When the attacks of September 11, 2001 reshaped American military strategy overnight, the Navy's amphibious forces were among the first assets repositioned for the response. USS Peleliu (LHA-5) deployed to the Arabian Sea in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the campaign in Afghanistan that began in October 2001 — a Marine Expeditionary Unit embarked, Marine helicopters ready, the full range of amphibious capabilities positioned in the waters south of a landlocked country where the first war of the twenty-first century was beginning. It was the kind of forward presence that the amphibious Navy exists to provide: not always visible, not always in the news, but there when it matters.
The Ship
USS Peleliu (LHA-5) was commissioned on May 3, 1980, the last of the Tarawa-class amphibious assault ships — a class designed to replace the older amphibious helicopter assault ships with a vessel capable of operating both helicopters and the AV-8 Harrier in the fixed-wing role, and equipped with a well deck for landing craft. Peleliu was named for the Battle of Peleliu in September-November 1944, one of the most costly and controversial engagements of the Pacific War. She was homeported at San Diego, California, and deployed regularly to the Western Pacific throughout her service life.
Operation Enduring Freedom
Peleliu deployed to the Arabian Sea in the weeks following September 11, 2001, joining the naval forces assembling in support of operations in Afghanistan. The tactical challenges of supporting a landlocked country from a ship at sea were significant: the distances involved in helicopter operations, the political complications of overflight rights, the coordination required with ground forces operating far inland. Marine helicopters from the embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit flew missions in support of Special Operations Forces and conventional ground units as the campaign in Afghanistan accelerated through late 2001 and into 2002.
The amphibious ready group provided a range of capabilities beyond helicopter insertion: a mobile base of operations, a platform for command and control, logistics support, and the full complement of a Marine Expeditionary Unit ready for whatever mission the operational situation required. In a campaign that was fundamentally about projecting force into difficult terrain far from conventional bases, the amphibious force provided options that no other platform could.
The Western Pacific
Peleliu's service in the Western Pacific spanned three decades — deployments to the Philippine Sea, the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea that accumulated into one of the most operationally rich records of any amphibious ship of her era. The ship that bore the name of one of the Pacific War's hardest-fought battles spent her career in the same waters where those battles had been fought, projecting American power across the ocean that American naval forces had contested in 1944 and dominated ever since.
Each deployment brought different operational requirements: humanitarian assistance operations, noncombatant evacuations, presence patrols, combined exercises with allied navies. The Marines of the MEUs that embarked aboard Peleliu trained for all of them, and the ship's crew sustained the platform that made those capabilities possible.
Life Aboard
An LHA carries a ship's company and a Marine detachment that together create a community of several thousand people living and working in an environment that combines the rhythms of a Navy ship with the operational culture of a Marine ground force. The integration of those two communities — sailors running the ship, Marines preparing for operations ashore — is the defining social fact of amphibious service, and it creates a kind of unit identity that is distinct from either a pure Navy or a pure Marine Corps assignment. Those who have served in amphibious forces tend to carry that dual identity for the rest of their lives.
If you served aboard USS Peleliu or want to honor an amphibious sailor or Marine, browse The Ship's Store — cruise shirts, license plate frames, and more.
Legacy
USS Peleliu was decommissioned on March 30, 2015, after thirty-five years of active service — one of the longest service lives of any amphibious assault ship in Navy history. Her 2001-02 OEF deployment was one of the final chapters of that long story: a ship at the beginning of a war, providing the capabilities that the first months of the campaign in Afghanistan required. She was named for a battle. She served in the tradition of the Marines who fought that battle. That connection is not incidental.