Athol Kids Name Pend Oreille Sub

And the winner is … the cutthroat.

The native fish won fins down when Athol Elementary School students voted Thursday on the name for the U.S. Navy’s newest model submarine.

“They’ll have to paint a couple of red stripes on the sides of that vessel,” joked principal Dan Mellick.

Officials from the Acoustic Research Attachment at Bayview invited the children to name the 190-ton, $50 million sub, which will be based at Lake Pend Oreille. It’s a quarter-scale model of the Navy’s new attack submarine.

The children were given six choices, all fish native to Idaho. The vote tally was: Cutthroat, 167; sturgeon, 75; sculpin, 39; bass, 32; dace, 12; grayling, 11.

Five of those names had been used in the past for submarines. But the Navy had avoided having a USS Cutthroat, because the named seemed too aggressive.

The model sub, until now called the LSV-2, is still in the design stages. When it arrives at the base in three years, Athol Elementary students will be invited to its christening.

Meanwhile, students will have a painting of the Cutthroat to ponder. It will be presented to the school on June 6 by Rear Adm. J.P. Davis.

, DataTimes