Early Cold War Developments
The first use of helicopters in an amphibious assault came during the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956 (the Suez War). Two British light fleet carriers were pressed into service to carry helicopters, and a battalion-sized airborne assault was made. Two of the other carriers involved, HMS Bulwark (R08) and Albion (R07), were converted in the late 1950s into dedicated "commando carriers." The techniques were developed further by American forces in the Vietnam War and refined during training exercises. The modern amphibious assault can take place at virtually any point of the coast, making defending against them extremely difficult.
Earlier ships which played a similar role to the current vessels as the heart of an amphibious assault included five Iwo Jima class Landing Platform Helicopter vessels, built in the 1950s and 1960s, and various converted fleet and escort carriers. The first of the type envisaged was the escort aircraft carrier USS Block Island (CVE-106/LPH-1), which never actually saw service as an amphibious assault ship. Delays in the construction of the Iwo Jima class saw other conversions made as a stopgap measure; three Essex-class aircraft carriers (USS Boxer (CV-21/LPH-4), Princeton (CV-37/LPH-5), and Valley Forge (CV-45/LPH-8)) and one Casablanca class escort carrier (USS Thetis Bay (CVE-90/CVHA-1/LPH-6)) were converted into Boxer and Thetis Bay class amphibious assault vessels.
The Tarawa and Wasp types and their Iwo Jima class forebears resemble aircraft carriers. However, the role of an amphibious assault ship is fundamentally different from that of an aircraft carrier. Its aviation facilities are not to support strike or air defense aircraft, but for hosting helicopters to support forces ashore.
Read more about this topic: Amphibious Warfare Ship, History
Famous quotes containing the words early, cold, war and/or developments:
“I got a little secretarial job after college, but I thought of it as a prelude. Education, work, whatever you did before marriage, was only a prelude to your real life, which was marriage.”
—Bonnie Carr (c. early 1930s)
“Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science, and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“Every country we conquer feeds us. And these are just a few of the good things we’ll have when this war is over.... Slaves working for us everywhere while we sit back with a fork in our hands and a whip on our knees.”
—Curtis Siodmak (1902–1988)
“The developments in the North were those loosely embraced in the term modernization and included urbanization, industrialization, and mechanization. While those changes went forward apace, the antebellum South changed comparatively little, clinging to its rural, agricultural, labor-intensive economy and its traditional folk culture.”
—C. Vann Woodward (b. 1908)