USS Jason (AR-8)
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USS Jason (AR-8) in 1993
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| History | |
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 United States
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| Name: | USS Jason |
| Namesake: | Jason |
| Builder: | Los Angeles Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, San Pedro, California |
| Laid down: | 9 March 1942 |
| Launched: | 3 April 1943 |
| Commissioned: | 19 June 1944 |
| Decommissioned: | 24 June 1995 |
| Reclassified: | AR-8, 9 September 1957 |
| Struck: | 24 June 1995 |
| Nickname(s): | Jolly J |
| Honors and awards: |
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| Fate: | Scrapped, 2007 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Vulcan class repair ship |
| Displacement: |
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| Length: | 530 ft (160 m) |
| Beam: | 77 ft (23 m) |
| Draft: | 26 ft (7.9 m) |
| Propulsion: | 4 × Babcock Wilcox Express A Type 400psi Boilers, 2 × steam turbines, 2 propeller shafts, 11,000 shp (8,203 kW) |
| Speed: | 19.2 knots (35.6 km/h; 22.1 mph) |
| Complement: | 1,297 |
| Armament: |
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USS Jason (AR-8) was a repair ship of the United States Navy in service from 1944 to 1995, serving in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. At the time of her decommissioning, Jason was (with the exception of USS Constitution) the oldest ship in continual commission in the United States Navy, and the final ship in continual commission from World War II onward.
She was laid down on 9 March 1942, at Los Angeles Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, San Pedro, California, as Heavy-hull Repair Ship ARH-1, and launched on 3 April 1943. Jason was commissioned on 19 June 1944, with Capt. A.O.R. Bergesen in command.
After brief shakedown and fitting out, the repair ship arrived Pearl Harbor on 6 July 1944 on the first leg of her journey to the Pacific battle area. She arrived Purvis Bay in the Solomon Islands on 17 August to commence operations with Service Squadron 10. Two months later she arrived Ulithi, where she was to spend the greater part of the war, performing the task of keeping the U.S. Navy's ships at peak strength and operating efficiency.
For seven months at Ulithi, as American forces captured island after island from the Japanese, Jason, many times under enemy attack, repaired broken hulls, buckled decks and twisted bulkheads of every type of ship in the U.S. Navy. This floating shipyard turned seemingly hopeless battle wrecks into rejuvenated fighting ships again able to stand out gallantly in the final victorious months. As the action crept closer to Japan, Jason sailed for Leyte arriving there on 28 May 1945. She remained there for the duration of the war continuing to service ships of the Pacific Fleet.
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Wikipedia