Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit

combatant in the U.S. Navy aside from the supercarriers, it is a virtual one-ship task force that can probably take down a small nation by itself. The story of Wasp and her sisters is the story of the Navy's amphibious force after the blight of the Vietnam War and the move to an all-volunteer force. It is also the story of a contractor that saw the future and decided to remake itself.

At the end of World War II, the Marine Corps began to examine ways of avoiding amphibious frontal assaults against fortified enemy shores. The losses suffered in taking Japanese island fortresses like Iwo Jima and Peleliu left a lasting impression on Marine and Navy leaders. Out of all this thinking came the concept of vertical envelopment using the new technology of the helicopter. The father of the current Commandant, Victor 'Brute' Krulak, was quick to support the concept. And by the mid-1950s, several World War II aircraft carriers had been converted into experimental helicopter assault carriers. Designated LPH (for 'Landing Platform, Helicopter'), they proved successful, though their size and large crews made them expensive to operate. The first conversion, USS Block Island (LPH-1, ex-CVE-106), was never completed. But several others, including USS Boxer (LPH-4, ex-CV-21), USS Princeton (LPH-5, ex-CV-37), USS Thetis Bay (LPH-6, ex-CVE-90), and USS Valley Forge (LPH-8, ex-CV-45), were converted from surplus aircraft carriers during the 1950s and 60s. Even before these conversions were completed, plans were underway for an LPH designed from the keel up. The idea was to pack a Marine battalion and a reinforced helicopter squadron into the smallest hull possible, so that the ship would be cheap to build and efficient to operate. Crew and passenger (i.e. Marine) comfort would be minimal.

The result was the Iwo Jima-class (LPH-2) assault carriers, of which seven were eventually built. Designed around the hull form and engineering plant of a World War II escort carrier, they were built for maximum storage density of aircraft, equipment, supplies, and Marines. Ingalls Shipbuilding (now Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding) of Pascagoula, Mississippi, and a pair of government shipyards built the LPHs, and they proved highly successful. Displacing only 18,300 tons (compared to almost 29,000 tons for the Essex-class LPH conversions) and powered by a pair of steam boilers driving a single screw, the LPHs were everything that their designers hoped. Over the thirty-five years since Iwo Jima was commissioned, they have been in the front lines of almost every major American military action. They have also served as rescue vessels during the Apollo space missions, trials ships for the deployment of Harrier V/STOL fighter bombers, and as command ships for minesweeping during Desert Storm. This was how USS Tripoli (LPH-10, now MCM-10) wound up being mined in the northern Persian Gulf in 1991. America has gotten its money's worth from the LPHs, several of which will serve for a few more years. By the early 21 st century these hard-working carriers will go to a well-earned retirement.

The success of the LPH in the 1960s might have led to a follow-on class but for the Vietnam War and the coming of an all-volunteer Navy. And then requirements for more capability and habitability caused a rewrite of the specifications for new warships that would be built in the 1970s. Whatever would replace the LPHs in production would be larger, more comfortable, and more capable. The downsizing of the Navy by the Nixon Administration in the late 1960s also meant that future ships would have 'doubled-up' functions. The ideal was a ship that could be both a helicopter carrier and an amphibious dockship, but the Navy only had to pay for one set of engines and a single crew to man it. Thus the stage was set for the Landing Assault Ship, known as the LHA.

There were a number of innovations planned for the LHAs. The entire class was to be built by a single yard under a 'fixed price' contract. By awarding the entire program to one shipyard at a 'fixed' price, the Government would get a better deal, because of assumed economies of scale. This was a good idea at the time, but problems emerged that neither the Government nor contractors foresaw. Meanwhile, the planned class of nine LHAs represented a huge pool of work for a shipbuilding industry that was already feeling the pinch of declining military orders and competition from overseas. This meant that every major construction yard on both coasts was prepared to fight like hell to win a contract that would be worth over a billion dollars in the 1970s. Down at Pascagoula, Mississippi, Ingalls Shipbuilding (which merged with Litton in 1961 to form Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding) had come to a startling conclusion: The traditional manner of building ships on slipways was both inefficient and overpriced. If a ship could be built in modules, like the sub-assemblies of an automobile, and then put together on an assembly line, cost and building time could be slashed. Now, you have to remember that they were doing all this thinking in the 1960s when gasoline was $.20 a gallon, love was still 'free,' and a 'throwaway' society devalued 'quality.'

Ingalls has always been a forward-thinking, innovative place, having built the first all-electrically-welded ship, the C3 cargo ship SS Exchequer in the 1930s. They worked hard to stay competitive in a business dominated by overseas yards operating with government subsidies (as in Europe), or with incredibly cheap labor (as in Asia). In 1967, they made the decision to construct a new kind of shipyard, across the river from their existing yard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The new facility would use modular construction techniques and would take advantage of the newest technology for computer-aided design and automated inventory tracking. The idea was that Ingalls could build the same warship as any other yard, but with a competitive price advantage that nobody would be able to touch without making the same investment. At the time, their competitors made fun of the millions of dollars poured into the new facility on the Gulf Coast. But Litton Ingalls stayed the course, and submitted bids for both the LHA and Spruance-class (DD-963) programs. Incredibly, amid a howl of protests, they won both contracts.

The Tarawa-class (LHA-1) assault ships were 820 ft/249.9 m long, weighing 39,967 tons (fully loaded), and looked a lot like a straight-decked Essex-class (CV-9) carrier from World War II. Powered by a pair of large Combustion Engineering boilers feeding twin Westinghouse steam turbines driving two screws with some 70,000 shp, the new ship was capable of a maximum speed of 24 kt/43.9 kph and a sustained speed of 22 kt/40.2 kph. Their broad beam of 106 ft/32.3 m and draft of 26 ft/7.9 m would just fit through the locks of the Panama Canal, so that they could switch between the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets in a hurry. They were long and slab-sided, their dominant feature a huge island structure along the starboard side amidships. This island contains command, flag, and navigational bridges, along with planning and command spaces for embarked Marine units. The hull of an LHA consists of five zones, each with a different function. They include:

• Flight Deck—This runs the full length of the LHA; it has nine helicopter landing spots and two aircraft elevators to the hangar deck. There is access to the interior of the ship through the island structure. While there is no 'ski-jump' to assist in launching V/STOL aircraft like the Harrier (as found on British, Italian, Spanish, and Russian carriers), there is enough length for a normal takeoff run.

• Hangar Deck—Directly below the flight deck in the after half of the ship, this enclosed hangar holds a reinforced squadron of medium lift helicopters. Between the flight deck and the hangar deck, there is room to stow and operate roughly forty-two CH-46-sized aircraft.

• Well Deck/Vehicle and Cargo Stowage—Directly below the hangar deck and extending forward is the well deck for launching and retrieving landing craft, as well as the stowage areas for Marine vehicles, equipment, and supplies. The well deck was originally configured for four LCUs, or seven LCM-8s (described shortly). To operate landing craft, ballast tanks at the aft end of the ship are flooded, giving a slight 'tip' to the LHA and creating an artificial 'beach' for landing craft. Then the tanks are pumped out, and a large stern gate is raised to protect the landing craft and the well deck from the elements.

• Engineering—Located amidships below the vehicle and cargo stowage is the engineering plant. This area contains boilers, turbines, generators, and heavy equipment — everything from the engines to the air-conditioning and electrical systems. From here, the exhaust from the boilers and other equipment runs through uptakes on the starboard side, where it is vented through the top of the island structure.

• Crew/Troop Accommodations—Most of the forward half of the ship contains berthing, mess, and other spaces for the crew of 925 sailors and 1,713 Marines. Accommodations on the Tarawa were considered lavish by contemporary standards, with air-conditioning in all berthing compartments, enlarged bunk and personal stowage space, and a climate-controlled conditioning room for the embarked Marines (now converted to a gym for the entire ship's company).

^{The USS Essex (LHD-2) is moved from its final assembly area to a floating barge for launching at the Litton Ingalls production facility at Pascagoula, Miss., on January 4th, 1991. Ships of this class are the largest man-made objects to be moved across the earth.}

^{OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO} 

Compared with earlier amphibious ships, the Tarawas were armed to the teeth.