USS Black Hawk (AD-9)

USS Black Hawk (ID # 2140) Moored at Inverness, Scotland, in September 1918, while serving as Mine Force repair ship and flagship, and painted with a camouflage pattern.
History
Name:	USS Black Hawk
Builder:	William Cramp and Sons, Philadelphia
Cost:	$99,751 (hull & machinery)
Launched:	1913, as SS Santa Catalina
Acquired:	by purchase, 3 December 1917
Commissioned:	15 May 1918
Decommissioned:	15 August 1946
Reclassified:	AD-9, November 1920
Honours and awards:	1 battle star (WWII)
Fate:	Transferred to Maritime Commission, 4 September 1947
General characteristics
Type:	Destroyer tender
Displacement:	5,690 long tons (5,781 t)
Length:	420 ft 2 in (128.07 m)
Beam:	53 ft 10 in (16.41 m)
Draft:	28 ft 5 in (8.66 m)
Speed:	13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph)
Complement:	471
Armament:	4 × 5 in (130 mm) guns 1 × 3 in (76 mm) gun

USS Black Hawk (AD-9) was a destroyer tender that was launched in 1913 as SS Santa Catalina by William Cramp and Sons Ship and Engine Building Co., Philadelphia; purchased by the U.S. Navy on 3 December 1917; and commissioned 15 May 1918, Commander R. C. Bulmer in command.

Assigned as tender and flagship to the Mine Force, Black Hawk departed Boston in June 1918 to take station at Inverness, Scotland. She remained there until the end of World War I and then shifted her base to Kirkwall, Orkney Islands, for the North Sea mine sweep.

She returned to New York in November 1919 and served as flagship and tender for the Atlantic Fleet destroyers in reserve at Philadelphia. After the installation of a torpedo workshop and other equipment she was designated a destroyer tender (AD-9) in November 1920 and reported as flagship of the Operative Squadron, Destroyer Flotillas, Atlantic Fleet. She served mainly in Caribbean and Panamanian waters until June 1922 when she left Newport, Rhode Island, via the Suez Canal, for the Asiatic Squadron. Black Hawk remained in the Far East for twenty years during which she tended Destroyer Squadrons 5 (1922–40) and 29 (1940–42).