The USS Fairfax County (LST-1193) was a Newport-class tank landing ship laid down and launched in 1970, commissioned in 1971, and assigned to Amphibious Force, Atlantic Fleet. The vessel was the fifteenth of twenty Newport-class tank landing ships of the US Navy. She alternated amphibious training operations along the US East Coast and the Caribbean Sea with regular, extended deployments to the Mediterranean Sea. During the Gulf War, she was one of three ships that formed the Marine Amphibious Ready Group 3-90 (MARG 3-90). She was deployed off the northern African coast as part of this deterrent force. The ship was kept in the Mediterranean as a show of force to possible hostile African nations while the US was occupied in the Persian Gulf. MARG 3-90 departed Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in 1990 with a US Marine Corps detachment and returned home a year later. The USS Fairfax County was decommissioned and struck from the Register in 1994. Levels of asbestos exposure and their relationship with cancerous diseases stemming from them may classify former Navy service members as having been exposed to asbestos during service and qualify them for compensation from the asbestos trust funds and the VA.
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