Mission: commission

USS New Hampshire visits namesake state Saturday

(Steve Miller for The Boston Globe) Chief Petty Officer Jim Guild, who serves on the USS New Hampshire, stands next to the vessel that's due to be commissioned on Saturday.

When people asked Portsmouth, N.H., native Jim Guild what he was going to be when he grew up, he didn't exactly picture himself making a living beneath the waves.

He thought he might be a military policeman, and it was with that pursuit in mind that he visited a recruiting office of the Marine Corps.

"I went to see the Marine recruiter one day," Guild said. "He wasn't in so I stopped to see the Navy guy to find out when he was coming back, and they grabbed me. They said 'Oh, you're too smart to be in a foxhole.' "

Instead, he winds up in a 7,800-ton, 377-foot-long Virginia Class submarine powered by a nuclear reactor and capable of carrying Special Forces and Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Chief Petty Officer Guild, 34, a 1992 Portsmouth High School graduate and one of six crew members from the state of New Hampshire to serve aboard the new submarine New Hampshire, will be back in his old neighborhood for the commissioning of the sub Saturday at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

Along with Guild, many are looking forward to it. "This is a great honor for all of New Hampshire and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to host this commissioning ceremony," said Bruce A. Clark of Portsmouth, chairman of the community commissioning committee.

The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is one of four Naval shipyards that will perform Virginia Class depot maintenance, according to Danna Eddy, a shipyard spokeswoman.

For his part Guild is happy he found the Navy, or that it found him, and sees now that his career path - or waterway - indeed makes much sense.

"Being from Portsmouth, you grow up around all types of boats," he said while standing atop the submarine last week at the Navy base in Groton, Conn. "So maybe that's another attraction I had to the Navy."

Guild served five years aboard the USS Virginia, the first sub in the Virginia class of attack submarines, as part of a crew that did test runs and worked the kinks out. He passed up shore duty for a chance to lend his expertise gained from that experience to help out for more than a year aboard the New Hampshire, the fifth submarine in the Virginia class.

"I figured it was possibly my last submarine, and why not be a part of it," Guild said. "It's not every day that you get to work on a submarine that's named after your state."

Construction of the New Hampshire began in January 2004. The submarine was built at the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics in Groton, and Northrop Grumman Newport News, in Newport News, Va.

Things went better than planned, the Navy said. The New Hampshire (SSN 778) was launched on Feb. 21 and christened four months later, on June 21, in Groton, eight months ahead of schedule and $54 million under budget, according to Lieutenant Joseph R. Holstead, acting public affairs officer for Submarine Group Two, based in Groton. It cost $2.2 billion and was delivered to the Navy on Aug. 28.

"We went into the water in February, christening ceremony was in June, we went to sea trials in July, delivered in August, and now we're commissioning in October," said Command Master Chief Glen Kline, chief of the boat.

"That is just unprecedented in any of the previous ships in the class, to go that quickly."

"Everything about the ship was a complete leap in technology over the previous classes of submarines," Kline said. "We had to learn about this whole submarine, so it was never a dull moment. There was always something to study, always something to do to get certified and be ready to take the ship to sea."

Guild, a conventional machinist's mate who operates and maintains the nonnuclear mechanical systems on the ship, played his part in helping move things along. "He's top-notch," Kline said. "Having served on another Virginia Class ship, he was able to point things out that weren't obvious to us. That was a big help, having him here to help point us in the right direction."

Guild lives in Ledyard, Conn., with his wife, Melissa, son, Kyle, 6, and daughter, Autumn, 4. He gave Kyle a tour recently, "and he thought it was pretty neat," Guild said. He wanted his son to have a look around so the child could carry a mental picture of his dad's undersea office.

Guild, who will see a lot more of his family when he begins shore duty in a few months, said he is looking forward to the commissioning ceremony in Portsmouth on Saturday. "That's kind of like the light at the end of the tunnel," he said. "That's reward for the crew's hard work."

The latest New Hampshire is the fourth ship to be named for the state, though one was authorized but canceled before the keel was laid, according to the Navy's website.

The pitch to name the sub after the Granite State was made by students from the Garrison Elementary School in Dover, who launched a letter-writing campaign to the secretary of the Navy and others. Years later, many of those students will be in attendance on Saturday.

The ship was christened by its ceremonial sponsor, Cheryl McGuinness of Portsmouth, whose late husband, Thomas McGuinness, was copilot of American Airlines Flight 11, which was flown into the north tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

In the tradition of the Navy, she will call the sailors onto the sub on Saturday, at which time the submarine will be officially commissioned.

"I'm honored to be a part of the commissioning, honored to be the sponsor of the New Hampshire, and honored to be a part of the special work that the men and women serving our country are doing," McGuinness said.