I thought this class was to be named after cities
“I thought this class was to be named after cities.”
I liked it a lot better when they stuck with traditions like that. I remember when Rickover departed from the norm of naming subs for fish. He was currying favor from strategic states. When asked about it he replied “fish don’t vote”.
The Navy has a long history of violating naming conventions. For the first six frigtes President Washington was responsible for selecting five of the names: Constitution, United States, President, Constellation, and Congress, each of which represented a principle of the United States Constitution. The sixth frigate, Chesapeake, remained nameless until 1799, when Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Stoddert, designated her a namesake of the Chesapeake Bay, ignoring the previous Constitutional naming protocol.