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An aerial starboard side view of the amphibious ship USS Guadalcanal (LPH-7) passing the Ellis Island Memorial Immigration Center as the ship arrives at New York City for Fleet Week '92.
Career (US)
Ordered:	21 December 1959
Laid down:	01 September 1961
Launched:	16 March 1963
Commissioned:	20 July 1963
Decommissioned:	31 August 1994
Struck:	31 August 1994
Status:	Expended as a target March, 2005
General characteristics
Displacement:	19395 tons
Length:	602.3 ft
Beam:	84 ft (25.6 m)
Draught:	27 ft (8.2 m)
Propulsion:	2 × 600 psi (4 MPa) boilers, one 22-foot (7 m) diameter screw, 23,000 shaft horse power
Speed:	23 knots (43 km/h)
Complement:	685 (47 officer, 638 enlisted)
Troops	2,000
Armament:	2 × 8 cell NATO Sea Sparrow BPDMS launchers; 4 × 3 inch / 50 cal (2 × twin barrel guns); 2 × 20 mm Phalanx CIWS
Aircraft carried:	11 - CH-53 Sea Stallions; 20 - CH-46 Sea Knights (representative, actual complement was mixed, including UH-1s and AH-1W Super Cobras)
Motto:	There When Needed

The second USS Guadalcanal (LPH-7), an Iwo Jima class amphibious assault ship, was launched by the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard 16 March 1963, sponsored by Mrs. David Shoup, wife of General Shoup, the former Commandant of the Marine Corps; and commissioned 20 July 1963, Captain Dale K. Peterson in command.

An amphibious assault ship named USS Guadalcanal has appeared as the location of the TV show JAG.

Upon completion of sea trials and outfitting, Guadalcanal departed Philadelphia to join the Amphibious Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. One of a new class of ships designed from the keel up to embark, transport, and land assault marines by means of helicopters, she lent new strength and flexibility to amphibious operations. After departing Norfolk 23 October 1963 for 6 weeks shakedown training at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Guadalcanal steamed to Onslow Beach, North Carolina, 6 December for practice amphibious landings. She then carried on training and readiness operations with the Atlantic Fleet, based in Norfolk until departing for Panama 11 February 1964. Following 2 months on station as flagship for Commander PhibRon 12 with the 12 Marine Expeditionary Unit embarked and ready to land anywhere needed. Guadalcanal entered Philadelphia Naval Shipyard 26 May, but was deployed again 7 October as a unit of Operation "Steel Pike 1", a NATO landing exercise on the beaches of southern Spain.

Guadalcanal continued to serve in the Atlantic Fleet into 1967. Highlights of her career included 21 July 1966 when she recovered Gemini X astronauts after their spacecraft landed in the Atlantic east of Cape Kennedy, and 13 March 1969 when she recovered Apollo 9 off the Bahamas.

In 1987 the Guadalcanal was leading minesweeping operations in the Persian Gulf when it encountered the Iran Ajar laying mines in the shipping lanes. Helicopters from the Guadalcanal attacked the ship; troops from the Guadalcanal boarded and captured the ship. (Iran Ajar was the second enemy warship captured on the high seas by the U.S. Navy since 1815; the first was the U-505 captured in 1944 by the first USS Guadalcanal, an escort carrier.) This Guadalcanal also provided the Marines for the first wave of Operation Provide Comfort, the Kurdish relief operations in Northern Iraq immediately following the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

She was decommissioned in 1994, and stored as part of the James River Reserve Fleet until she was used as a target and sunk in March, 2005.

See USS Guadalcanal for other U.S. Navy ships of this name.

• LPH-7 Personnel Roster at HullNumber.com

This article includes text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.