Parachutists to Land on Roof of Cruise Terminal

By PATRICK MCGEEHAN

Civilians can arrive at the Manhattan Cruise Terminal by land or by sea, but only Navy parachutists are cleared to land on the roof, as some are scheduled to do on Saturday morning.

The occasion for this nearly unprecedented stunt is a 10 a.m. ceremony to commission the U.S.S. Michael Murphy, a guided-missile destroyer named after a former Navy SEAL from Patchogue, N.Y., who died in combat in Afghanistan in 2005. The Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, will be on hand when Lt. Murphy's mother, Maureen, will give the order to “man our ship and bring her to life.”

To add flair to the festivities, members of the Navy Parachute Team, known as the Leap Frogs, will jump from a helicopter and land on top of the cruise terminal on the West Side Highway at West 48th Street. The New York City Economic Development Corporation, which manages the terminal, had never allowed it to serve as a land ing zone before the Leap Frogs made a trial jump on Friday, a spokesman for the agency said on Friday.

The Navy says that the 509-foot-long ship, which will have a crew of 279, is capable of fighting “air, surface and subsurface battles simultaneously.”