So this slow-motion funeral happened this week:
Official caption: “Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam residents watch as the decommissioned amphibious assault ship ex-USS Tarawa (LHA 1), is escorted out of Pearl Harbor by the Safeguard-class rescue and salvage ship USNS Grasp (T-ARS 51) during Exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2024, July 16.”
(U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Courtney Strahan)
Laid up in Pearl’s Middle Loch since she retired in 2009 after 33 years of hard service, plans fell through to turn Tarawa into the first Navy amphibious ship museum once she was removed from a Category B reserve asset, and she was stricken from the Naval List earlier this year.
Of course, the old Tarawa is only participating in RIMPAC as a target ship for the big upcoming general SINKEX, which for many of the countries taking part is an extremely rare event.
It is rarer still to have a weapons-free bite at something the size of the mighty cold warrior Tarawa.
I mean, it’s not often that a 40,000-ton aircraft carrier-sized warship is expended in a gunnery drill. It has only happened before in the still largely classified USS America (CV-66) tests in 2005– which was used to engineer resiliency in every U.S. flattop ever since– and in Tarawa’s sistership USS Belleau Wood’s sinking in 2006.
It is a bit sad, honestly, as Tarawa, laid down on 15 November 1971 at Pascagoula, was the first big-deck ‘phib that combined the dock of an LPD with the helicopter capability of an LPH and supersized it into a ship that is the same size as a WWII Essex-class fleet carrier.
Artist’s conception of a very preliminary design of the LHA, released by DoD, 15 February 1967. USN 1120262
USS Tarawa as commissioned, with bow 5-inch MK45 guns, which were later removed. At the time she was constructed, she was the largest ship that Ingalls had built.
Since Tarawa, the Navy built (and retired) four of her sisters, followed by eight updated Wasp-class LHDs, and are now planning 11 America-class LHAs which all show the same lineage.