SS Louise Lykes (1941)
| History | |
|---|---|
| Name: | SS Louise Lykes |
| Owner: | Lykes Brothers Steamship Company |
| Port of registry: |
 New Orleans
|
| Builder: | |
| Yard number: | 180 |
| Launched: | 27 September 1941 |
| Completed: | October 1941 |
| Fate: | sunk with all hands by U-384, 9 January 1943 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Type C2-F ship |
| Tonnage: | 6,155 GRT |
| Length: | 439 ft 0 in (133.81 m) |
| Beam: | 63 ft 1 in (19.23 m) |
| Draft: | 27 ft 5 in (8.36 m) |
| Decks: | two plus shelter deck |
| Propulsion: | 2 General Electric steam turbines, geared to a single screw propeller |
| Speed: | 15.5 knots (28.7 km/h) |
| Crew: | 10 officers, 41 sailors, 32 Naval Armed Guardsmen (83 total) |
| Armament: |
|
SS Louise Lykes was a Type C2-F ship built in 1941 at Federal Shipbuilding of Kearny, New Jersey. She sailed for the Lykes Brothers Steamship Company out of New Orleans, Louisiana. On 9 January 1943, she was sunk with all hands in the North Atlantic by German submarine U-384.
Louise Lykes was laid down at Federal Shipbuilding of Kearny, New Jersey, and launched on 27 September 1941. After her October 1941 completion, she was delivered to her owners, the Lykes Brothers Steamship Company, and registered at New Orleans, Louisiana. Very little information on the earliest parts of Louise Lykes' career are reported in secondary sources, but some time after the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the ship was armed with one 4-inch (10 cm), two 3-inch (7.6 cm), and eight 20-millimetre (0.79 in) guns, and a Naval Armed Guard detachment to man them.
Information on most of Louise Lykes' wartime activities is also absent from secondary sources, but she is recorded as sailing in Convoy UGF 2 from Hampton Roads, Virginia, to Casablanca in November 1942 with 21 other merchant vessels, and the return convoy, GUF 2, which returned to Hampton Roads on 11 December. Both convoys were escorted across the Atlantic by the American battleship Arkansas and other escorts and support ships.
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