USS Sara Thompson, a 5836-ton (displacement) oiler, was built in 1888 at Newcastle, England, as the 2691 gross ton German civilian oil tanker Gut Heil. Sold to American owners in 1912, she retained her original name and operated until lost in an accident on the Mississippi River in 1914. The great need for ships during World War I caused her to be raised in 1917 and refurbished for further use. In August 1918, while repairs were underway at New Orleans, Louisiana, Gut Heil was purchased by the Navy. She was placed in commission in mid-September 1918 as USS Sara Thompson (ID # 3148) and spent the rest of the war, and the first months following the November 1918 Armistice, carrying oil from the Gulf Coast to ports on the Atlantic Coast and to Bermuda and Ponta Delgada, Azores.
Sara Thompson remained at Ponta Delgada as a station tanker until early September 1919, when she began a two-month voyage to the Philippine Islands by way of the Suez Canal. In July 1920, when the Navy formally implemented its hull number system, she was designated AO-8. Though assigned as a fuel storage vessel at the Cavite Navy Yard, during her first years of Asiatic Fleet service Sara Thompson also was used to carry oil to Guam and to China, and operated with other U.S. Navy ships in Far Eastern waters. However, after early December 1921 her worn-out machinery restricted her to reduced commission status at Cavite. The old ship had more than another decade of employment there, acting as a storage ship for fuel oil and, after 1930, as receiving ship. USS Sara Thompson was decommissioned in July 1933 and stricken from the list of Navy vessels in December. She was sold in August 1934.
This page features all the views we have concerning USS Sara Thompson (ID # 3148, later AO-8) and the civilian tanker Gut Heil.
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 23 November 2004