USS Gosper, one of 117 attack transports of the 6,873-ton Haskell-class, was built to a modified Victory ship design at Portland, Oregon, and was commissioned in November 1944. After shakedown training off the West Coast, she carried out two logistics voyages to Pearl Harbor, arriving there the second time in late February 1945. The Navy then decided to equip her as a casualty evacuation transport for the Okinawa invasion, and she was furnished with operating rooms and other hospital facilities. Gosper arrived at Ulithi at the end of March and moved to the vicinity of Okinawa in early April, five days after the initial assault there. She cared for casualties there for the next 11 days, and then transported them to the Naval Hospital at Guam. She returned to Okinawa at the beginning of May with over 1,000 reserve troops from Saipan. She remained near Okinawa until mid-July, caring for casualties and fighting off Japanese air raids. She returned to San Francisco in August for repairs.
After the Japanese surrender, Gosper sailed in late August to the Philippines where, because of her medical facilities, she took on board a large group of former Allied prisioners of war. She delivered these to Seattle in October. Gosper then carried out two voyages under Operation "Magic Carpet," returning veterans from the Pacific theater of war to the West Coast. In February 1946 she moved to the East Coast. She was decommissioned and returned to the Maritime Commission at Newport News in April, stricken from the Navy List in May, and placed in the Maritime Commission's reserve fleet. She was sold for scrapping in 1974.
This page features our only view of USS Gosper (APA-170).
If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital image presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions." |
Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.
If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital image presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions." |
Page made 23 October 2003