingalls and the Bath Iron Works unit of General Dynamics Corp. in Maine build American destroyers. The Fitzgerald, built in 1995 at Bath, is an early version of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. The Navy said it chose to send it to Ingalls for repairs because that yard, which employs 11,000 workers, "has the available capacity to restore USS Fitzgerald to full operational status in the shortest period of time with minimal disruption to ongoing repair and new construction work." (For more information on the repairs and other Mississippi stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

A second destroyer, the USS John S. McCain, collided on Monday with an oil tanker collided off Singapore, injuring five sailors and leaving 10 others missing. The Navy is still seeking missing sailors and assessing damage to that ship.

Repairs are likely to cost hundreds of millions of dollars and could take more than a year. The Navy spent $250 million on 14 months of repairs for another destroyer, the USS Cole, after it was damaged in a bombing in Yemen in 2000. Repairs at Ingalls to the USS Stark, a frigate hit by Iraqi missiles in 1987, cost $90 million over 10 months.

The Navy said that it will use the opportunity to modernize the Fitzgerald, which had been scheduled for an overhaul in the 2019 budget year. A Navy spokeswoman couldn't immediately say how much those overhauls typically cost on an undamaged ship.

The Navy said it is considering proposals to hire a heavy-lift ship to carry the Fitzgerald to Pascagoula from Yokosuka, Japan, where it's currently dry-docked. In a contract solicitation issued earlier this month, the Navy said loading could begin as early as Sept. 15.

By JEFF AMY, Associated Press

Photo credit: Spc. 1st Class Leonard Adams/U.S. Navy via AP