Iwo Jima-class amphibious assault ship

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USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2), the lead ship of the class, off the coast of South Vietnam in 1965.
Class overview
Builders	Puget Sound Naval Shipyard Philadelphia Naval Shipyard Ingalls Shipbuilding
Operators	United States Navy
Preceded by	Essex class (some ships converted)
Succeeded by	Tarawa class
In commission	1961–2002
Completed	7
Active	0
Laid up	0
Retired	7
General characteristics
Type	Amphibious assault ship (LPH)
Displacement	18,474 tons (full) 11,000 tons (light)
Length	592 ft (180 m)
Beam	84 ft (26 m)
Draft	27 ft (8.2 m)
Propulsion	2 × 600 psi (4.1 MPa) boilers, one geared steam turbine, one shaft, 22,000 shaft horsepower (16 MW)
Speed	22 knots (41 km/h)
Troops	2,157
Complement	667
Armament	Initially: 2 × 2 3-inch (76 mm) / 50 caliber DP guns, 8 cell Sea Sparrow BPDMS launchers, Later: 2 × Phalanx CIWS
Aviation facilities	25 helicopters or AV-8 Harriers Flight deck width: 105 ft (32 m)

The Iwo Jima-class amphibious assault ships of the United States Navy were the first amphibious assault ships designed and built as dedicated helicopter carriers, capable of operating up to 20 helicopters to carry up to 1,800 marines ashore.^[1] They were named for battles featuring the United States Marine Corps, starting with the Battle of Iwo Jima. The first ship of the class was commissioned in 1961, and the last was decommissioned in 2002. The hull classification of "LPH" stands for "Landing Platform Helicopter".

Ships of this class participated in several conflicts and peacekeeping and humanitarian relief operations:

• Nuclear weapons test support, Johnston Atoll 1962
• Cuban Missile Crisis 1962
• Vietnam War 1963–1973
• Dominican Civil War 1965
• Gemini and Apollo spacecraft recovery 1966–1975
• Iran hostage crisis 1980
• Multinational Force in Lebanon, 1982–1983
• Operation Urgent Fury, Grenada, 1983
• Operation Earnest Will, Persian Gulf 1987–1988
• Operation Sharp Edge, Liberia, 1990
• Gulf War 1990–1991
• Operation Eastern Exit, Somalia, 1991
• Operation Restore Hope, Somalia, 1993
• Operation Continue Hope, Somalia, 1994
• Operation Deny Flight, Bosnia, 1994
• Operation Uphold Democracy, Haiti, 1994
• Operation Vigilant Warrior, Kuwait, 1994
• Operation Assured Response, Liberia, 1996

One ship of this class, USS Guam (LPH-9), was used in a 1970-1974 Sea Control Ship experiment to test the concept of a smaller aircraft carrier using V/STOL aircraft.

Another ship, USS Inchon (LPH-12), was converted to a mine countermeasures ship which hosted mine sweeping helicopters.

The hull design of the Iwo Jima-class also became the basis of the slightly larger Blue Ridge class of amphibious command ships.^[2]

The seven ships of the Iwo Jima-class were given non-sequential hull numbers, as, at the time of their construction, five existing aircraft carriers were being converted to serve in the Landing Platform Helicopter role - these five ships were renumbered, with the new ships slotted into a single sequence. The five existing ships were:

One of the Iwo Jima-class ships served as the fieldsite in Edwin Hutchins's classic cognitive science study Cognition in the Wild.^[4] Although Hutchins does not mention the ship class by name, on p. 7 he characterizes it as a 603-foot-long (184 m) amphibious helicopter carrier.

• hazegray.org: Iwo Jima-class amphibious assault ships

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