USS Abraham Lincoln comes home after a historic 321 day deployment

The USS Abraham Lincoln sailed into Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego on Thursday, ending a 321 day deployment that tested the crew as few in modern Navy history have been tested.

The carrier spent 10 and a half months at sea, including 265 days without a single port call, as the Iran war kept the strike group on station. The roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard endured cramped living conditions, disrupted resupply and long months away from home. The Navy has acknowledged 8 suicide attempts during the deployment, a stark measure of the strain.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the ship on Wednesday, the day before homecoming. Captain Dan Keeler, the ship's commanding officer, marked the moment simply: "Every single sailor and marine that left on this deployment is going home."

The Lincoln's deployment is among the longest continuous stretches at sea for an American carrier in the modern era, a consequence of a war that has now run eight months and shows no sign of ending. For the families waiting on the pier in San Diego, the geopolitics could wait. Their sailors were home.