Brown’s wingman ship commissioning

The Navy’s newest guided-missile destroyer, the future USS Thomas Hudner (DDG 116), is scheduled to be introduced to the active fleet Dec. 1 during a commissioning ceremony in South Boston. The ship arrived at Flynn Cruiseport Boston via Castle Island on Nov. 26 in preparation for the ceremony. The ship, which was built in Bath, Maine, is the namesake of the late Capt. Thomas J. Hudner Jr. A Fall River, Mass., native. Hudner was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1951 about four months after he intentionally crash-landed his plane into a snowy mountain in an attempt to save his wounded wingman, Ensign Jesse Brown of Hattiesburg, Miss., during the Korean War. Brown was the first African-American naval pilot and the first to be killed in combat. Before Hudner died in November 2017, at age 93, he wrote a letter to then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus asking him to consider naming a new destroyer after Brown. The future USS Thomas Hudner will be the 66th Arleigh Burke-class destroyer to be commissioned into the Navy. The destroyer’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Nathan Scherry, and the ship’s 310 officers and enlisted personnel will accept the duties of running and maintaining the destroyer as the commissioning pennant is raised for the first time around 9 a.m. (CT) Saturday, officials said. (Source: Boston Globe 11/26/18) A previous ship (FFT 1089) had been named for the Mississippi native. It was decommissioned at NAS Pensacola, Fla., and afterwards was commissioned into the Egyptian Navy. Prior to decommissioning, the ship was homeported at the former Naval Station Mobile, Ala. The commissioning ceremony on Saturday will be live-streamed at https://www.navy.mil/ah_online/live/ah-live.asp