TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Navy will hold a decommissioning ceremony for the Kaohsiung tank landing ship on Wednesday after nearly 70 years of service.
The ship was originally the US Navy tank landing ship USS LST-735, launched on March 11, 1944. It entered service in the Pacific theater of World War II, Liberty Times reported.
After the war, the vessel was named USS Dukes County and was briefly decommissioned in March 1946. However, it was recommissioned and returned to service following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950.
In May 1957, the ship was leased to Taiwan and was renamed ROCS Chung Hsi. It was primarily tasked with amphibious transport, logistics support, and training missions.
Four years later, the ship was upgraded with additional communications equipment and renamed ROCS Kaohsiung, becoming the first Navy vessel to be named after a Taiwanese city, according to Liberty Times. In addition to participating in amphibious landing exercises, it also carried out transport and resupply missions.
The Kaohsiung began serving as a testing platform for the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology in 2017 for a range of domestically developed weapons systems. These included the Sea Sword II surface-to-air missile, the Hua Yang vertical launch system, as well as the Sea Oryx close-in weapon system, the Sea Bow III air defense missile, and a phased-array radar system. The ship became an important platform for Taiwan’s indigenous defense research and development.
