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Career (US)
Laid down:	13 August 1973
Launched:	21 January 1978
Commissioned:	28 July 1979
Status:	Active in service as of 2007
Homeport:	NS Norfolk, Virginia
General characteristics
Displacement:	39,300 tons
Length:	833.34 ft (254 m)
Beam:	106.6 ft (32.5 m)
Draught:	26.25 ft (8 m)
Propulsion:	Steam Turbine
Speed:	24 knots (44 km/h)
Complement:	82 officers, 882 enlisted, 1,900+ Marines
Armament:	2 × RAM launchers 4 × 25 mm Mk 38 cannons 2 × Phalanx CIWS 5 × 0.50-caliber M2HB machine guns
Aircraft carried:	6 AV-8B Harrier attack planes, 4 AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters, 12 CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters, 9 CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters, 4 UH-1N Huey helicopters
Motto:	First from the Sea

The second USS Nassau (LHA-4) is a Tarawa-class amphibious assault ship. She is capable of transporting over 3,000 Navy and Marine Corps personnel.

She has 1,400 compartments—about the same number as a large hotel, has nine elevators and two horizontal conveyors—more than most department stores. She has 2 boilers—the largest ever manufactured for the United States Navy. They can generate a total of 400 tons of steam per hour and develop 140,000 horsepower (104 MW)—equivalent to the power of more than 700 average automobiles. Nassau has electrical power subsystem creating 14 MW to provide electrical power for the ship—adequate electrical power to light 11,500 homes for 50,000 people. She has air conditioning equipment rated at a total of 1500 tons (5.3 MW)—sufficient to environmentally control a 32-story office building or 500 average homes and can ballast 12,000 tons of seawater for trimming the ship to receive and discharge landing craft from the well deck.

She was constructed with more than 20,000 tons of steel, 3,000 tons of aluminum, 400 miles (600 km) of cable and 80 miles (130 km) of pipe and has a 300 bed hospital, 4 medical operating rooms and 3 dental operating rooms. She has a 900 horsepower (671 kW) bow thruster for lateral movement at low speeds that can move the bow with 20,000 pounds of force (90 kN)—equivalent to half the pulling power of a diesel/electrical locomotive. Her cargo areas are capable of holding large amounts of LCACs, tanks, trucks, cannons and other material needs of the Marine Corps Combat Cargo Division, Navy and SeaBees.

See USS Nassau for other ships of this name.

• nassau.navy.mil USS Nassau official website
• navysite.de: USS Nassau
• LHA-4 Personnel Roster at HullNumber.com