USS Pondera, one of 117 Haskell-class attack transports, was built to a modified Victory ship design at Vancouver, Washington. Commissioned in September 1944, after shakedown she was employed in Californian waters training precommissioning crews for other attack transports until late January 1945. In February she departed San Francisco for Hawaii, and in late April she delivered a battalion of Seabees to Okinawa. Pondera carried casualties to San Francisco via Saipan in May, completed a second troop lift to the Far East, this time to Leyte, in July, and had begun her third such voyage when the Japanese agreed to surrender in mid-August.
After disembarking passengers at Guam and Okinawa in late August and early September 1945, Pondera loaded occupation troops and delivered them to Jinsen, Korea, in late September. After carrying more troops to Korea in October, she lifted Chinese Nationalist soldiers from Hong Kong to Tsingtao in November. Pondera then carried out two voyages returning veterans back to the United States as part of Operation "Magic Carpet," completing the first at San Diego in November and the second at San Francisco in March 1946. She arrived at Norfolk in April for disposal. In June USS Pondera was decommissioned, stricken from the Navy List, and returned to the Maritime Commission for layup in their reserve fleet. She was sold for scrapping in June 1974.
This page features our only view of USS Pondera (APA-191).
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