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USS Coronado (AGF 11)

USS CORONADO was built and commissioned as an AUSTIN - class LPD. She was the second ship in the Navy to bear the name. After her redesignation from LPD to AGF she underwent numerous modifications and finally served as flagship Third Fleet. On November 14, 2003, the CORONADO was transfered to the Military Sealift Command and her designation was changed to T-AGF 11. But shortly afterwards, due to some discrepancies, the Navy redesignated the CORONADO as USS and put the ship under control of a US Navy Commanding Officer again. The reason for the redesignation was that the Department of the Navy declared that the CORONADO had to be able to conduct belligerent operations but international law requires that those operations may only be conducted by warships but as T-AGF 11, the CORONADO was not a designated warship. The CORONADO subsequently operated with a mixed crew of US Navy and MSC sailors. She was decommissioned at San Diego, Calif, on September 30, 2006, and spent the following years laid-up at Pearl Harbor, Hi., awaiting final disposal. The CORONADO was finally sunk as a target on September 12, 2012, during exercise Valiant Shield 117 miles south of Guam.

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Crew List:

This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard USS / USNS CORONADO. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.

• Click here to view the list.

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• Click here to see which USS CORONADO memorabilia are currently for sale on ebay.

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USS CORONADO Cruise Books:

• Persian Gulf Cruise Book 1988

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Accidents aboard USS CORONADO:

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History of USS CORONADO:

USS CORONADO was ordered on May 15, 1964, as part of the AUSTIN-class amphibious transport dock program, intended to provide the U.S. Navy with modern, helicopter-capable amphibious platforms for Cold War contingency operations. She was laid down on May 3, 1965, at Lockheed Shipbuilding and Construction Company in Seattle as the eighth ship of the class and one of a subset built with an additional superstructure level from the outset, anticipating possible future employment as a command ship. Launched on July 30, 1966, she spent almost four years fitting out and conducting trials before being commissioned on May 23, 1970, with Captain Grant J. Walker in command.

On entering service in 1970, USS CORONADO joined the amphibious forces of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. From her early years, she operated as a conventional AUSTIN-class landing platform dock, embarked with Marines, helicopters and landing craft to support the Navy-Marine Corps team in exercises and contingency planning. Through the early 1970s, she conducted work-ups, training periods, and deployments with Atlantic Fleet amphibious readiness groups, participating in routine amphibious exercises off the U.S. East Coast and in the Caribbean. She embarked and landed Marine units in assault training, practiced helicopterborne and surface landings, and provided command and control facilities for embarked amphibious group staffs. Although open sources do not record every movement, they show her employed in the standard rotation of deployments and overhauls typical for an Atlantic Fleet amphibious ship of the period.

By the mid-1970s, CORONADO was regularly deploying with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. In the summer of 1974, she was in the Eastern Mediterranean when the Cyprus crisis erupted following the Greek-backed coup in Nicosia and subsequent Turkish intervention. As part of the U.S. response, CORONADO was tasked to support a non-combatant evacuation operation. Embarked Marines and small boats of the 34th Marine Amphibious Unit moved American and other civilians from shore, including from the British base at Dhekelia, to the ship. CORONADO then transported evacuees onward to safer ports, including Beirut, under the overall direction of U.S. European Command and the Sixth Fleet. Contemporary Navy and Marine accounts highlight her role as one of the principal afloat platforms for the Cyprus evacuations, reflecting the broader Cold War practice of using amphibious ships to extract civilians from unstable areas along the Mediterranean littoral.

Through the later 1970s, CORONADO continued in Atlantic Fleet and Mediterranean service. She cycled between deployments with the Sixth Fleet, amphibious and NATO exercises, and maintenance periods in U.S. yards. Her design with the enlarged superstructure made her attractive for staff embarkations, and she increasingly operated as an amphibious group flagship in addition to her troop-lift role. Meanwhile, geopolitical attention in Washington was shifting to the Persian Gulf as the British withdrew from "east of Suez" and regional tensions grew. In that context, the Navy began to look for a dedicated command platform for the Middle East Force, which had previously been supported by a succession of different ships.

In 1980, CORONADO was selected for conversion to a permanent command ship. She entered a West Coast shipyard for an extensive refit that removed most of her original troop and vehicle spaces and transformed her into a specialized command-and-control platform. New combat information centers, flag plots, communications rooms and extensive antenna arrays were added, together with improved accommodations for a large embarked staff. On completion, she was redesignated AGF 11, an auxiliary command ship, and formally became USS CORONADO (AGF 11).

After post-conversion trials, CORONADO deployed to the Persian Gulf and took up station as the permanent flagship of Commander, Middle East Force, based primarily out of Bahrain. From 1980 into the mid-1980s, she provided afloat command facilities for U.S. naval presence operations in the Gulf and northern Arabian Sea, a period overlapping the Iranian Revolution, the Iran hostage crisis after 1979, and the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. Operating in narrow, heavily trafficked waters and in close proximity to Iranian and Gulf Cooperation Council navies, she served as the central node for surveillance of shipping, coordination of exercises with regional partners, and management of routine incidents at sea. Her presence reflected the growing strategic value Washington attached to the security of oil routes from the Gulf.

In October 1985, CORONADO's mission shifted from the Middle East to the Mediterranean. She relieved USS PUGET SOUND (AD 38) as flagship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, taking up a long-term berth at Gaeta, Italy, while continuing to operate throughout the Mediterranean Sea. As Sixth Fleet command ship, she hosted the fleet commander and his multinational staff, directing routine exercises and port visits and, when required, crisis responses. During this period, the Eastern Mediterranean saw heightened tensions with Libya. In 1986, U.S. naval forces conducted freedom of navigation operations in the Gulf of Sidra and later participated in air strikes against Libyan targets following terrorist attacks attributed to Libyan support. CORONADO provided the afloat headquarters and communications hub that allowed the Sixth Fleet commander to coordinate carrier battle groups, surface action groups and supporting units during these operations.

In 1986, the Navy decided to reassign CORONADO again, this time to the Pacific. After being relieved as Sixth Fleet flagship, she left Gaeta, crossed the Atlantic, transited the Panama Canal, and arrived at Pearl Harbor to become the flagship of the newly reconstituted U.S. Third Fleet. From berths in Hawaii, she controlled major fleet exercises in the eastern and central Pacific, including RIMPAC series training with allied navies. Her role as command ship meant she usually operated as the nucleus of a larger formation, with escorts and logistics ships supporting her as she embarked the Third Fleet commander and staff.

In early 1988, CORONADO deployed from Pearl Harbor to the North Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf as U.S. naval forces expanded their presence in the region during the closing years of the Iran-Iraq "tanker war". She served as flagship for the joint task force that controlled naval operations in the area. On April 18, 1988, during Operation Praying Mantis, the U.S. retaliatory strike following the mining of USS SAMUEL B. ROBERTS (FFG 58), CORONADO acted as the afloat command center for coordinated surface, air and special operations against Iranian naval units and oil-platform bases in the Persian Gulf. From her flag spaces, senior commanders directed engagements involving cruisers, destroyers and aircraft in the largest surface action fought by the U.S. Navy since the Second World War. After the conclusion of those operations and further presence patrols in the Gulf, she returned to the Pacific later in 1988, resuming her role as Third Fleet flagship.

Through the early 1990s, CORONADO remained the primary command ship of the Pacific-based Third Fleet as U.S. naval operating patterns adjusted to the post-Cold War environment. Her homeport was shifted from Pearl Harbor to San Diego in 1991, aligning the Third Fleet commander geographically with a larger fraction of his surface forces. From San Diego, she continued to embark the fleet staff for large-scale maritime exercises, including repeated RIMPAC series events and other joint and combined training in the eastern and central Pacific.

A significant personnel milestone came in 1994, when CORONADO became the first U.S. combatant ship to embark women as permanent, full-time members of the crew rather than as temporary augmentees. This reflected broader changes in U.S. Navy policy following the end of formal restrictions on women serving on combat ships. The change unfolded while the ship continued her routine cycle of operations and maintenance out of San Diego, with no recorded interruption of her command-ship duties.

In the late 1990s, CORONADO was selected as the Navy's "Sea Based Battle Lab", a major testbed for new command-and-control systems. Around 1998, she entered shipyard availability for extensive modernization of her communications, networking and information-processing systems. The upgrade integrated advanced satellite links, improved local area networks, video teleconferencing capabilities, and reconfigured operations centers designed to support experimental concepts in joint, network-centric warfare. After returning to sea with these updated systems, she continued to serve as Third Fleet flagship while simultaneously hosting a series of fleet experiments in which new sensors, software and operational concepts were evaluated during large exercises such as RIMPAC. Photographs from this period show CORONADO operating as the command platform for multinational task groups, underscoring her dual role as both operational headquarters and technology demonstrator.

At the beginning of the 2000s, budget pressures and a desire to reduce uniformed manning for non-combat functions led the Navy to explore transferring some command ships to the Military Sealift Command with hybrid crews of civilian mariners and military specialists. CORONADO was chosen for this experiment. On November 14, 2003, she was decommissioned as a fully commissioned warship, redesignated USNS CORONADO (T-AGF 11), and assigned to Military Sealift Command with a civilian crew augmented by embarked Navy personnel and staff. She remained based in San Diego still providing afloat command facilities.

Despite her change in administrative status, CORONADO quickly returned to demanding operational employment. On March 5, 2004, she departed Naval Submarine Base Point Loma, San Diego, for a major Western Pacific deployment that lasted into the autumn. During this cruise, she acted as forward-deployed flagship for Commander, U.S. Seventh Fleet while the regular 7th Fleet command ship, USS BLUE RIDGE (LCC 19), was in an extended maintenance period in Yokosuka. CORONADO's updated command, control and communications suites were used to direct Seventh Fleet activities in the Western Pacific and parts of the Indian Ocean, including routine presence patrols, exercises with regional navies, and theater security cooperation visits. The deployment included multiple port calls, among them stops in Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines and Singapore, though open sources do not list every visit in detail.

The 2004 deployment also brought some notable incidents. In March 2004, while alongside in Subic Bay in the Philippines, CORONADO suffered a mishap during internal fuel transfer that led to the release of a substantial quantity of diesel fuel into the harbor, prompting cleanup operations and diplomatic attention to environmental impact on nearby coral. Later in the cruise, during heavy weather associated with a typhoon in October 2004, CORONADO collided with the guided missile cruiser USS VINCENNES (CG 49) while both ships were moored in Japan, sustaining damage that required repair but did not end her deployment prematurely. After completing her Seventh Fleet flagship duties, she returned to San Diego in November 2004 and entered maintenance to address the accumulated wear and storm damage.

Experience during this period demonstrated that CORONADO's mission and configuration were still effectively those of a warship rather than a typical MSC support vessel, and legal and policy reviews led the Navy to re-commission her. On February 25, 2005, she regained full commissioned-ship status as USS CORONADO (AGF 11), while retaining a hybrid manning concept that blended civilian mariners for ship support functions with Navy crews and staffs for combat systems and command spaces. She returned to service as an afloat command platform and continued to participate in exercises and experiments from her San Diego base, using her Sea Based Battle Lab installations to test new systems and to support joint and fleet-level command-and-control events.

By the mid-2000s, however, the Navy was reducing its inventory of dedicated command ships as more modern surface combatants and shore facilities gained improved networking and communications. CORONADO's specialized systems were aging, and the cost of maintaining a unique platform was increasingly difficult to justify. After more than three and a half decades in service, the ship was finally decommissioned again on September 30, 2006, struck from the Naval Vessel Register and placed in reserve. She was laid up at Pearl Harbor with other retired vessels, pending a final decision on disposition.

In 2012, the Navy designated the former CORONADO as a target ship for a sinking exercise in conjunction with the large multinational exercise Valiant Shield. Towed to a location south of Guam in the Western Pacific, she was subjected to live-fire testing by U.S. and allied units, allowing evaluation of weapon effectiveness against a realistic, full-scale hull. On September 12, 2012, after absorbing multiple impacts, the former USS CORONADO sank in deep water.

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USS CORONADO Image Gallery:

The photos below were taken by Brian Barton and show the CORONADO undergoing modifications to accommodate civilian sailors. The photo was taken in San Diego on December 6, 2003.

The photos below were taken by me and show the CORONADO laid-up at Pearl Harbor, Hi., on March 20, 2010.

The photos below were taken by me and show the CORONADO laid-up at Pearl Harbor, Hi., on March 6, 2012. Roughly 6 months later, the CORONADO was sunk as a target near Guam.

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