Zumwalt is floating now:
The Navy's stealthy Zumwalt destroyer floated out of dry dock without fanfare Monday night and into the waters of the Kennebec River, where the warship will remain dockside for final construction.
The largest destroyer ever built for the Navy, the Zumwalt looks like no other U.S. warship, with an angular profile and clean carbon fiber superstructure that hides antennas and radar masts.
This class of "destroyer" is 600 feet long and almost 15,000 tons.
The large class of Fletcher class destroyers we built for World War II was very successful. These capable ships were 2,500 tons and a little over 375 feet long. That's a destroyer.
Zumwalt isn't much smaller than Germany's pre-World War II pocket battleships. Why we call something this big a "destroyer" eludes me.
I hope it is a good ship killer. The idea that it should be a shore-bombardment vessel always seemed ridiculous.
