Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit tcml-4

by Tom Clancy

  Navy plans envision a force of thirty-six vessels of three different types (LHD/LHA, LSD, and LPD), organized into twelve amphibious ready groups (ARGs). These ships could deliver twelve reinforced battalions, each about 1,600 Marines. This would represent about 2.5 Marine Expeditionary Brigades (MEBs) if every ship could be deployed at one time. Unfortunately, ships that stay in the fleet for thirty to forty years need periodic overhaul and maintenance. Large warships spend about one year in four out of service, "in dockyard hands." So, only about three quarters of our amphibious shipping will be available at any time. These ships are split between the Pacific and Atlantic fleets. Not much strength for any particular crisis when you consider the thousands of miles/kilometers of hostile shoreline the U.S. might have to face. For example, during Desert Storm, the Navy assembled four ARGs with a single afloat brigade from both fleets. The arithmetic demands that each and every amphibious ship constructed for the Navy must be highly mobile and sustainable. The "amphibs" are the high-value units in any naval task force-sometimes even more valuable than the big-deck carriers which often accompany the ARGs these days.

  Amphibious ships are evaluated by five different capacities or "footprints" as they are known. These include:

  • Troop Capacity—The number of Marines the ship can comfortably berth, feed, and support.

  • Vehicle Space—Called cargo, this is measured in square feet of vehicle storage, along with a little extra room for maneuvering vehicles in and out (called "turnout" space). Total area can be converted to standard vehicle dimensions, based upon the footprint of an HMMWV.

  • Cargo Space—This is a measure of storage space for packaged cargo, supplies, and equipment. Called cargo, it is measured in cubic feet (ft).

  • Landing Craft Capacity—This footprint indicates how many LCAC landing craft can be carried in the vessel's well deck.

  • Aircraft Capacity—The number of aircraft that can be operated, stowed, and maintained on deck and in the hangar. The capacity is based on the CH-46E Sea Knight helicopter. An AH-1W Cobra attack helicopter only occupies about.5 units of deck space, whereas the new MV-22B Osprey will have a 1.4 equivalent.

  These five measures tell you how valuable a particular ship is to an ARG. For example, the new LPD-17 will replace four different ship classes (the LST-1189, LPD-4, LSD-36, and LKA-113) in the ARG. You can see how critical this one ship must be to future ARG commanders.

  Amphibious ships are nothing without people. Life for the sailors in the amphibs is a mix of high technology (like satellite communications and navigation) and old-style seamanship (like small-boat handling and the ancient skills of knotting lines). It is also long, hard work. Marines love to practice their exciting tasks in the wee hours before and around dawn. So, whenever the ARG is conducting operations, the ships' crews go on a fatiguing round-the-clock schedule. The work is hard; but when you talk to the sailors, they tell you that it's exactly what they joined the Navy to do. 'Gator sailors love their jobs. Senior chiefs tell you it's like the "old" Navy they grew up in. They frequently see the 'Gator Navy as a refuge from the "political correctness" that seems to infect today's U.S. Navy. For officers, life in the amphibs is a chance to truly test themselves in their chosen profession.

  Navigation and warfighting in the littoral zones is demanding and dangerous. Inshore operations present all kinds of natural and man-made hazards to the sailor. Consider the cruise of the assault carrier Tripoli (LPH-10), which was mined while operating in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm. The ship survived, albeit with heavy damage. As we have seen, the British Royal Navy learned even harder lessons during the invasion of the Falkland Islands in May 1982. Also, nature is not kind to sailors working near shore. Everything from rogue waves to hurricanes can foil an amphibious assault. D-Day, originally planned for June 5th, 1944, had to be delayed twenty-four hours because of storms in the English Channel. Like flying, amphibious landings are unforgiving, and only a complex combination of planning, skill, experience, and equipment can make them successful.

  One quick note before we begin. There are many different ways to interpret warship specifications and statistics, and "official" sources often disagree. On matters of fact, I defer to A.D. Baker III's superb biannual work, Combat Fleets of the World (U.S. Naval Institute Press). For over two decades, Dave Baker has made this book his life's work, and all of us who write about defense matters are in his debt. I ask your patience in my use of tables. Amphibious ships are number-intensive! Now, let's go aboard!

  USS Wasp (LHD-1)

  It is the largest and mightiest amphibious ship ever built. At over forty thousand tons, it is the largest man-made object to ever move across the land (so says the Guinness Book of World Records). The landing helicopter dockship USS Wasp (LHD- 1) is the lead ship of a seven-ship class that represents the best America's shipbuilding industry can produce. The largest combatant in the U.S. Navy aside from the supercarriers, it is a virtual one-ship task force that can probably take down a small nation by itself. The story of Wasp and her sisters is the story of the Navy's amphibious force after the blight of the Vietnam War and the move to an all-volunteer force. It is also the story of a contractor that saw the future and decided to remake itself.

  At the end of World War II, the Marine Corps began to examine ways of avoiding amphibious frontal assaults against fortified enemy shores. The losses suffered in taking Japanese island fortresses like Iwo Jima and Peleliu left a lasting impression on Marine and Navy leaders. Out of all this thinking came the concept of vertical envelopment using the new technology of the helicopter. The father of the current Commandant, Victor "Brute" Krulak, was quick to support the concept. And by the mid-1950s, several World War II aircraft carriers had been converted into experimental helicopter assault carriers. Designated LPH (for "Landing Platform, Helicopter"), they proved successful, though their size and large crews made them expensive to operate. The first conversion, USS Block Island (LPH-1, ex-CVE-106), was never completed. But several others, including USS Boxer (LPH-4, ex-CV-21), USS Princeton (LPH-5, ex-CV-37), USS Thetis Bay (LPH-6, ex-CVE-90), and USS Valley Forge (LPH-8, ex-CV-45), were converted from surplus aircraft carriers during the 1950s and 60s. Even before these conversions were completed, plans were underway for an LPH designed from the keel up. The idea was to pack a Marine battalion and a reinforced helicopter squadron into the smallest hull possible, so that the ship would be cheap to build and efficient to operate. Crew and passenger (i.e. Marine) comfort would be minimal.

  The result was the Iwo Jima-class (LPH-2) assault carriers, of which seven were eventually built. Designed around the hull form and engineering plant of a World War II escort carrier, they were built for maximum storage density of aircraft, equipment, supplies, and Marines. Ingalls Shipbuilding (now Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding) of Pascagoula, Mississippi, and a pair of government shipyards built the LPHs, and they proved highly successful. Displacing only 18,300 tons (compared to almost 29,000 tons for the Essex-class LPH conversions) and powered by a pair of steam boilers driving a single screw, the LPHs were everything that their designers hoped. Over the thirty-five years since Iwo Jima was commissioned, they have been in the front lines of almost every major American military action. They have also served as rescue vessels during the Apollo space missions, trials ships for the deployment of Harrier V/STOL fighter bombers, and as command ships for minesweeping during Desert Storm. This was how USS Tripoli (LPH-10, now MCM-10) wound up being mined in the northern Persian Gulf in 1991. America has gotten its money's worth from the LPHs, several of which will serve for a few more years. By the early 21 st century these hard-working carriers will go to a well-earned retirement.

  The success of the LPH in the 1960s might have led to a follow-on class but for the Vietnam War and the coming of an all-volunteer Navy. And then requirements for more capability and habitability caused a rewrite of the specifications for new warships that would be built in the 1970s. Whatever would replace the LPHs in production would be larger, mor
e comfortable, and more capable. The downsizing of the Navy by the Nixon Administration in the late 1960s also meant that future ships would have "doubled-up" functions. The ideal was a ship that could be both a helicopter carrier and an amphibious dockship, but the Navy only had to pay for one set of engines and a single crew to man it. Thus the stage was set for the Landing Assault Ship, known as the LHA.

  There were a number of innovations planned for the LHAs. The entire class was to be built by a single yard under a "fixed price" contract. By awarding the entire program to one shipyard at a "fixed" price, the Government would get a better deal, because of assumed economies of scale. This was a good idea at the time, but problems emerged that neither the Government nor contractors foresaw. Meanwhile, the planned class of nine LHAs represented a huge pool of work for a shipbuilding industry that was already feeling the pinch of declining military orders and competition from overseas. This meant that every major construction yard on both coasts was prepared to fight like hell to win a contract that would be worth over a billion dollars in the 1970s. Down at Pascagoula, Mississippi, Ingalls Shipbuilding (which merged with Litton in 1961 to form Litton Ingalls Shipbuilding) had come to a startling conclusion: The traditional manner of building ships on slipways was both inefficient and overpriced. If a ship could be built in modules, like the sub-assemblies of an automobile, and then put together on an assembly line, cost and building time could be slashed. Now, you have to remember that they were doing all this thinking in the 1960s when gasoline was $.20 a gallon, love was still "free," and a "throwaway" society devalued "quality."

  Ingalls has always been a forward-thinking, innovative place, having built the first all-electrically-welded ship, the C3 cargo ship SS Exchequer in the 1930s. They worked hard to stay competitive in a business dominated by overseas yards operating with government subsidies (as in Europe), or with incredibly cheap labor (as in Asia). In 1967, they made the decision to construct a new kind of shipyard, across the river from their existing yard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The new facility would use modular construction techniques and would take advantage of the newest technology for computer-aided design and automated inventory tracking. The idea was that Ingalls could build the same warship as any other yard, but with a competitive price advantage that nobody would be able to touch without making the same investment. At the time, their competitors made fun of the millions of dollars poured into the new facility on the Gulf Coast. But Litton Ingalls stayed the course, and submitted bids for both the LHA and Spruance-class (DD-963) programs. Incredibly, amid a howl of protests, they won both contracts.

  The Tarawa-class (LHA-1) assault ships were 820 ft/249.9 m long, weighing 39,967 tons (fully loaded), and looked a lot like a straight-decked Essex-class (CV-9) carrier from World War II. Powered by a pair of large Combustion Engineering boilers feeding twin Westinghouse steam turbines driving two screws with some 70,000 shp, the new ship was capable of a maximum speed of 24 kt/43.9 kph and a sustained speed of 22 kt/40.2 kph. Their broad beam of 106 ft/32.3 m and draft of 26 ft/7.9 m would just fit through the locks of the Panama Canal, so that they could switch between the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets in a hurry. They were long and slab-sided, their dominant feature a huge island structure along the starboard side amidships. This island contains command, flag, and navigational bridges, along with planning and command spaces for embarked Marine units. The hull of an LHA consists of five zones, each with a different function. They include:

  • Flight Deck—This runs the full length of the LHA; it has nine helicopter landing spots and two aircraft elevators to the hangar deck. There is access to the interior of the ship through the island structure. While there is no "ski-jump" to assist in launching V/STOL aircraft like the Harrier (as found on British, Italian, Spanish, and Russian carriers), there is enough length for a normal takeoff run.

  • Hangar Deck—Directly below the flight deck in the after half of the ship, this enclosed hangar holds a reinforced squadron of medium lift helicopters. Between the flight deck and the hangar deck, there is room to stow and operate roughly forty-two CH-46-sized aircraft.

  • Well Deck/Vehicle and Cargo Stowage—Directly below the hangar deck and extending forward is the well deck for launching and retrieving landing craft, as well as the stowage areas for Marine vehicles, equipment, and supplies. The well deck was originally configured for four LCUs, or seven LCM-8s (described shortly). To operate landing craft, ballast tanks at the aft end of the ship are flooded, giving a slight "tip" to the LHA and creating an artificial "beach" for landing craft. Then the tanks are pumped out, and a large stern gate is raised to protect the landing craft and the well deck from the elements.

  • Engineering—Located amidships below the vehicle and cargo stowage is the engineering plant. This area contains boilers, turbines, generators, and heavy equipment — everything from the engines to the air-conditioning and electrical systems. From here, the exhaust from the boilers and other equipment runs through uptakes on the starboard side, where it is vented through the top of the island structure.

  • Crew/Troop Accommodations—Most of the forward half of the ship contains berthing, mess, and other spaces for the crew of 925 sailors and 1,713 Marines. Accommodations on the Tarawa were considered lavish by contemporary standards, with air-conditioning in all berthing compartments, enlarged bunk and personal stowage space, and a climate-controlled conditioning room for the embarked Marines (now converted to a gym for the entire ship's company).

  The USS Essex (LHD-2) is moved from its final assembly area to a floating barge for launching at the Litton Ingalls production facility at Pascagoula, Miss., on January 4th, 1991. Ships of this class are the largest man-made objects to be moved across the earth.

  OFFICIAL U.S. NAVY PHOTO

  Compared with earlier amphibious ships, the Tarawas were armed to the teeth. In addition to a pair of launchers for the new RIM-7 Sea Sparrow Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM), there were a pair of new lightweight Mk 45 5-in./127mm 54-cal. guns, to provide naval gunfire support, and mounts for six Mk 67 20mm cannons, for protection against enemy patrol boats and other threats. All of this firepower was backed up by a combination of air, surface search, and fire-control radars, as well as by a low-light television camera. Tarawa and her sisters were at the time the largest, most powerful amphibious ships ever built. They combined the best features of an LPH, LKA, LSD, and LPD, all in a single, highly survivable hull. Sailors and Marines lined up to get duty assignments to the new "king of the 'gators."

  While the new ships were everything the Navy and Marines wanted, they came at a high price, and with a lot of teething problems. The fixed-price contracts had assumed that inflation of construction costs (labor, energy, materials, etc.) would remain stable through the early 1970s. Unfortunately, the 1970s were anything but stable. Several bouts of double-digit inflation, a five-fold increase in the cost of energy, and a huge increase in labor rates caused the construction cost of the LHAs (and everything else!) to skyrocket beyond the expectations of either Litton Ingalls or the Navy. The original plan was that $1.2 billion would buy nine Tarawas. The government wound up paying $1.6 billion for five: Tarawa (LHA-1), Saipan (LHA-2), Belleau Wood (LHA-3), Nassau (LHA-4), and Peleliu (LHA-5). Nobody had seen price inflation like that of the 1970s in over a generation, and it simply was not taken into account when the contracts were written. Since there was no "fault" on the part of either Litton Ingalls or the Navy, the two sides agreed to an additional $400 million for completion of five units. After this forecasting breakdown, Navy contracting was changed forever. Today, contracts have a built-in growth factor to adjust for inflation (determined by the government). This "cost-plus" contract lets the contractor and the government split cost overruns, reassuring contractors who take huge risks on billion-dollar projects that they have a chance to turn a profit someday.

  Meanwhile, there were problems at the new Litton Ingalls yard with modular construction. Until engineers realized that they had made the tolerances too tight,
the pre-assembled modules wouldn't fit together. They had failed to allow for the normal metal expansion and contraction that might occur between cool Mississippi mornings and the blazing heat of summer afternoons. Simply adding a little extra "meat" to joints between modules and trimming it as they were assembled solved this problem. Another problem developed out of the LHA design itself, which tried to trim top weight by thinning down structural assemblies topside. Unhappily, the strength of the ocean sometimes exceeded the expectations of engineers. The fix for this — structural stiffening — was made when the ships came back in for refits. But generally, the new concept worked, keeping Litton Ingalls the most profitable and busy shipyard in America. As the U.S. shipbuilding industry has crumbled (in 1996 we're down to just five yards capable of building major combatants), they have remained competitive, branching out into building railroad cars and oil platforms.

  While the Navy and Litton Ingalls were sorting out financial and engineering problems, the five LHAs were making their presence so much felt around the world, that the Navy and Marines soon realized they should have bought more of them, whatever their cost. While the policies of the Carter years prohibited this, the coming of the Reagan Administration changed everything. John Lehman's planned six-hundred-ship Navy included funding for new amphibious vessels and landing craft. First on the wish list was a batch of new big-deck amphibious assault carriers, based on the LHA design. The new class, designated Landing Helicopter Dockships (LHDs), would consist of five units. By 1996, seven LHDs had been contracted, with possible extra units to replace retiring LPHs. The LHDs would bear the proud names of World War II aircraft carriers. The lead ship was christened USS Wasp (LHD-1) after two carriers (CV-7 and CV-18) that served in World War II and the Cold War. Wasp was a traditional name dating back to the American Revolutionary War.