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Tarawa to decommission Thursday

SAN DIEGO — After 32 years, Tarawa is going to bid farewell to its sailors.

Navy officials on Thursday will retire the amphibious assault ship, which in June returned to its pier at San Diego Naval Base after wrapping up its final operational deployment to the Persian Gulf and Northern Arabian Sea.

One of Tarawa’s former skippers, Rear Adm. Garry Hall, will speak during the formal decommissioning ceremony that afternoon. Hall commanded the ship during a 2000 deployment that included assisting with efforts to recover victims of the terrorist attack on the destroyer Cole and assisting with the investigation. He serves as president of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in Washington, D.C.

Tarawa, commissioned in 1976, is the lead ship in the LHA class, which saw only four other ships — Saipan, Belleau Wood, Nassau and Peleliu — constructed by the shipbuilder, Ingalls Shipbuilding, before the Navy shifted to a new, larger LHD, or Wasp, class of amphibious assault ships.

Belleau Wood retired in 2005 and nine months later succumbed to the sea in its final role as a naval gunnery target off Hawaii. The Navy retired Saipan last year. Nassau and Peleliu will remain in the fleet after Tarawa’s decomissioning.

The 820-foot-long ships, each with a crew of nearly 1,000, can carry more than 1,000 Marines with a Marine expeditionary unit along with more than two dozen helicopters and Harrier attack jump jets, utility trucks, amphibious vehicles and three landing craft.

Tarawa’s final deployment included helping with disaster relief operations in Bangladesh, humanitarian assistance missions in Djibouti and maritime security operations in the Persian Gulf.

The Navy plans to send Tarawa to the Fleet Ready Reserve Force.