The USS New York was met with appropriate fanfare last week when she was commissioned in New York. Now there’s word that her sister ship, the USS Somerset has scheduled her keel-authentication ceremony for December 11 at the Northrop Grumman Avondale yard in Louisiana. Like the New York, the Somerset is a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock. And like the New York, she’s tied to 9/11. She takes her name from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 crashed. Flight 93 crashed in a field where old coal-mining equipment had been sitting for years. One of those machines was a Marion 7500 dragline, which was quite near the crashsite. The shipbuilders took the bucket of that dragline, melted it down, and used it to pour the Somerset’s bow stem. When she’s commissioned in 2013, the Somerset will be a fine memorial to the heroes of Flight 93–probably the best memorial the federal government can offer.
