The United States Navy, United States Coast Guard, and United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) use a hull classification symbol to identify their ships by type and by individual ship within a type. The system is analogous to the pennant number system that the Royal Navy and other European and Commonwealth navies use.
Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) was the original name for a submarine detection system based on passive sonar developed by the United States Navy to track Soviet submarines. The system's true nature was classified with the name and acronym SOSUS classified as well. The unclassified name Project Caesar was used to cover the installation of the system and a cover story developed regarding the shore stations, identified only as a Naval Facility (NAVFAC), being for oceanographic research. The name changed to Integrated Undersea Surveillance System (IUSS) in 1985, as the fixed bottom arrays were supplemented by the mobile Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) and other new systems. The commands and personnel were covered by the "oceanographic" term until 1991 when the mission was declassified. As a result, the commands, Oceanographic System Atlantic and Oceanographic System Pacific became Undersea Surveillance Atlantic and Undersea Surveillance Pacific, and personnel were able to wear insignia reflecting the mission.
USNS Kingsport (T-AG-164) was built as SS Kingsport Victory, a United States Maritime Commission VC2-S-AP3 (Victory) type cargo ship. During the closing days of World War II the ship was operated by the American Hawaiian Steamship Company under an agreement with the War Shipping Administration. After a period of layup the ship was operated as USAT Kingsport Victory by the Army under bareboat charter effective 8 July 1948. When Army transports were transferred to the Navy's Military Sea Transportation Service the ship continued as USNS Kingsport Victory (T-AK-239), a cargo transport. On 14 November 1961, after conversion into the first satellite communication ship, the ship was renamed Kingsport, reclassified as a general auxiliary, and operated as USNS Kingsport (T-AG-164).
A cable layer or cable ship is a deep-sea vessel designed and used to lay underwater cables for telecommunications, for electric power transmission, military, or other purposes. Cable ships are distinguished by large cable sheaves for guiding cable over bow or stern or both. Bow sheaves, some very large, were characteristic of all cable ships in the past, but newer ships are tending toward having stern sheaves only, as seen in the photo of CS Cable Innovator at the Port of Astoria on this page. The names of cable ships are often preceded by "C.S." as in CS Long Lines.
USCGC Yamacraw (WARC-333) was a United States Coast Guard Cable Repair Ship. The ship was built for the Army Mine Planter Service as U. S. Army Mine Planter Maj. Gen. Arthur Murray (MP-9) delivered December 1942. On 2 January 1945 the ship was acquired by the Navy, converted to an Auxiliary Minelayer and commissioned USS Trapper (ACM-9) on 15 March 1945. Trapper was headed to the Pacific when Japan surrendered. After work in Japanese waters the ship headed for San Francisco arriving there 2 May 1946 for transfer to the Coast Guard.
USNS Albert J. Myer (T-ARC-6) was the second of only two Maritime Commission type S3-S2-BP1 ships built for the US Army near the end of World War II intended to support Army Signal Corps communications cables. She is named for Brig. Gen. Albert J. Myer, the founder of the Signal Corps. The other ship was the William H. G. Bullard, later USS Neptune, which Myer later joined in naval service.
USNS Neptune (ARC-2), was the lead ship in her class of cable repair ships in U.S. Naval service. The ship was built by Pusey & Jones Corp. of Wilmington, Delaware, Hull Number 1108, as the USACS William H. G. Bullard named for Rear Adm. William H. G. Bullard. She was the first of two Maritime Commission type S3-S2-BP1 ships built for the US Army Signal Corps near the end of World War II. The other ship was the Albert J. Myer, which later joined her sister ship in naval service as the USNS Albert J. Myer (T-ARC-6).
USS Muskeget (AG-48) – originally USS YAG-9 – was a former commercial cargo ship acquired by the United States Navy in 1941 for use during World War II. She was outfitted with a variety of guns, depth charge tracks, Y-guns, and Mousetrap and placed in service as a patrol vessel. Transferred to the United States Coast Guard for use as a weather ship in the North Atlantic Ocean and renamed USCGC Muskeget (WAG-48), she disappeared in September 1942 with the loss of all on board, the only U.S. weather ship lost during World War II. It was later determined that she had been sunk by a German submarine.
The Alaska Communication System (ACS), also known as the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System (WAMCATS), was a system of cables and telegraph lines authorized by the U.S. Congress in 1900 and constructed by the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The communications lines were to serve both military and civilian needs in the territory of Alaska. By 1904, ACS comprised some 2,100 miles (3,400 km) of undersea cable, over 1,400 miles (2,300 km) of land lines, and a wireless segment across at least 107 miles (172 km). On May 15, 1936 WAMCATS was renamed the U.S. Army Alaska Communication System. The Alaska Communication System remained under the control of the Army Signal Corps until 1962 when it was taken over by the U.S. Air Force. The ACS handled the radioteletype, radio telephone, 500 kHz ship-to-shore frequencies, collected communications intelligence, and other services for more than half a century in Alaska.
Donald Alywn Innis,, is an American architect based in San Diego, California. Innis is also an inventor and engineer and has pioneered the idea of floating real estate, specifically the notion of a floating airport using pneumatic stabilized platform (PSP) technology which he has developed and patented through his company, Float Incorporated. Innis designed several notable San Diego landmarks, including the 1970s remodeling of the San Diego Broadway Pier, the master plan for the San Diego Embarcadero, and Terminal One of the San Diego International airport. He is a long-standing member of the American Institute of Architects.
USS White Sands (ARD-20), ex-USS ARD-20, ex-USS ARD(BS)-20, later AGDS-1, was a United States Navy auxiliary repair dock in service from 1944 to 1947 and from 1966 to 1974 and an Auxiliary floating drydock.
Mine planter and the earlier "torpedo planter" was a term used for mine warfare ships into the early days of World War I. In later terminology, particularly in the United States, a mine planter was a ship specifically designed to install controlled mines or contact mines in coastal fortifications. This type of ship diverged in both function and design from a ship operating as a naval minelayer. Though the vessel may be seagoing it is not designed to lay large numbers of mines in open sea. A mine planter was designed to place controlled minefields in exact locations so that they might be fired individually or as a group from shore when observers noted a target to be at or near a designated mine's position. The terms and types of specialized ship existed from the 1860s where "torpedoes" were made famous in the American Civil War until the demise of large, fixed coastal fortifications brought on by the changes of World War II.
The Martinolich Shipbuilding Company was founded in the early 1900s by John Martinolich (1877-1960), an Italian immigrant from modern day Croatia.
The Type B ship is a United States Maritime Administration (MARAD) designation for World War II barges. Barges are very low cost to build, operate and move. Barges were needed to move large bulky cargo. A tug boat, some classed as Type V ships, could move a barge, then depart and move on to the next task. That meant the barge did not have to be rushed to be unloaded or loaded. Toward the end of World War 2, some ships that had not been completed in time for the war were converted to barges. US Navy barges are given the prefix: YWN or YW. Due to shortage of steel during World War II, concrete ship constructors were given contracts to build concrete barges, with ferrocement and given the prefix YO, YOG, YOGN. Built in 1944 and 1945, some were named after elements.
NOAAS Murre II, previously NOAAS Murre II, was an American research vessel in commission in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) fleet from 1970 to 1989. Prior to her NOAA career, she operated under the United States Department of the Interior′s Fish and Wildlife Service from 1949 to 1956 and under the United States Fish and Wildlife Service′s Bureau of Commercial Fisheries from 1956 to 1970 as US FWS Murre II.
USS Wompatuck (YT-27) was an armed tug in commission in the United States Navy from 1898 to 1931. Early in her naval career, she saw combat in the Spanish–American War and the Philippine–American War. After she was decommissioned, she was selected for conversion into the fuel oil barge YO-64, but she was lost in the early days of World War II in the Pacific before the conversion could be completed.
United States
