USS Tarawa (LHA-1)
39 925 tonnes
249.9 meters
32.3 meters
8.2 meters
82 officers, 882 sailors, up to 1894 troops
2 propellers, 2 steam turbine driven; 70,000 shaft horsepower
24 knots
2 Starter RAM, various gun
The USS Tarawa ( LHA -1) is an amphibious assault ship of the United States Navy and namesake of the Tarawa class. She is the second ship named after the island of Tarawa U.S. Navy, a place of battle for the Gilbert Islands. The first was the USS Tarawa (CV -40).
History
The keel was laid in November 1971 by Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi. About two years later, on 1 December 1973 was the launching. Audrey B. Cushman, the wife of the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Robert E. Cushman, baptized the Tarawa. The commissioning of the ship on May 29, 1976 Captain James H. Morris was the first commander.
The ship left Pascagoula on July 7, 1976, and continued course of the Panama Canal. It happened the channel on July 16th and came after a stop in Acapulco, Mexico, on August 6 in San Diego, California, on. The rest of the year, led by the Tarawa exercises, tests and functional tests in the southern area of operations off the coast of California.
In the first half of 1977, the Tarawa participated in further training missions off the California coast. On August 13, she ran into the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, where the final commitment was made. On 15 July 1978, the ship was finally completed. The next four and a half months were again dominated by the training, this time involving the Marines stationed on the Tarawa. The end of 1978, finally, the exercises were complete, and the Tarawa lay in her home port of San Diego at anchor.
Your first mission they had in 1979, were carried out as a successful experiments with the AV -8 Harrier and later 400 Vietnamese refugees from the South China Sea rescued.
After a second mission in 1980 and during their third mission in 1983 Tarawa in the Mediterranean was used as a support in Beirut ( Lebanon) UN peacekeepers stationed. Other missions followed.
In December 1990, Tarawa was the flagship of 13 vessels strong fleet amphibious support of Operation Desert Storm. She participated in the landing exercise Sea Soldier IV part in January, which is regarded as a dress rehearsal for a landing in Kuwait. On 24 February, she then landed Marines in Saudi Arabia, south of the Kuwaiti border. In May 1991, a humanitarian use the Tarawa to Bangladesh, where she delivered a typhoon victims rice and a water treatment plant. 1992 visited the Tarawa Hong Kong, Singapore, the Persian Gulf, Somalia and Australia.
In October 2000, the Tarawa was one of the Support Association of the USS Cole ( DDG -67) in the port of Aden came to the rescue. There, the Cole was due to a stop badly damaged in the harbor. The association, which belonged to the Tarawa helped repair and supply the crew of the Cole.
On 4 December 2008, the formal decommissioning ceremony for the Tarawa was held in San Diego. The U.S. Navy provided the Tarawa on 31 March 2009 officially decommissioned. The ship is still held in the reserve fleet in state.