USS Rankin (AKA-103)
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| History | |
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| Name: | Rankin |
| Namesake: | Rankin County, Mississippi |
| Ordered: | July 1944 |
| Builder: | North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, Wilmington, North Carolina |
| Laid down: | 31 October 1944 |
| Launched: | 22 December 1944 |
| Commissioned: | 25 February 1945 |
| Decommissioned: | 21 May 1947 |
| Recommissioned: | 22 March 1952 |
| Decommissioned: | 11 May 1971 |
| Reclassified: | LKA-103, 1969 |
| Struck: | 1 January 1977 |
| Motto: | "Ready Now" |
| Honors and awards: |
1 battle star (World War II) |
| Fate: | Sunk as a fishing & diving reef off Stuart, Florida, 24 July 1988 |
| Badge: |  |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Tolland-class attack cargo ship |
| Displacement: |
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| Length: | 459 ft 2 in (139.95 m) |
| Beam: | 63 ft (19 m) |
| Draft: | 26 ft 4 in (8.03 m) |
| Propulsion: | GE geared turbine drive, single propeller, 6,000 shp (4.5 MW) |
| Speed: | 16.5 knots (30.6 km/h; 19.0 mph) |
| Range: | 17,000 miles |
| Boats & landing craft carried: |
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| Capacity: | 380,000 ft3 (11.000 m³), 5,275 tons |
| Complement: | 62 officers, 333 men |
| Armament: |
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USS Rankin (AKA-103/LKA-103) was a Tolland-class attack cargo ship (later Rankin class amphibious cargo ship) named after Rankin County, Mississippi. Like all AKAs, Rankin was designed to transport military cargo and landing craft, and use the latter to land weapons, supplies, soldiers and Marines on enemy shores during amphibious operations. She was the 103rd of 114 ships eventually constructed for this purpose.
Her construction was part of the country's emergency program for replacing the hundreds of cargo ships lost to enemy attacks during World War II. The Maritime Commission administered the program and dozens of the ships it produced were acquired by the United States Navy and converted into warships. Many of these ships would be used for amphibious warfare.
Rankin's keel was laid down on 31 October 1944 at North Carolina Shipbuilding Co. in Wilmington, North Carolina. She was launched 52 days later on 22 December, and commissioned in Charleston, South Carolina on 25 February 1945. She served as a commissioned warship for a total of 21 years and five months.
Commissioned during the final year of World War II, Rankin served briefly during that conflict, and for about two years during the postwar transition to peacetime. She was put in mothballs in 1947, then recommissioned during the Korean War in 1952. Based in Norfolk from her recommissioning until the end of her service life, she participated in many cold war naval activities. In 1969, the Navy changed her hull classification symbol to LKA-103, and renamed Attack Cargo Ships as Amphibious Cargo Ships. (Other amphibious ships were also redesignated at that time, so that all amphibious designators began with the letter "L".) Rankin was decommissioned in 1971, and was sunk in 1988 as a fishing and diving reef off the coast of Stuart, Florida.
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