On January 17, 1991, at 12:30 in the morning local time, USS San Jacinto (CG-56) launched the opening salvo of Operation Desert Storm. The Tomahawk cruise missiles that left her vertical launch cells were among the first weapons fired in what would become one of the most precisely executed air campaigns in history. San Jacinto was a cruiser, a Ticonderoga-class Aegis warship built to defend battle groups from air and missile attack. That night she was an offensive weapon — reaching deep into Iraq with weapons that had never before been fired in combat from an Aegis cruiser.
The Ship
USS San Jacinto (CG-56) is a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, commissioned on January 23, 1988, and named for the Battle of San Jacinto, where Texan forces defeated the Mexican Army in 1836. She was homeported at Norfolk, Virginia, and in the fall of 1990 deployed to the Red Sea as part of the massive coalition buildup known as Operation Desert Shield. The Ticonderoga class was the Navy’s most capable surface combatant — an Aegis-equipped cruiser with the SPY-1 phased-array radar, capable of tracking and engaging hundreds of targets simultaneously. San Jacinto also carried Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles in her forward vertical launch system, making her a long-range precision strike platform as well as a defensive powerhouse.
Desert Shield
San Jacinto arrived in the Red Sea theater as Saddam Hussein’s forces sat in Kuwait and the coalition assembled its forces for what was becoming inevitable. The cruiser operated in the Red Sea, providing air defense for the battle group and standing by as the diplomatic window slowly closed. Through the fall of 1990 and into January 1991, the fleet rehearsed, exercised, and waited. When the UN deadline passed and the air campaign began, San Jacinto was ready.
The Opening Shots of Desert Storm
San Jacinto’s Tomahawk launches in the early hours of January 17, 1991, were part of a coordinated first strike that targeted Iraqi command and control infrastructure, air defense networks, and communications facilities across the country. The missiles flew the length of their programmed routes — low, terrain-following, using GPS and TERCOM guidance to navigate to targets hundreds of miles away. For San Jacinto’s crew, the launches were a moment of controlled intensity: the vertically launched missiles leaving the ship in rapid succession, the smell of propellant, the noise, and then silence as the weapons flew north into the dark.
The Tomahawk performed exactly as designed. Iraqi air defenses, built for attacking aircraft, had no effective counter to low-flying cruise missiles appearing from unexpected directions. The first night of the war degraded Iraq’s ability to coordinate its defense of the country significantly.
Life Aboard
A Ticonderoga-class cruiser carried a crew of approximately 400 — large enough to operate all of the ship’s systems simultaneously, small enough that everyone knew everyone. Combat Information Center was the heart of the ship during Desert Storm: the Aegis displays showing the air picture, the Tomahawk fire control solutions, the constant communication with the battle group. For the crew at their stations during the opening hours of the war, the experience combined the technical precision of running the systems they’d trained on for years with the knowledge that this time, what they were doing was real.
If you served aboard USS San Jacinto or want to honor someone who did, browse the full San Jacinto collection — cruise shirts, license plate frames, and more.
Legacy
San Jacinto’s role in the opening of Desert Storm cemented the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile as a cornerstone of American naval power. The weapon had been developed through the 1970s and 1980s as a long-range precision strike capability, and Desert Storm proved it in combat. San Jacinto continued to serve through the end of the Cold War era and into the post-9/11 period, a capable Aegis cruiser in a fleet that was reshaping itself for a new world. The men who were in CIC when the first Tomahawks launched were present at a moment that changed how the United States fights wars.