Fitzgerald to arrive at Ingalls today

The Navy’s guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald, damaged from a collision last June with a Philippine-flagged container ship off Japan, is expected to arrive at Huntington Ingalls’ shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., on the morning of Jan. 19. HII-Ingalls announced the Fitzgerald's expected arrival on Thursday, and inviting residents to wave flags as the ship is carried up the Pascagoula River aboard a transport ship. Colleen O'Rourke, a spokeswoman for Naval Sea Systems Command, which is overseeing the repair at Pascagoula, wrote in an e-mail that the Navy will have more information once the ship arrives. The collision resulted in the death of seven sailors. DDG-62’s hull was also punctured twice more in November while being loaded aboard a transport ship, which eventually sailed from Japan on Dec. 9. HII-Ingalls, chosen because it was one of only two shipyards that builds destroyers and had available capacity, was awarded a $63M repair contract. Fitzgerald will also be modernized while at HII-Ingalls, and had been scheduled for an overhaul in FY 2019. (Source: The AP & WLOX 01/19/18)