USS Lincoln Returns to San Diego After Record 322-Day Deployment in the Iran War

CORONADO, Calif. — After more than 10 months at sea, thousands of sailors streamed off the USS Abraham Lincoln on San Diego Bay on Thursday to thunderous cheers, tears and long hugs. The homecoming included new fathers meeting babies born while they were deployed in support of the Iran war.

The Navy said 64 fathers aboard the carrier met their children for the first time, and 122 counting the air wing. Sailor Kathy Monterrosa waited on the pier holding her 6-month-old daughter, Sarahi, in a tiny sailor dress. "She's our deployment baby," said Monterrosa, of Virginia Beach, Virginia. She said it was hard to hear about conditions on the ship while she was pregnant. "I was crying a lot and worried," she said. Fourteen-year-old Cassity Garduque waved to her mother on the top deck. "She missed most of my seventh grade and my birthday," she said.

The ship set a record for uninterrupted time at sea, 265 days. The full deployment ran 322 days, just shy of the 326-day deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford, which returned in May and was the longest for an aircraft carrier in the past 50 years. The Lincoln left San Diego in November and reached the Middle East in January. U.S. and Israeli forces launched airstrikes on Iran on Feb. 28. The crew got a stop in Thailand early last month on the way home, and the USS George Washington relieved the Lincoln in the Middle East in August.

The deployment became a political flashpoint. The Navy initially downplayed problems aboard, and President Donald Trump said in August that the Lincoln's lengthy deployment was "not nearly long enough." Navy leaders later acknowledged there were issues. Families described reports of supply shortages and deteriorating mental health. Sailors told relatives about "the lack of food and showers," and one child said her mother had eaten ramen almost every day. The Navy told lawmakers that eight sailors attempted suicide during the deployment, a number experts say is low for a strike group of about 6,000 sailors over 10 months.

Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said in August that the Lincoln maintained adequate food supplies, but that combat operations limited resupply and reduced meal options for a short time. The ship's commander, Capt. Daniel Keeler, said most of the crew was on a first deployment and that the problems were normal for a deployment this long. He said everyone had access to four meals a day. "It's a floating city as you can see and at any moment there might be a clogged toilet," Keeler said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth flew out to the carrier on Wednesday to present the Presidential Unit Citation, which is typically reserved for significant achievement in combat. "What makes the U.S. military and the U.S. Navy and all these sailors different is that you adapt and that you're resilient and you overcome," Hegseth told the crew. He pushed back on what he called efforts to turn the Lincoln into "a symbol of dysfunction or a symbol of low morale or a symbol of a failed mission." The citation said the Lincoln and its strike group flew nearly 3,700 combat missions, launched 450 Tomahawk cruise missiles, shot down 77 one-way attack drones, sank 64 Iranian warships and destroyed 21 anti-ship cruise missiles. The Lincoln is the second carrier to endure an unusually long Iran-war deployment and receive the citation afterward.

For many families, the numbers mattered less than the reunion. Sailor Abel Ramirez, 20, walked off grinning on his first deployment. "There was a certain point when I never thought I would come off," he said. Alma Solano Velez said her husband had sent her a list of the foods he craved after 10 months, including oxtail, barbecue chicken, broccoli and shrimp empanadas, and was eager to see their daughter, who turned 4 while he was away.