USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81)

USS *Winston S. Churchill*
History
USS Winston S. Churchill
United States
Name:	USS Winston S. Churchill
Namesake:	Winston S. Churchill
Ordered:	6 January 1995
Builder:	Bath Iron Works
Laid down:	7 May 1998
Launched:	17 April 1999
Commissioned:	10 March 2001
Motto:	"In war: Resolution; In peace: Good Will"
Status:	in active service
Badge:
General characteristics
Class and type:	Arleigh Burke-class destroyer
Displacement:	9,200 tons (9,350 t)
Length:	509.5 ft (155.3 m)
Beam:	66 ft (20 m)
Draft:	31 ft (9.4 m)
Propulsion:	4 × General Electric LM2500-30 gas turbines, 2 shafts, 100,000 shp (75 MW)
Speed:	exceeds 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph)
Complement:	32 officers, 348 enlisted
Electronic warfare & decoys:	AN/SLQ-32(V)3
Armament:	1 × 32 cell, 1 × 64 cell Mk 41 vertical launch systems; 96 × RIM-66 SM-2 Standard, BGM-109 Tomahawk, or RUM-139 VL-Asroc missiles; 1 × 5 in (127 mm)/62 cal., 2 × 25 mm, 2 × .50 cal. guns (single), 2 × .50 cal. (dual), 2 × 7.62 mm M240 +1 on flight deck (if req) guns, 2 × 20 mm Phalanx CIWS; 2 × Mk 32 Mod 11 triple torpedo tubes, MK 46, MK 50 and MK 50 torpedoes.
Aircraft carried:	2 × SH-60 Sea Hawk helicopters

USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81) is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer of the United States Navy. She is named after British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill. This ship is the 31st destroyer of its class. Winston Churchill was the 18th ship of this class to be built at Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, and construction began on 7 May 1998. She was launched and christened on 17 April 1999. On 10 March 2001, she was commissioned during a ceremony at Town Point Park in Norfolk, Virginia. Her home port is in Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. She is a component of Carrier Strike Group Twelve.

On 29 November 1995, on a visit to the United Kingdom, President Bill Clinton announced to both Houses of Parliament that the new ship would be named after former British Prime Minister and Honorary Citizen of the United States whose mother, Lady Churchill was American, Sir Winston Churchill. It would make it the first warship of the United States Navy to be named after a non-American citizen since 1975, and the first destroyer and only the fourth American warship named after a British citizen.

Other American warships named after Britons were Alfred, an armed merchantman named after King Alfred the Great; Raleigh, a continental frigate, named after Sir Walter Raleigh (though three later USS Raleighs—and two Confederate warships—would be named after the North Carolina city, which did not exist at the time) and Effingham, named after The 3rd Earl of Effingham who resigned his commission rather than fight the Americans during the American Revolutionary War. The former frigate Harold E. Holt was also named after a person from a country in the Commonwealth of Nations, Harold Holt, the Australian Prime Minister who is presumed to have drowned in 1967. However, this is the first ship to be named after a modern British hero, or British Prime Minister.