Austin-class amphibious transport dock

The Austin class was a group of amphibious transport docks that served the United States Navy from 1965 to 2017, an enlarged version of the earlier Raleigh class with a well deck for landing craft and a flight deck for troop-carrying helicopters. The ships were built at several yards, and Ingalls Shipbuilding at Pascagoula, Mississippi, built some of them, among them Cleveland, which gave its name to the seven-ship Cleveland subgroup, and Dubuque, whose keel was laid on 25 January 1965 and which was launched on 6 August 1966 and commissioned on 1 September 1967. Dubuque was decommissioned on 30 June 2011. Propulsion was by two Foster Wheeler boilers feeding two De Laval geared turbines, and later ships of the class served as amphibious ready group flagships. USS Ponce served until 2017 as an interim afloat forward staging base, and Trenton, sold to India, is the last active ship of the class.