USS San Marcos LSD-25 Reunion Association

Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, San Marcos rotated regularly between the Second and Sixth Fleets. While with the Second, she participated in exercises and carried cargo and personnel from New England to the Caribbean. Severing of diplomatic relations and increased tension between the United States and Cuba and political unrest in the Dominican Republic brought extended operations in the Greater Antilles in early 1961. In April, San Marcos supported the Bay of Pigs Invasion, carrying LCUs and LCVPs loaded with vehicles and equipment to a rendezvous a few miles off the coast with the ships carrying Brigade 2506.

 

Those operations were followed by duty in support of Project Mercury; and, in September, she received modifications which added helicopteroperations to her capabilities. Then a five-month Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM II) overhaul in 1962 and 1963 modernized her equipment and living spaces and improved her operational abilities in transporting, launching, and controlling assault craft; besides providing drydocking and repair services to landing ships and craft.

 

Her annual (excluding 1964) Mediterranean deployments brought participation in fleet, binational, and multinational (NATO) exercises. In 1964, she deployed only briefly, in September, to participate in Operation Steel Pike, a large-scale amphibious operation held off the coast of Spain.

 

On 13 August 1970, San Marcos returned to Little Creek to complete her last Mediterranean tour. During the return to Little Creek, she was caught in a hurricane and took a 45-degree roll, lost the rear 20-tonne gate and almost went down. Her crew kept her afloat after losing one power plant. Local and Caribbean exercises took her into 1971, when she was designated for transfer to the government of Spain. The first detachment of her future Spanish crew arrived in mid-April; the remainder joined her on 30 May. June was spent in familiarization activities and, on 1 July 1971, San Marcos was decommissioned and turned over.

 

The former San Marcos was commissioned in the Spanish Navy as Galicia (TA31) on 1 July 1971. She was sold outright to Spain on 1 August 1974. Galicia's pennant number was changed to L31 c. 1980. Galicia was stricken from the Spanish Navy list in early 1988, and scrapped in 1989.