USS Abraham Lincoln returns to San Diego after 321-day deployment

The USS Abraham Lincoln returned to San Diego on Thursday after a 321-day deployment that took its crew into the U.S. war with Iran and kept the aircraft carrier at sea for a record stretch without a port call. Thousands of relatives and friends gathered to welcome home the sailors and Marines.

Cheers rose as the carrier approached Naval Air Station North Island around noon. Sailors lined its deck, then waved and called loved ones waiting on shore. Among them was Alexander Adkins, who met his 10-week-old son, Declan, for the first time. His wife, McKenzie, held the baby as she waved to him from the pier, CBS News reported.

The deployment began in November. The Lincoln reached the Middle East in January, before U.S. and Israeli forces launched airstrikes against Iran on Feb. 28. The carrier and its accompanying ships supported the war until leaving the region in late August. The strike group stopped in Thailand and Guam on its way home, according to CBS News. The USS George Washington replaced the Lincoln in the Middle East in August.

The accounts differ slightly on the uninterrupted time at sea: NPR reported 265 days, while The Guardian put it at 264, citing the Defense Department. Both described it as a record. CBS News said the Lincoln carried more than 4,500 sailors and Marines; The Guardian described the number aboard as roughly 5,000.

The homecoming followed months of scrutiny over reports of food and hygiene-product shortages, plumbing problems and deteriorating mental health aboard the ship. Democratic lawmakers pressed the Navy for answers. The Navy told lawmakers that eight sailors in the Lincoln strike group had attempted suicide during the deployment.

Navy leaders initially downplayed problems. In August, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said combat operations had limited resupply opportunities and briefly reduced meal options from two to one, but that the ship had adequate food and served four nutritionally balanced meals a day. The Pentagon has defended conditions aboard the carrier.

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth flew to the Lincoln and presented its crew with the Presidential Unit Citation, the highest honor a military unit can receive. He rejected efforts to make the carrier “a symbol of dysfunction or a symbol of low morale or a symbol of a failed mission,” telling sailors: “You adapt and that you’re resilient and you overcome — you finish the mission nonetheless.”

According to the citation Hegseth read, the Lincoln strike group carried out 3,693 combat missions, delivered 1.37 million pounds of ordnance, launched 450 Tomahawk cruise missiles, shot down 77 one-way attack drones and sank 64 Iranian warships. It also destroyed 21 anti-ship cruise missiles and defended against four fast-attack craft and explosive-carrying ships.

For some families, the return brought relief alongside the weight of time missed. Brenda Rivas told The Guardian that her husband, who deployed while she was pregnant, missed their daughter’s birth. “It’s mixed emotions,” she said as she waited for him. “I’m more sad than excited because he did miss so much.”