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DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER
805 KIDDER BREESE SE -- WASHINGTON NAVY YARD
WASHINGTON DC 20374-5060

Photo # NH 101993:  USS Lake Bridge with other ships, during World War I

Online Library of Selected Images:
-- U.S. NAVY SHIPS --

USS Lake Bridge (ID # 2990), 1918-1919.
Previously War Rifle (American Freighter, 1917)

USS Lake Bridge, a 1984 gross ton mine carrier and cargo ship, was built at Toledo, Ohio, in 1917 as the civilian freighter War Rifle. Renamed Lake Bridge by the United States Shipping Board, she was chartered by the Navy in December 1917 and placed in commission as USS Lake Bridge in February 1918.

Initially employed carrying coal in the western Atlantic area, Lake Bridge began the first of three voyages to Scotland in May 1918. On all of these trips, she transported mines for deployment in the great North Sea Mine Barrage that was intended to hinder hostile submarine activities. On 5 June 1918, while on the return leg of her first mine-carrying run, Lake Bridge engaged the German submarine U-156 in a half-hour gun battle. Following the end of the war, she was again used as a cargo and coal carrier along the U.S. east coast and in the Caribbean.

USS Lake Bridge was decommissioned and returned to the Shipping Board in August 1919. She later entered the West Coast lumber trade as the S.S. Cascade. Sold to a Latin American shipping company in about 1940, she was lost in the Indian Ocean in August 1941.

This page features the only views we have concerning USS Lake Bridge and the civilian freighter War Rifle.


If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions."

Click on the small photograph to prompt a larger view of the same image.

Photo #: NH 99509

S.S. War Rifle
(American Freighter, 1917), left
and
S.S. War Bayonet (American Freighter, 1917)

In port, possibly in the New York City area when they were inspected by the Third Naval District on 26 December 1917.
During 1918-1919 these two ships served, respectively, as USS Lake Bridge (ID # 2990) and USS Lake Superior (ID # 2995). The latter also had World War II Navy service as USS Tuluran (AG-46).

U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

Online Image: 78KB; 740 x 575 pixels

 
Photo #: NH 101993

USS Lake Bridge
(ID # 2990) - center, marked by arrow

Photographed during World War I. Built in 1917 and originally named War Rifle, this freighter was acquired by the Navy on 12 December 1917 and commissioned on 16 February 1918. She was returned to the U.S. Shipping Board on 5 August 1919.
The stern of the tug Leon Nuct (or Leon Muct), of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is in the left foreground.

The original print is in National Archives' Record Group 19-LCM.

U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.

Online Image: 81KB; 580 x 765 pixels

 


If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions."


Return to Naval Historical Center home page.

Page made 7 October 2001
New image added 1 September 2004