US Navy Auxiliary Ships 1922-1945

U. S. Navy Auxiliary Vessels

1922-1945

Use the sidebar or click on this photograph to access the ship listings, or read the instructions below and click "Enter."

The ammunition ship USS Rainier (AE-5) replenishing USS Antietam (CV-36) and USS Wisconsin (BB-64) in 1952.
This portion of the Shipscribe site contains reference information on the auxiliary vessels of the United States Navy that were on hand or added to the force between 1922 and 1945. For each ship the site provides name and classification, technical specifications, procurement history, and dates of and other relevant data on construction, commissioning, and disposal. Changes in this information that occurred during the ship's career are identified, including those after 1945, but other career details, notably operational history, are outside the scope of this work.

New!! Information Posted Recently August 2010: With the posting of the Station Tankers and Station Cargo Ships (IX), the first draft of the 1922-1945 portion of the Auxiliary Vessels section of this site is complete except for the tug types and the special (mostly small) IX category. Current plans are to complete these missing sections, update the work already done, and then proceed to the ships on hand in 1922 and, if circumstances permit, expand the site to include auxiliaries prior to 1920 and those after 1945. In the meantime, enjoy this reference to all of the Navy's large auxiliary ships between 1922 and 1945.

For a log of additions to this site during the past four years click here.

Ships are listed by type using standard U. S. Navy classifications (AD: Destroyer Tender, etc.) and class. To proceed to the ship class pages that have been posted, click "enter" below or click on the photograph at the top of this page to access the main ship type page. On the type page, click on anything that is highlighted by your browser as a hyperlink. If you want full data on the class with links to its photographs, click the link on the left; if you want to go directly to the photographs, click the link on the right. (The sidebar on the left of the screen provides short cuts to these pages.) The lines that are not yet links are promises of things to come and indicate the full dimensions of this project.

Enter

This site is a cyber sequel to the book Register of Ships of the U. S. Navy, 1775-1990: Major Combatants, by K. Jack Bauer and Stephen S. Roberts, published by Greenwood Press in 1991. It emulates the scope and format of that volume and uses the same nomenclature and abbreviations. For more information on Major Combatants follow these links to descriptions by two on-line retailers:

Amazon.com

Barnes & Noble

Whenever possible, representative photographs have been provided for each ship class. They are primarily from the U. S. Naval Historical Center and from Record Groups 19-LCM and 80-G at the U. S. National Archives. Unlike the other information on this site, all of which is copyright © by Stephen S. Roberts, all photographs that originated from U.S. Government collections or that have U.S. Government file numbers are believed to be in the public domain. For most classes, the photographs provided here are only a small proportion of those in existence.

For a major online resource on photographs of U. S. Navy ships, follow this link for instructions on how to access the Online Library of Selected Images created by the U. S. Naval Historical Center and now maintained in two locatons:

Online Library of Selected Images

Note: The Naval Historical Center was renamed the Naval History and Heritage Command in December 2008.
The new name is now used in the Shipscribe site, although some references to the old name remain.

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