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Crew List:
This section contains the names of sailors who served aboard USS EMORY S. LAND. It is no official listing but contains the names of sailors who submitted their information.
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USS EMORY S. LAND Cruise Books:
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USS EMORY S. LAND in the News:
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History of USS EMORY S. LAND:
USS EMORY S. LAND was conceived in the mid-1970s as a modern submarine tender for the growing LOS ANGELES-class attack submarine force. The U.S. Navy ordered the ship on November 20, 1974, and her keel was laid on March 2, 1976, at Lockheed Shipbuilding in Seattle, Washington. She slid down the ways on May 4, 1977, sponsored by Sarah H. Long, and was delivered to the Navy on March 2, 1979, after completion of fitting-out. On July 7, 1979, the ship was placed in commission as USS EMORY S. LAND (AS 39), the lead unit of her class, equipped with an extensive suite of workshops, cranes and support facilities that effectively made her a small industrial town afloat, designed primarily to support LOS ANGELES-class submarines but also capable of tending surface combatants.
After commissioning, USS EMORY S. LAND reported to the U.S. Atlantic Fleet with Norfolk, Virginia, as homeport. Through late 1979, she carried out builder's and acceptance trials, crew training and shakedown, including refresher training out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Caribbean operations to certify her propulsion plant, repair departments and logistic systems. These early months also allowed the crew to integrate the dozens of specialized shops - ranging from machine and electronics repair to medical, dental and ordnance facilities - into a cohesive tender organization.
In September 1980 the ship undertook her first major deployment, shifting temporarily to the Pacific Fleet to support the Indian Ocean Battle Group. She crossed the Atlantic and entered the Mediterranean, making port calls at Palma de Mallorca and Malaga in Spain and at Haifa, Israel, before transiting the Suez Canal into the Red Sea and on to the Arabian Sea. Command histories and crew recollections place her at Diego Garcia later that year, as well as on the equator crossing southbound in October 1980, a typical milestone for long-distance deployments. This deployment occurred against the backdrop of the final phase of the Iran hostage crisis and the growing U.S. naval presence in the Indian Ocean following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and EMORY S. LAND's role was to provide repair, logistics and "hotel" support to deployed submarines and surface ships far from established shore facilities.
Returning to the Atlantic in early 1981, the tender resumed her role in Norfolk as a primary support platform for SUBMARINE SQUADRON EIGHT and other Atlantic Fleet units. In the spring of 1981, she conducted a three- to four-day training cruise to Halifax, Nova Scotia, mooring with one of her squadron's submarines at Canadian Forces Base Shearwater in Dartmouth. This visit combined routine training with alliance signaling, underlining close cooperation between the U.S. and Royal Canadian navies.
Through the rest of 1981, USS EMORY S. LAND settled into a steady rhythm at the destroyer and submarine piers in Norfolk, Va. Day to day, she acted as flagship and support ship for SUBMARINE SQUADRON EIGHT's LOS ANGELES-class submarines, handling scheduled maintenance, emergent repairs, weapons loading and logistics while crews turned around between Atlantic and Mediterranean patrols. The 1981 command history, which summarizes the year, notes that she was repeatedly recognized on the Type Commander's Honor Roll and that the ship as a whole earned her first Battle Efficiency "E" award for the competitive cycle ending in late 1981, a formal acknowledgment that, among tenders of her type, she was at the top of the pack in readiness, training and material condition.
Calendar year 1982 continued that pattern and is relatively well documented in the surviving command-history snippets. EMORY S. LAND remained homeported at Norfolk and spent most of her time in port with submarines and occasional surface combatants nested alongside, but she still kept her own seakeeping skills fresh: the Operations Department recorded 18 days underway for independent steaming exercises, two additional days underway in support of an INSURV (Board of Inspection and Survey) assessment, and a couple of short shifts under her own power for berth changes. The ship's medical and administrative sections used a relatively quiet deployment schedule to strengthen internal programs – occupational health and preventive-medicine tracking, radiation-health monitoring for nuclear-support work, and a structured drug-abuse urinalysis program - and the ship successfully passed all major inspections in these areas.
Operationally, the highlight of 1982 came in December, when USS EMORY S. LAND went to sea again to participate in a package of tactical voice-net drills, maneuvering exercises and underway replenishment training. During this short period at sea she also conducted a medical evacuation, described in the 1982 report as the first medevac the ship had had to carry out since the 1980-1981 Indian Ocean deployment. For a tender whose primary job was to keep other ships ready, this sort of underway period served as a practical proof that her own crew could still steam and fight the ship if needed. For the period from October 1, 1981 to September 30, 1982 she was awarded a second consecutive Battle Efficiency "E", confirming that the high tempo of inspections, training and in-port support was paying off in measured performance.
By 1983, the Navy was beginning to invest heavily in the long-term upkeep of the relatively new tender. The command history for that year records that USS EMORY S. LAND entered Norfolk Naval Shipyard on June 6, 1983, for a two-month Selected Restricted Availability (SRA). Planned to run until early August, this yard period focused on hull work, structural repairs and modernization of internal systems such as ventilation and fluid-handling, and it also included a notable upgrade to the ship's ship-service distribution and exchange systems. The report notes that the SRA actually finished six days ahead of schedule despite additional hull repairs that had not been in the original work package, which was unusual for a complex availability and reflected careful planning between the ship, the shipyard and the type commander.
The 1983 documentation also gives a snapshot of the crew and the way the ship was evolving socially. By that year, USS EMORY S. LAND had six female officers and about 185 female enlisted sailors assigned, including two female chief petty officers, a relatively high number for the early 1980s and one that forced the ship to adapt berthing, work-center practices and personnel policies.
Coming out of the SRA in August, EMORY S. LAND resumed her role as a busy Norfolk tender. A well-known photograph dated October 8, 1983, shows her moored at the destroyer-and-submarine piers with three LOS ANGELES-class nuclear attack submarines outboard, exactly the configuration she had been designed to support. The year's performance was strong enough that she completed a third straight Battle "E" run, covering the 1982-1983 competitive cycle, and maintained the high retention and counseling standards that had put her repeatedly on the Type Commander's Honor Roll.
In 1984, the ship did not conduct a major overseas deployment, but she was far from idle. The 1984 command-history summary notes that USS EMORY S. LAND spent 49 days underway that year, with the balance of the time in port at Norfolk. Those underway days were mostly devoted to local operations: short training sorties, engineering trials, and periods at sea to support inspections or evolutions with the submarines she served. In port, the ship continued high-volume maintenance and logistic support to SUBMARINE SQUADRON EIGHT and other Atlantic Fleet units, and she again appeared multiple times on the Type Commander's Honor Roll for retention and administrative performance, this time seven consecutive listings, indicating a stable, well-managed crew.
For her sustained effectiveness over this early-1980s period, the ship received a Meritorious Unit Commendation in 1984, her first unit-level decoration, recognizing the whole crew's contribution rather than a single department's work. Food-service and habitability also became a point of distinction. Evaluations conducted over 1984 and into 1985 culminated in the award of the Captain Edward F. Ney Memorial Award for large ship food excellence in 1985, a Navy-wide competition that judged galleys on everything from menu planning and nutrition to sanitation and customer satisfaction. Winning a Ney Award in the large-ship category placed EMORY S. LAND's S-2 division among the very best afloat dining facilities in the fleet and suggests that, even while operating as an industrial repair platform, the ship was paying close attention to quality of life for her large embarked crew and for the personnel of submarines and other ships temporarily berthed alongside.
Operationally, 1985 appears to have been another year of steady but largely unremarked work out of Norfolk: tending LOS ANGELES-class attack submarines, handling TOMAHAWK and other ordnance, performing intermediate-level repairs and supporting periodic inspections and exercises. The lack of public reporting on major deployments for that year, combined with the emphasis in awards citations on sustained performance and internal programs, points to a period in which EMORY S. LAND's contribution lay in quietly keeping the Atlantic submarine force at high readiness rather than in headline-grabbing cruises.
By early 1986, the ship was a mature, well-run tender with a solid reputation. Homeport was still Norfolk, and her daily routine remained centered on supporting SUBMARINE SQUADRON EIGHT, but her proven communications and command-and-control facilities meant she was increasingly seen as more than just a repair ship. In July 1986, USS EMORY S. LAND was designated Officer in Tactical Command ship for a mixed group of four U.S. warships and five allied ships transiting from the Virginia Capes operating area to New York Harbor to participate in the International Naval Review and the Statue of Liberty rededication events around July 4, 1986.
The fact that a submarine tender was selected to lead that formation was very much a product of the previous five years: the ship had demonstrated reliable engineering performance, strong communications, disciplined watchstanding and a consistently high standard of crew training and administration.
In August 1987, the tender again shifted from routine support work to an operational role as a tactical communications and coordination platform. During that period she supported SUBMARINE SQUADRONS EIGHT and SIX in complex anti-submarine warfare exercises in the Atlantic, providing a command-and-control node for scenarios in which submarines trained both alongside and against an embarked surface combatant group. Her communications suites and staff spaces allowed squadron commanders to direct multi-unit operations while keeping the full capability of a repair ship immediately at hand.
In 1988, USS EMORY S. LAND completed what became one of the signature deployments of her early career. She deployed for 182 days, steaming 26,011 nautical miles and circumnavigating the globe. Ports visited on this cruise included Lisbon in Portugal, Naples in Italy, Port Said in Egypt, Muscat in Oman, Fremantle in Australia and Rodman in Panama. For 92 days she lay at anchor in the North Arabian Sea, acting as tender to the surface combatants of Joint Task Force Middle East and to carrier battle groups operating in the region during the closing phase of the Iran-Iraq War and the U.S. reflagging operations in the Persian Gulf. The deployment showcased her ability to sustain both submarines and surface ships for extended periods without shore infrastructure, validating the concept of a large, forward-deployed submarine tender.
Through the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, she continued to operate primarily from the U.S. East Coast, with a pattern of local operations, short deployments and periodic maintenance availabilities. On February 11, 1991, USS EMORY S. LAND arrived in Port Canaveral, Florida, for an eight-day period during which her crew conducted a round-the-clock Tomahawk cruise-missile load-out, including 24 vertical-launch system moves, in support of a "Desert Storm rapid deployer" from the Atlantic submarine force. This work, undertaken while Operation Desert Storm was still ongoing, illustrates the tender's role in quickly rearming and preparing deploying submarines for combat operations.
In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, EMORY S. LAND's activities reflected the shift from confrontation to cautious cooperation. In July 1993, she served as flagship for COMMANDER, SUBMARINE GROUP TWO during a port visit to Boston, Massachusetts. Moored there as part of Boston Harborfest, she hosted the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Northern Fleet and three visiting Russian warships, symbolizing a brief period of naval diplomacy and transparency between former adversaries and demonstrating the ship's capacity to support high-level visits while still functioning as an operational tender.
Public sources mention no further major deployments or foreign port visits in the remainder of 1993, indicating a year that, after the Boston event, was dominated by in-port work, inspections, and short local underway periods rather than long cruises.
In 1994, the ship's activities are better documented and show how intensely she was being used as an industrial and communications platform. The command History for that year records that USS EMORY S. LAND completed 39 submarine availabilities and 56 submarine voyage repairs in 1994 alone, a workload that implies an almost continuous rotation of nuclear attack submarines and other craft alongside the tender in Norfolk. Against this background of heavy pier-side support, the ship also went to sea for one of the defining joint exercises of the decade. On March 21, 1994 she departed Norfolk to take part in NATO Exercise POLO HAT 94-1, a nuclear command-and-control communications exercise, and combined the training with a port visit to Nassau in the Bahamas before returning home on April 1, 1994. Later in the year she supported POLO HAT 94-2 as well. The 1994 command history notes POLO HAT Exercise 94-2 among the Operations Department's activities, together with a satisfactory COMSUBLANT evaluation of her Intermediate Maintenance Activity, which confirmed that her repair shops met Atlantic Fleet standards.
The year 1995 saw USS EMORY S. LAND continue as a Norfolk-based tender, but the surviving summaries show that it was also a period of intensive modernization behind the scenes, especially in supply and administration. The 1995 command history describes how the Supply Department developed a new SUADPS (Shipboard Uniform Automated Data Processing System) program to improve the way monthly demand-type orders and stock material obligations were processed, tightening control over the large volume of parts and consumables that passed through her storerooms.
That same year, the ship's food-service and damage-control programs were recognized at Navy-wide level: EMORY S. LAND won the Captain Edward F. Ney Memorial Awards for large ship food excellence for 1995, and received both the Safety "S" and the red Damage Control "DC" awards, reflecting strong safety culture and emergency-preparedness programs across the crew.
Operationally, she remained mostly in port, providing hotel services, maintenance and logistics to submarines berthed alongside, but the award pattern shows that the mid-1990s were years in which the ship's internal standards were being driven steadily upward.
In 1996, USS EMORY S. LAND's focus on safety and readiness came under formal scrutiny. A Naval Safety Center survey team embarked for a detailed safety survey on March 13-14, 1996, examining everything from industrial shop procedures and electrical safety to underway watchstanding and damage-control readiness. The 1996 command history, in summarizing the year, also notes that the ship conducted more than 250 submarine pier-side mooring evolutions, a figure that underlines how frequently submarines were coming alongside to be supported and how often her deck and engineering teams had to organize complex mooring, utility connection and services-transfer operations. For this period she was again awarded the Battle "E" for the 1996 competitive cycle, indicating that in the view of the Type Commander she remained one of the best-run ships in her category in terms of overall readiness, training and material condition.
By 1997, EMORY S. LAND was not only a repair platform but also a recurring player in high-end communications and command-and-control exercises. The 1997 command history records that during that year, she conducted helicopter operations on four occasions, transferring cargo and personnel by air, which reflected her role as a logistics hub even when alongside or at anchor. More significantly, she participated in POLO HAT 97-3 and was selected by CINCLANTFLT as that exercise's "POLO HAT Top Performer", a recognition that suggests she achieved particularly high scores in the demanding communications and nuclear command-and-control scenarios that characterized the POLO HAT series. In the background, the ship was also preparing for another Ney Award competition cycle, as indicated by references to the 1998 Capt. Edward F. Ney Award competition in the same 1997 documentation.
The pattern continued into 1998, with EMORY S. LAND still homeported at Norfolk but increasingly prominent as a testbed and control node for strategic communications training. The 1998 command history notes that she was selected as a POLO HAT 98-2 top performer by CINCLANTFLT, scoring 100 percent in six of eight graded categories, which implies exceptionally reliable performance of her communications suite and watch teams during that year's iteration of the exercise. At the same time, the document shows that the ship maintained a rich internal life: the Chaplain's Department, for example, coordinated two "Gospel-Fest" musical events featuring a 40-voice EMORY S. LAND choir, something that hints at the size of the crew community and the effort invested in morale during a period of steady but largely unheralded Atlantic operations.
Structurally, Navy planning documents from 1998 still list EMORY S. LAND among the Atlantic Fleet tenders alongside older ships such as USS HUNLEY (AS 31) and USS L. Y. SPEAR (AS 36), even as discussions were under way about reducing the number of tenders and relying more heavily on a smaller number of forward-deployed support ships.
The decisive shift in the ship's career came in 1999, when she left the U.S. East Coast to become the permanently forward-deployed tender for the U.S. SIXTH FLEET in the Mediterranean. Until early 1999, EMORY S. LAND was still based in Norfolk, but planning was underway for her to relieve USS SIMON LAKE (AS 33) at the Naval Support Site on the small island of Santo Stefano, opposite La Maddalena in northern Sardinia in Italy. On April 6, 1999, she departed Norfolk for the Mediterranean, beginning a 16-day transit that would mark the end of two decades of East Coast basing.
On April 22, 1999, she arrived at her new homeport, Santo Stefano Naval Base in La Maddalena, after that crossing, and moored at the support site that had previously been served by SIMON LAKE and other tenders. Sources differ slightly on the exact date of the formal relief, but they agree that in the weeks after her arrival she took over SIMON LAKE's duties. SIMON LAKE's own history records that she departed La Maddalena on May 11, 1999 after being relieved by EMORY S. LAND, while later summaries describe the relief as having occurred by June 1999.
Once the relief was complete, EMORY S. LAND became the sole permanently assigned U.S. ship at La Maddalena, serving as the afloat tender for submarines and surface ships of the SIXTH FLEET in the central Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic.
The 1999 command history, in the fragments that are publicly accessible, notes that she was moored at La Maddalena for significant portions of the year and that later in 1999 there was a change of command alongside in Italy, with Captain Lenny Zingarelli relieving his predecessor as commanding officer. In December 1999, the ship continued her long association with strategic communications training by participating in Exercise POLO HAT 99-3 from December 14-17, this time as a forward-based asset rather than from U.S. home waters.
By the start of 2000, USS EMORY S. LAND was firmly established in her new role as the SIXTH FLEET's repair and support ship homeported in La Maddalena. The command history for 2000 shows that her routine now consisted of extended in-port periods at La Maddalena interspersed with trips to other Mediterranean ports and operating areas: one entry, for example, records her "inport La Maddalena, Italy", then "underway, en route Souda Bay, Greece", followed by "inport" at Souda Bay, indicating at least one deployment to Crete during that year to support units there.
Other contemporary sources flesh out this first full year in the Mediterranean with specific examples of the ships she supported. In May 2000, the amphibious transport dock USS TRENTON (LPD 14) spent May 8-18, 2000 in La Maddalena during a deployment. A U.S. Marine Corps article about that visit notes that USS EMORY S. LAND, "a submarine tender stationed in La Maddalena", provided the repair capability and spare parts TRENTON needed to prepare for the second half of her deployment, and that a significant package of repairs was completed during that availability.
The destroyer USS LABOON (DDG 58), deployed to the Mediterranean the same year, also recorded a week-long maintenance availability in La Maddalena with EMORY S. LAND, illustrating how quickly the tender had become a regional support node for surface combatants as well as submarines.
Photographic records show EMORY S. LAND operating away from Sardinia as well. On July 29, 2000, she was photographed at anchor in La Spezia, Italy, with a nuclear attack submarine moored alongside, confirming that by mid-2000 she was already ranging along the Italian coast to provide repair and logistics support where needed. The 2000 command history also highlights the scale of her ordnance responsibilities in this new role, noting that she managed and maintained 122 ordnance accounts valued at more than 35 million dollars, issuing large quantities of torpedoes, missiles, and other munitions to submarines and surface ships as they cycled through La Maddalena and other ports. For her overall performance in this period she again received the Battle "E".
In 2001, she supported Operation Enduring Freedom, providing repair and logistics services to units transiting the Mediterranean and operating further east in response to the September 11 attacks. In 2003, she deployed for approximately three months to the eastern Mediterranean in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, tending submarines and surface ships engaged in strike and surveillance missions against Iraq and providing an afloat repair hub close to the theater.
Alongside these operational commitments the tender continued routine support and periodic shipyard work. On January 14, 2004, she was photographed at Santo Stefano as the sun rose behind her, described at the time as the only forward-deployed submarine tender in the Western Hemisphere, underscoring her unique status in the U.S. Navy's force structure. A month later, on February 18, 2004, she lay alongside the command ship USS LA SALLE (AGF 3) in Gaeta, Italy, to begin a scheduled availability providing repairs and maintenance to that long-serving flagship.
On March 26, 2004, she was again documented at the La Maddalena base with the guided-missile destroyer USS COLE (DDG 67) tied up alongside for maintenance and repair. During these same years, EMORY S. LAND's crew also contributed directly to land operations. In early 2005, while the ship remained based in the Mediterranean, fifteen of her hull technicians and metal workers deployed ashore to Camp Buehring in northern Kuwait for roughly 45 days. There, they welded additional armor onto U.S. Army trucks as part of the wider effort to protect vehicles deployed to Iraq, demonstrating the flexibility of the ship's repair personnel and their relevance beyond the maritime environment.
By 2005-2006, the Navy decided to shift the tender's focus back toward the Pacific and simultaneously to introduce a new manning concept. EMORY S. LAND departed La Maddalena for a new homeport of Bremerton, Washington, where she entered a Docking Phased Maintenance Availability (DPMA) and underwent conversion to a hybrid crew consisting of U.S. Navy sailors and Military Sealift Command civilian mariners. This conversion - the first of its kind for a submarine tender - retained the ship as a commissioned US Navy vessel under a Navy captain while assigning most navigation, deck and engineering watchstanding to civil service mariners, freeing more sailors to concentrate on specialized repair and support functions. She completed the DPMA and hybridization in the second half of the decade.
Leaving the yard, USS EMORY S. LAND sailed from Bremerton on June 14, 2010, as part of a broader Defense Global Posture Realignment that placed her once again in a forward-deployed role. During the 61-day, roughly 10,000-mile voyage she made port calls at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, at Guam and in Singapore, and on July 23, 2010, she was photographed transiting Apra Harbor after a port visit to Naval Base Guam, already en route to her new station. On August 14, 2010, the tender arrived at Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory and moored there as her new homeport. From Diego Garcia, she was tasked to provide expeditionary maintenance and logistics to fast-attack submarines and guided-missile submarines operating across the U.S. Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Fleet areas of responsibility.
From 2010 onward, EMORY S. LAND ranged widely across the Indian Ocean and adjacent waters. Navy accounts note visits to ports in the Seychelles, the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Bahrain and India as part of theater security cooperation and support to deployed submarines. In this period, she frequently worked with OHIO-class guided-missile submarines and LOS ANGELES-class attack boats, including documented operations with USS GEORGIA (SSGN 729) at Diego Garcia, reflecting the increasing importance of land-attack cruise missiles and special operations support in U.S. maritime strategy. Within that Diego Garcia-based cycle, a particularly detailed sequence can be traced in 2011. On February 26, 2011, according to deployment histories compiled from ship and media sources, EMORY S. LAND arrived at Manama, Bahrain, to provide services to the LOS ANGELES-class submarines USS LA JOLLA (SSN 701) and USS HAMPTON (SSN 767), moored in the Mina Salman area as part of ongoing Fifth Fleet operations.
Less than two months later, on April 22, 2011, she reached Goa, India, berthing at Mormugao as part of a theater cooperation and goodwill mission. During this visit she provided full tender support to USS LA JOLLA, which moored outboard of the tender. The two U.S. ships in Goa drew considerable local interest as the first U.S. nuclear submarine visit to India.
On June 21, 2011, during an inbound transit to Mina Salman port in Bahrain, EMORY S. LAND struck a channel buoy. A subsequent investigation led to the relief of her commanding officer, Captain Eric Merrill, at admiral's mast on July 15, 2011, for improper hazarding of a vessel under Article 110 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The ship herself continued operations after damage checks and any necessary repairs.
Later that year, on October 11, 2011, she arrived at Sepanggar, near Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, for a goodwill visit as part of her transit toward an extended deployment in the western Pacific. There, she conducted coordinated mooring and full tender support to the LOS ANGELES-class submarine USS COLUMBIA (SSN 771), while her crew participated in community projects and engagement events with the Royal Malaysian Navy.
As 2011 drew to a close and into early 2012, EMORY S. LAND increasingly operated from Guam while still notionally Diego Garcia-based, often working in tandem with her sister ship USS FRANK CABLE (AS 40). Photographic records show her conducting coordinated moorings in Apra Harbor with USS TEXAS (SSN 775) and USS HOUSTON (SSN 713), and alongside FRANK CABLE, underscoring a "team tender" concept in which one tender focused on heavy maintenance while the other acted as a more mobile support platform for deployed units.
In mid-2012, the ship participated in a theater security cooperation and friendship mission to Thailand. She called at Pattaya, where her crew worked with Royal Thai Navy sailors on community projects at local schools and child-protection centers, while simultaneously providing tender services to visiting submarines such as USS BUFFALO (SSN 715) and coordinating activities with the Thai frigate HTMS NARESUAN (FFG 421).
About the same time, EMORY S. LAND underwent repair and maintenance work in Subic Bay, Philippines, at a former U.S. naval base that was reemerging as a logistical hub for the American "rebalance to the Pacific", a fact noted in contemporary reporting that used the ship as a visible symbol of the shifting U.S. focus toward Asia.
In the mid-2010s, the Navy reassessed tender basing once more. By late 2015, the decision had been made to shift EMORY S. LAND's homeport from Diego Garcia to Guam, pairing her permanently with USS FRANK CABLE in Apra Harbor. Official histories record that her homeport change was completed in December 2015, at which point both tenders were based at Guam to support four forward-deployed LOS ANGELES-class submarines and, later, a VIRGINIA-class boat. Around this period, EMORY S. LAND also supported port calls and maintenance periods in Southeast Asia, including documented visits to Sepanggar and to Subic Bay, now again hosting U.S. naval ships.
From 2016 onward, EMORY S. LAND operated as one half of the Guam-based tender pair. On March 2, 2017, she and USS FRANK CABLE were photographed moored together at Guam, with USS PASADENA (SSN 752) lying alongside EMORY S. LAND. This image encapsulated the new concept: both tenders forward-based in Guam, alternating between local repair work and regional deployments while maintaining a ready hub for attack submarines in the western Pacific.
In the second half of the 2010s she continued to support operations throughout the Indo-Pacific, including ordnance transfers and tender support to submarines engaged in regional exercises and presence patrols. Her crew participated regularly in community events on Guam, and joint activities with FRANK CABLE reinforced the "team tender" approach described in Navy logistics publications, with one tender taking the lead maintenance role while the other deployed forward to support submarines at regional ports.
A new chapter opened in 2020 when EMORY S. LAND left Guam for an extended maintenance period on the U.S. West Coast. On August 16, 2020, she transited San Francisco Bay en route to Mare Island Dry Dock in Vallejo, California, where she entered an eight-month scheduled maintenance availability that included hull work, systems upgrades and habitability improvements. On May 20, 2021, she returned to Guam, transiting Apra Harbor and mooring once more at her homeport, having completed the availability.
With her systems renewed, USS EMORY S. LAND resumed the pattern of Guam-based operations in the early 2020s, supporting submarines across the Fifth and Seventh Fleet areas of responsibility and participating in local engagement events. Navy news and visual media from 2022 and 2023 show her crews involved in training, "Top Gun"-themed morale videos and visits by senior commanders, as well as ongoing maintenance of submarines alongside in Apra Harbor. At the strategic level she, together with FRANK CABLE, remained central to the U.S. ability to sustain forward-deployed nuclear-powered submarines without the need for large shore facilities.
From 2023 onward, EMORY S. LAND became increasingly visible in the context of the U.S. and allied focus on the Indo-Pacific and undersea warfare. She conducted deployments that took her across the region, visiting a series of allied and partner ports while tending U.S. submarines. Photographic records show her at Ulithi Atoll and in other remote anchorages, where she provided repair and logistics support far from established bases, essentially recreating the classic role of a tender as a mobile base at sea.
In 2024, the tender's activities dovetailed with the growing AUKUS partnership and the deepening of U.S.-Australian naval cooperation. In August 2024, she operated from HMAS STIRLING in Western Australia, where images show USS HAWAII (SSN 776) alongside EMORY S. LAND at the Australian base. This use of an American tender in an Australian port that is central to future AUKUS basing plans, underscored her role in demonstrating how allied infrastructure and U.S. submarine support capabilities can be integrated in practice. In the same period she visited other regional ports such as Busan in South Korea, the Republic of Palau and Brunei, conducting routine port calls, community relations projects and submarine tending while on deployment from Guam.
By 2025, USS EMORY S. LAND was firmly established as a key asset for distributed submarine support across the Indo-Pacific. On March 25, 2025, she arrived in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, for a routine port visit during which the VIRGINIA-class attack submarine USS MINNESOTA (SSN 783) moored alongside her to receive tender services - another visible demonstration of U.S. undersea presence in northern Australia. She departed Darwin on April 2, 2025, and on April 9, 2025, returned to Apra Harbor, Guam, concluding an approximately eleven-month deployment.
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Interesting Facts:
- To construct a ship the size of the EMORY S. LAND, 12,500 tons of steel were required, along with 142 miles of electric cable and 30 miles of piping.
- The ship provides food, electricity, water, consumable, spare parts, medical, dental, disbursing, mail, legal services, ordnance and any parts or equipment repair that a submarine may require. To accomplish this, the ship has a physical plant similar to that of a small town, including 53 different specialized shops.
- After commissioning, EMORY S. LAND was equipped with a Navmacs V2+ satellite communications system that was hardly ever used. (multi million dollars) While destroyers were clammering for it, the crew of EMORY S. LAND had to report on its performance monthly. Obviously everything checked out okay seeing the crew was not using it. (Info by David Semenske, Plankowner of USS EMORY S. LAND)
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About the Ship's Name, about Emory Scott Land:
Emory Scott Land, a native of Cannon City, Colorado, attended the University of Wyoming prior to his appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland. He entered the Academy as a Naval Cadet and graduated with distinction on May 21, 1902. After two years at sea, then required by law, he was commissioned an Ensign on May 2, 1904. After leaving the Academy he became a Naval architect specializing in submarine construction.
During World War I, Vice Admiral Land was assigned for duty with the Board of Devices and Plans Connected with Submarines in Warfare in May 1917; the Board of Standardization of Submarines in September 1917; the Staff of Admiral W. S. Sims, USN (Commander Naval Forces operating in European Waters) at Naval Headquarters, London, England, in July 1918; and the Allied Naval Armistice Commission. He was awarded the Navy Cross for his work on submarine design and construction and for work in the war zone. As Chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair from 1932 to 1937, he supervised the design and development of submarines that formed the backbone of the U.S. Submarine Fleet in World War II. On October 1,1932, Rear Admiral Land was designated Chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair, and remained there until he retired from active duty on April 1, 1937. Within a month he was appointed to the newly created U.S. Maritime Commission, tasked with rehabilitating the Nation's rapidly declining merchant fleet. On February 18, 1938, he became Chairman of the Commission, relieving Joseph P. Kennedy. On February 9, 1942, following the outbreak of WW II, he was also assigned as Administrator of the War Shipping Administration. He served in the dual capacity until the ending of hostilities. During the war he directed the design, establishment and maintenance of a 6000 vessel merchant fleet, the greatest maritime fleet in the history of the world. He was responsible for the availability of shipping and the resultant flow of manpower and munitions to war fronts extending from the United Kingdom to Russia and from Alaska to the Middle East.
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