Navy's America San Diego Marine Corps flight deck amphibious ship LHA-6 | UTSanDiego.com: A new Navy warship noteworthy for several reasons – chief among them its iconic name, America – arrived in its home port of San Diego on Monday.
In addition to its special moniker, the America is a modern first – a U.S. amphibious assault ship with a big flight deck but no “well deck.”
That means the ship cannot launch the kind of landing craft that Marines use to storm beaches.
Instead, it is focused solely on aviation and uses most of its hulking interior space to accommodate the Marine Corps’ larger new aircraft, the MV-22
Osprey and the vertical landing F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
