the outbreak of the One Year War, the Dreadnought-oriented Earth Federation was caught completely by surprise when the Principality of Zeon deployed the agile mobile suits against their fleets. The Federation military quickly realised that they would also need mobile suits if they were to have any chance of victory, and instituted the famed Project V in order to develop a mass-production mobile suit design. The Federation also realised that their existing line of space warships — mostly the cannon-heavy Magellan-class battleships, Salamis-class cruisers, and the unarmed Columbus-class transporters — are severely lacking in mobile suit transport and support capacity, and thus desperately in need of designs capable of mobile warfare. A new revolutionary warship class exclusively designed for MS combat and support was born — the Pegasus-class assault carrier'''. One of the first Pegasus-class ships to enter active service was the White Base. Launched in September UC 0079, White Base was immediately sent to retrieve the Federation's new mobile suit prototypes from Side 7's secret research facility for field testing. In the middle of this mission, she unexpectedly found herself tailed by a Zeon special combat unit led by Char Aznable. When the Zeon forces launched their surprise attack on the colony, heavy casualties were inflicted among the colony's civilian population and White Base's regular personnel. In the middle of the battle, civilian teenager Amuro Ray activated the RX-78-2 Gundam unit in sheer desperation and repulsed the Zeon attack, destroying two Zakus in the process. The surviving crew and the civilian refugees then boarded White Base and went on a long journey plagued by Zeon hostilities.White Base first landed at Luna II, home of the remaining Earth Federation Space Force fleet, where she was promptly seized by the base commander, who proceeded to interrogate the crew, militia and civilian survivors on board. In the middle of this interrogation, Char, searching for White Base, led an infiltration attack on Luna II by mining the port entrance. White Base managed to escape from Luna II, and sailed next for Earth under the command of a hastily promoted young captain named Bright Noa. Upon making contact with the Federation forces under the command of General Johann Abraham Revil, White Base was forced to push west through Zeon-controlled territory in North America and was drawn into a battle in the ruins of Seattle, where she shot down a Zeon Gaw-class carrier containing Zeon