In the summer of 1990, while the world's attention turned toward Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, a different crisis was unfolding on the coast of West Africa. Liberia had collapsed into civil war, and American citizens were trapped in the burning capital of Monrovia. The ship that answered was USS Saipan — and the operation she led, Sharp Edge, would become one of the longest-running noncombatant evacuations in modern naval history.
A Big-Deck Amphib
USS Saipan (LHA-2) was a Tarawa-class amphibious assault ship, commissioned in 1977 and homeported at Norfolk. From the outside she looked like a small aircraft carrier; in truth she was something more versatile — a ship built to carry a Marine landing force and put it ashore by helicopter and landing craft, sustain it, and provide the command-and-control to run an operation from the sea. In 1990 she was the flagship of an amphibious ready group carrying a Marine Expeditionary Unit, the 22nd MEU, trained and certified for exactly the kind of mission that was about to find her.
Operation Sharp Edge
By the spring of 1990, Liberia's civil war had reached Monrovia. Rival factions fought through the streets; the government was disintegrating; and foreign nationals, including Americans at the U.S. embassy, were increasingly in danger. The amphibious ready group led by Saipan took station off the Liberian coast, waiting, as the situation deteriorated.
On August 5, 1990, the order came. In a pre-dawn helicopter assault, Marines of the 22nd MEU flew from the decks of the ready group into Monrovia to secure the U.S. embassy compound and begin evacuating civilians. What was planned as a short operation became a marathon. The fighting ashore dragged on, and the ships stayed on station — evacuating, protecting, and sustaining — for months. By the time it wound down in early 1991, Operation Sharp Edge had brought out roughly 2,600 people, including some 330 American citizens and nationals of many other countries.
Saipan did not do it alone. The ready group included the amphibious ships USS Ponce and USS Nashville, the tank landing ship USS Sumter, and the destroyer USS Peterson — but Saipan was the flagship, the deck the helicopters flew from, and the command post from which the operation was run.
The Work of a Rescue
A noncombatant evacuation is a peculiar and demanding mission. It is not combat, exactly, but it is not peace either — it is Marines and sailors operating in the middle of someone else's war, tasked with getting innocent people out without making things worse. The Marines ashore had to hold a perimeter in a city coming apart. The aircrews had to fly in and out of a hot, uncertain landing zone. And the ships offshore had to receive, screen, feed, and care for a growing population of frightened evacuees — families, embassy staff, foreign nationals — many of whom arrived with nothing.
For the crew of Saipan, it was the mission that justified all the training. Sailors who had drilled for amphibious operations found themselves running a floating refuge, turning berthing and hangar spaces into shelter, and standing the long watches that a months-long operation demands. There was no glory in it and little headline attention — the Gulf was pulling the spotlight east — but the people they carried out of Monrovia were alive because Saipan was there.
Legacy
Operation Sharp Edge became a textbook example of what amphibious ships bring to the nation: the ability to loiter off a troubled coast, wait out a crisis, and act decisively the moment it is needed — all without a foreign base or a permission slip. USS Saipan served until 2007, but Sharp Edge remains one of her proudest chapters: the ship that stayed on station and brought 2,600 people home.
If you served aboard USS Saipan or with the embarked MEU, browse the USS Saipan (LHA-2) collection — ship's crest apparel and gifts for the Gator Navy sailors and Marines who ran the rescue.
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