Thomaston-class dock landing ship

The Thomaston class was the third class of dock landing ships built for the United States Navy, a group of eight ships ordered in the early 1950s after the Korean War showed how useful the type was for launching loaded landing craft. The lead ship, Thomaston, was laid down on 3 March 1953 at Pascagoula, Mississippi, by Ingalls Shipbuilding and launched on 9 February 1954, and the other seven were Plymouth Rock, Fort Snelling, Point Defiance, Spiegel Grove, Alamo, Hermitage and Monticello. They were larger and faster than their Second World War predecessors, at 11,270 tons full load and 24 knots, with redesigned superstructures and cranes and smoke stacks offset from one side to the other. The class hull later gave the basis for the amphibious transport dock. By the late 1980s most of the ships had been decommissioned into the reserve, and the Whidbey Island class was meant to replace them.