PASCAGOULA, Miss., March 02, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) —

What:  Kimball (WMSL 756) keel authentication

When: 10:30 a.m. Friday

Where: Ingalls Shipbuilding Visitor Control Center

Who:

• Ship Sponsor Kay Bowen Webber Cochran
• Ingalls Shipbuilding President Brian Cuccias
• U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft (keynote speaker)

RSVP: Bill Glenn, Huntington Ingalls Industries, (228) 327-1671
          [email protected]

Please RSVP by 5 p.m. Thursday. (Shipyard attire required.)

Ingalls Shipbuilding will authenticate the keel for the company’s seventh U.S. Coast Guard National Security Cutter, Kimball (WMSL 756), on Friday, March 4. Adm. Paul Zukunft, commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, is the ceremony’s keynote speaker. Kay Bowen Webber Cochran, wife of Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., is the ship sponsor and will have her initials welded onto a keel plate at the end of the ceremony.

The ship is named in honor of Sumner Kimball, who organized and directed the U.S. Life Saving Service and was a pioneer in organizing all of the different facilities associated with the service into what eventually would become the U.S. Coast Guard.

Legend-class NSCs are the flagships of the Coast Guard’s cutter fleet. Designed to replace the 378‐foot Hamilton-class High-Endurance Cutters that entered service during the 1960s, they are 418 feet long with a 54-foot beam and displace 4,500 tons with a full load. They have a top speed of 28 knots, a range of 12,000 miles, an endurance of 60 days and a crew of 110.

About Huntington Ingalls Industries

Huntington Ingalls Industries is America’s largest military shipbuilding company and a provider of engineering, manufacturing and management services to the nuclear energy, oil and gas markets. For more than a century, HII’s Newport News and Ingalls shipbuilding divisions in Virginia and Mississippi have built more ships in more ship classes than any other U.S. naval shipbuilder. Headquartered in Newport News, Virginia, HII employs nearly 36,000 people operating both domestically and internationally. For more information, visit: