History of Amphibious Warfare

The first American amphibious assault took place in 1776 when the Marines landed at New Providence, Bahamas, but the event that birthed the amphibious Navy as we know it today came well over 100 years later.

At 7:55 a.m. (Hawaii-Aleutian Time Zone) on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, the U.S. Navy was without a single oceangoing ship capable of discharging a cargo of big tanks or other heavy equipment onto a beach without the aid of piers or cranes. The events of that moment would change the face of the amphibious Navy forever. Amphibious forces in the Pacific would wrest island by island away from the Japanese and into Europe to recover Europe from Hitler's grip. Since then, amphibious forces have played an important role in U.S. Navy operations.

Expeditionary Strike Group 2, established in 2007, is an integrated Navy and Marine Corps headquarters staff of 76 personnel and 31 subordinate commands. Led by a one-star admiral, ESG-2 provides timely, operational, amphibious expertise in support of national tasking to sustain maritime security and defense of the nation.

In addition, ESG-2 provides oversight and management of 3 amphibious squadrons, a naval beach group, 13 amphibious ships, 2 expeditionary mobile base ships and 2 tactical air control squadrons, totaling more than 11,000 Sailors and Marines, with the capacity to embark an additional 14,000 Marines.

The commands of ESG-2 conduct all amphibious and expeditionary actions from the East Coast of the United States to the Middle East. The mobile, scalable, and self-sustaining nature of the expeditionary strike group allows a precision amphibious strike capability - more flexible than any previous expeditionary force composition.

As a rapid and robust, deployable, crisis response command element, ESG-2 supports missions across the range of military operations.

In both peacetime and full-scale operations, ESG-2 personifies its motto: “Ready, Responsive, Resolute.”