USS Natrona was one of the 117 Haskell-class attack transports built to a modified Victory ship design. Constructed at Richmond, California, she was commissioned in November 1944. After shakedown training on the West Coast, she sailed for Ulithi, stopping at Pearl Harbor and Saipan to load and deliver troops and cargo. Arriving at Ulithi in February 1945, she embarked Marine night fighters and moved to Leyte to load additional troops and prepare for the assault on Okinawa. In late March, Natrona participated in the inital landings at Kerama Retto, whose anchorage was used to support the Okinawa landings. A week after the Okinawa assault, she put her Marine night fighters ashore there, then returned to Kerama Retto, where she served as station and receiving ship into July. Having endured 208 air attacks while near Okinawa, she returned to San Francisco in August.
After the Japanese surrender, Natrona carried out two trans-Pacific round trip voyages, carrying replacement troops to forward areas, occupation troops to Japan, and returning Pacific War veterans to the United States as part of Operation "Magic Carpet." She completed the second of these voyages at San Pedro, California, in mid-January 1946 and then moved to Mare Island for inactivation. She was decommissioned and placed in reserve in July 1946. Retained on the Navy list for the next decade as a mobilization asset, Natrona was transferred to the Maritime Administration in August 1958 for further retention and stricken from the Navy list in October. The Maritime Administration sold her for scrapping in March 1975.
This page features our only view of USS Natrona (APA-214).
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 17 December 2003