USS Salinas (AO-19)
Salinas (AO-19), one of the older generation of Navy oilers, riding light in the water with much of her dark red bottom paint showing. Unlike later ships of this type, she does not have the extensive equipment required for underway replenishment.
|
|
| History | |
|---|---|
 United States
|
|
| Name: | Salinas |
| Namesake: | Salinas River |
| Builder: | Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co., Newport News, Virginia |
| Laid down: | 10 April 1919 |
| Launched: | 5 May 1920 |
| Acquired: | 29 October 1921 |
| Commissioned: | 16 December 1921 |
| Decommissioned: | 20 June 1922 |
| Recommissioned: | 12 June 1926 |
| Decommissioned: | 16 January 1946 |
| Struck: | 26 February 1946 |
| Fate: | Sold to a private shipping company |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Patoka Replenishment oiler |
| Displacement: | 16,800 long tons (17,070 t) |
| Length: | 477 ft 10 in (145.64 m) |
| Beam: | 60 ft (18 m) |
| Draft: | 26 ft 2 in (7.98 m) (mean) |
| Speed: | 10.5 knots (19.4 km/h; 12.1 mph) |
| Complement: | 87 |
USS Salinas (AO-19), a United States Navy Patoka-class replenishment oiler, was laid down for the United States Shipping Board (USSB) as Hudsonian (219592) on 10 April 1919 by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co., Newport News, Virginia; launched on 5 May 1920; accepted by the USSB on 13 May 1920; transferred to the Navy on 29 October 1921; renamed Salinas and designated AO-19 on 3 November 1921; and commissioned at Mobile, Ala., on 16 December 1921, Lt. Comdr. H. S. Chase, USNRF, in command.
Assigned to the Naval Transportation Service, Salinas was initially in commission for only a little over six months. She was decommissioned at Norfolk on 20 June 1922 and remained in reserve until recommissioned at Norfolk on 12 June 1926. The following September, she commenced carrying fuel from naval fuel depots and Caribbean and Texas oil ports to Navy bases and stations on the east and west coasts, in the Caribbean, in the Panama Canal Zone, and, in the late 1920s, to Marine Corps units in Nicaragua. Periodically interrupted for overhauls and fleet exercises; and, in 1938, for a transatlantic run to Britain, she maintained a continuous operating schedule in those areas until late in the 1930s.
Then, with tension increasing in Europe, she confined her operations to runs between Gulf coast and Caribbean oil ports and bases in Cuba and on the east coast. In September 1939, World War II broke out in Europe. Hostilities soon spread across the ocean. The United States commenced neutrality patrols and escort services in the western Atlantic, and Salinas, now armed, shifted her runs further north, and then east, to include bases in Canada and Iceland.
During August 1941, the AO served as station oiler at NS Argentia, Newfoundland. She joined a convoy for Iceland in September. She arrived at Reykjavík early in October and departed that port on 23 October, in ballast, for the mid-ocean meeting point where she rendezvoused with convoy ON 28 on 25 September. From there, the tanker moved west to return to the United States. At 0700 (GCT) on the 30th, her position was 46° 56'N, 37°46'W (about 700 miles (1,100 km) east of Newfoundland) [1]. Visibility was about 1,000 yards (1,000 m). Twelve minutes later, Salinas took a torpedo fired by German submarine U-106 commanded by Hermann Rasch, portside, at her number 9 tank. A second torpedo followed, hitting portside at tanks 2 and 3. Salinas settled to near her loaded waterline and remained there.
...
Wikipedia