USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81)
 | |
| Career | 
|
|---|---|
| Ordered: | 6 January 1995 |
| Laid down: | 7 May 1998 |
| Launched: | 17 April 1999 |
| Commissioned: | 10 March 2001 |
| Decommissioned: | |
| Fate: | Active in service |
| Struck: | |
| General Characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 9,200 tons |
| Length: | 509 ft 6 in |
| Beam: | 66 ft |
| Draught: | 31 ft |
| Propulsion: | 4 x General Electric LM 2500-30 gas turbines, 2 shafts, 100,000 shp |
| Speed: | 30+ knots |
| Range: | |
| Complement: | 380 officers and enlisted |
| Armament: | 1 x 32 cell, 1 x 64 cell Mk 41 vertical launch systems, 96 x RIM-67 SM-2, BGM-109 Tomahawk or RUM-139 VL-Asroc, missiles 1 x 5 in, 2 x 25 mm, 4 x 12.7 mm guns, 2 x Phalanx CIWS 2 x Mk 46 triple torpedo tubes |
| Aircraft: | 2 x SH-60 Sea Hawk helicopters |
| Motto: | |
The USS Winston Churchill (DDG-81) is an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer of the United States Navy homeported in Norfolk, Virginia.
The contract to build Churchill was awarded to the Bath Iron Works Corporation on 6 January 1995, and the keel was laid down on 7 May 1998. Churchill was launched 17 April 1999, delivered 13 October 2000, and commissioned 10 March 2001. The launch and christening of the ship was co-sponsored by Lady Soames, the daughter of Sir Winston Churchill and Mrs. Janet Cohen, wife of the United States Secretary of Defense.
USS Winston Churchill is the only active US Navy warship named after a foreign national, and is the first destroyer and only the fourth US warship named after an Englishman. (The others were USS Alfred, an armed merchantman named after King Alfred the Great; USS Raleigh, a continental frigate, named after Sir Walter Raleigh and USS Effingham, named after Thomas Howard the 3rd Earl of Effingham who resigned his commission rather than fight the Americans during the American Revolutionary War.)
On 14 September 2001, (three days after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack), the Deutsche Marine destroyer FGS Lutjens (D-185) passed close aboard Churchill and rendered honors by manning the rails, flying the Stars and Stripes at half-mast, and the display of a banner reading "We Stand By You."
General Characteristics
This article includes information collected from the Naval Vessel Register.
| Arleigh Burke-class destroyer |
| Arleigh Burke | Barry | John Paul Jones | Curtis Wilbur | Stout | John S. McCain | Mitscher | Laboon | Russell | Paul Hamilton | Ramage | Fitzgerald | Stethem | Carney | Benfold | Gonzalez | Cole | The Sullivans | Milius | Hopper | Ross | Mahan | Decatur | McFaul | Donald Cook | Higgins | O'Kane | Porter | Oscar Austin | Roosevelt | Winston S. Churchill | Lassen | Howard | Bulkeley | McCampbell | Shoup | Mason | Preble | Mustin | Chafee | Pinckney | Momsen | Chung-Hoon | Nitze | James E. Williams | Bainbridge | Halsey | Forrest Sherman | Farragut | Kidd | Gridley | Sampson | Truxtun | Sterett | Dewey |
| List of destroyers of the United States Navy |