USS Harpers Ferry (LSD-49)

16,400 tons

185.6 m

25.4 m

6.4 m

350 up to 500 marine

2 propellers, four diesel engines; 33,000 shaft horsepower

20 nodes

2 phalanx, 2 starters for air defense missiles

The USS Harpers Ferry ( LSD -49 ) is a dock landing ship of the United States Navy and the lead ship is named after her Harpers Ferry - class. The name derives from the town of Harpers Ferry in West Virginia.

History

LSD - 49 was commissioned in 1988 and set in 1991 at Avondale Shipyard in Kiel. In 1993, the ship was launched and was baptized. Beginning of 1995 found the official commissioning ceremony held in the fleet of the U.S. Navy.

1999 was the Harpers Ferry in use in the Persian Gulf. In 2002, she was moved from San Diego to Yokosuka, Japan, where it replaced the USS German Town ( LSD -42). In 2004, the ship from there part in an exercise with the cruiser USS Cowpens (CG- 63) and ships of the Royal Navy and the Russian Navy. In 2006, the Harpers Ferry with the USS Essex (LHD- 2) on a humanitarian mission on the part of Leyte, where a landslide had caused devastation. Later in the year was an exercise with the Philippine Navy.

In 2008 the ship was to help in the relief mission of Essex before the decision made by cyclone Nargis coast of Burma. After more than three weeks off the coast of the group was, however, withdrawn after no permission was received to bring relief supplies into the country. 2009 moved the Harpers Ferry with Essex in the Western Pacific. There she took part in a CARAT exercise with the Navy in Singapore in June. After the typhoons Parma and Katsana had made the Philippines was (LPD -9) sent to the region to support local disaster relief, the Harpers Ferry with USS Tortuga ( LSD 46) and USS Denver. Began on 1 September 2010, again at the side of Essex, the next installation in the Pacific. The program included exercises with allied nations, including Valiant Shield. In March 2011, the ship was sent to the coast of Japan to stand by after the Tōhoku earthquake on emergency assistance.