Admiral W. S. Benson (AP-120) Class: Photographs

USS Admiral W. L. Capps (AP-121) Near the San Francisco Naval Shipyard on 7 January 1945. Note the stacks of liferafts in place of boats and davits on the boat deck. They were found to be difficult to launch from this position. Photo No. 19-N-91519 Source: U.S. National Archives, RG-19-LCM
USS Admiral Hugh Rodman (AP-126) Photographed in San Francisco Bay circa late 1945. Photo No. NH 98760 Source: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command
USS Admiral E. W. Eberle (AP-123) In San Francisco Bay in late 1945 or early 1946. Her guns have been removed, as were those of many large transports soon after the end of hostilities. Note the revised stowage for the liferafts, in inclined racks overhanging the side of the ship. Photo No. NH 103420 Source: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command
USAT Admiral W. S. Benson At Shanghai on 10 December 1946. The Army fitted lifeboats and modified all of the ships of this class for operation by civilian crews during an initial austere conversion in 1946. They otherwise retained much of their wartime configuration. Photo No. None Source: Shipscribe
USAT Admiral W. L. Capps Photographed circa 1947 in her initial austere Army configuration. Photo No. None Source: Shipscribe
USAT General Edwin D. Patrick Shown after completing her full Army peacetime conversion in April 1948 and before her transfer to the Navy in March 1950. She was one of seven ships of this class that received an extensive full conversion to peacetime transports and dependents carriers in 1947-1948. In these ships the area between the bridge and the forecastle was filled in with additional accommodations, additional kingposts were fitted, and numerous other changes were made. Photo No. SC-30-182-5385-2 (Army) Source: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command
USAT General Nelson M. Walker Photographed during the brief interval between her late 1948 conversion and her transfer to the Navy in early 1950. This ship, the last of her class to be upgraded, received only a basic safety at sea conversion and a partial conversion to a dependents carrier in the second half of 1948. Her complement of lifeboats was increased, but she retained her original broken hull profile forward with its gap betwen the bridge and the forecastle as well as her original bridge and her original rig. Photo No. None Source: Shipscribe
USNS General Alexander M. Patch (T-AP-122) Entering New York Harbor on 14 June 1950. Photographed soon after her 1 March 1950 transfer from the Army, the ship appears to retain her Army hull paint and stack markings, with the exception that the round Army Transportation Service emblem on the forward stack has been deleted. Photo No. USN (80-G) 476456 Source: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command
USNS General William O. Darby (T-AP-127) Shown during the 1950s after her transfer from the Army to the Navy's Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS). Photo No. NH 104019 Source: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command
USNS General Edwin D. Patrick (T-AP-124) Photographed before November 1961. Numerous refinements, such as the graceful bridge wings, made the fully converted ships far more attractive than the original transports. Note also the addition of kingpost pairs fore and aft for improved cargo handling. Photo No. Unknown Source: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command
S.S. President Wilson This ship was laid down as USS Admiral F. B. Upham (AP-129) and was redesigned by the Maritime Commission as a merchant ship in December 1944. The modifications were far more extensive than in the Army conversions of the late 1940s, but both included filling in the break between the bridge and the forecastle with additional accommodations. She and her sister President Cleveland, ex Admiral D. W. Taylor (AP-128), served the American President Lines in the trans-Pacific trade from 1947-48 to 1973. Photo No. None Source: Shipscribe
USS IX-510 (ex General William O. Darby) Photographed on 16 April 1990 by Don S. Montgomery, USN (Ret.) at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co., where she served as a barracks ship to house the crews of aircraft carriers being overhauled. Photo No. DN-ST-90-09605 Source: U.S. Defense Visual Information Center (no longer on line)