USS Admiral W. S. Sims, a 9,676-ton (light displacement) Admiral W. S. Benson-class transport, was built at Alameda, California. Constructed for the U.S. Maritime Commission to its P2-SE2-R1 design, she was transferred to the Navy and commissioned in late September 1945. She never received her designed armament and fire control equipment, installation of which was cancelled several weeks before commissioning due to the end of World War II. After shakedown training she made four voyages as a Navy transport: two round-trips to Manila, one to Okinawa, and one that touched at Inchon in Korea, Okinawa and Manila. Admiral W. S. Sims was decommissioned at San Francisco in June 1946 and turned over to the War Shipping Administration for simultaneous transfer to the Army. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in July 1946.
The ship completed initial conversion for Army use at San Pedro, California, in August 1946. The Army began operating her with a civilian crew as USAT Admiral W. S. Sims, but soon renamed her in honor of Army Brigadier General William O. Darby, who had been killed in action at the end of April 1945. Between January and October 1948 the ship underwent full conversion to a peacetime transport. USAT General William O. Darby continued to operate for the Army until, in March 1950, all Army transports were transferred to the newly created Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS). As a civilian-manned MSTS transport she was owned by the Navy but retained her Army name. USNS General William O. Darby (T-AP-127) spent most of her career on the route between New York and Bremerhaven, West Germany, supporting U. S. military forces in Europe. Between June 1953 and January 1954, however, she operated in the Pacific helping to bring home Korean War veterans, and during 1956 she deployed to the Mediterranean in support of the Sixth Fleet. In mid-1965 all six MSTS transports in the Atlantic were transferred to the Pacific for use during the Vietnam buildup. In 1967 General William O. Darby was laid up in ready reserve at the Cavin Point (New Jersey) Army Depot in New York harbor. In June 1970 she was moved to the Maritime Administration's reserve fleet, in Virginia's James River, and in July 1971 was permanently transferred to the Maritime Administration, although the Navy retained ownership and the ship remained on the Naval Vessel Register.
In June 1976 an unimplemented proposal to loan the ship to the State of Maryland as a prison ship caused her to lose her name, becoming simply AP-127. In October 1981 the Navy withdrew her from the James River fleet and moved her to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, where in July 1982 she was placed in service as a barracks ship and reclassified IX-510 (still without name). Her primary use was to support the crews of aircraft carriers undergoing overhaul and construction at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co. IX-510 was returned to the James River reserve fleet in April 1991, stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in October 1993, and transferred to full Maritime Administration ownership in May 1999. In February 2005 she was towed to Brownsville, Texas, to be dismantled.
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Page made 21 December 2006
New image added 12 February 2007