[6] A former United States Marine Corps officer, Murtha was the first Vietnam War veteran elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, in 1974.

[2] John P. Murtha's keel was laid down on 6 June 2012 at the Ingalls Shipbuilding yard in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Some members of Congress questioned the appropriateness of naming a military vessel for Murtha after his call for withdrawing from the Iraq War in 2005 and his public accusation of Marines involved in the Haditha incident.

[12] In connection with this controversy, Sen. Roy Blunt added an amendment to the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act which required the Navy to report to Congress on how effectively it was adhering to established naming conventions.

[11][12] The resulting report, released in 2015, demonstrated a consistent tradition of naval secretaries making "occasional exceptions" to established ship-naming conventions, beginning in 1798 when Navy Secretary Benjamin Stoddert broke with naming convention by naming one of the original six frigates of the United States Navy as USS Chesapeake.