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.
If you want higher resolution reproductions than the digital images presented here, see: "How to Obtain Photographic Reproductions." |
Page made 7 October 2001
New image added 1 September 2004