U.S. Navy

Auxiliary Ships

The warships get the glory. The auxiliaries make it possible. Repair ships, floating dry docks, hospital ships, salvage vessels, survey ships, submarine rescue vessels, net layers, distilling ships, transports, prepositioning ships, and dozens of other specialized types - over 1,500 auxiliary vessels have supported the U.S. Navy from WWII to the present. They fix, float, heal, chart, track, rescue, supply, and sustain. Behind every fleet that fought, an auxiliary fleet kept it fighting.

Repair & Battle Damage Keeping the Fleet in the Fight

Repair Ships (AR)

Floating Machine Shops

First Commissioned

Industrial Repair

Floating industrial plants that could fabricate replacement parts from raw stock, weld shattered hulls, rebuild engines, and rewire electrical systems - all at a forward anchorage thousands of miles from the nearest shipyard. Vulcan-class and Hector-class repair ships turned atolls like Ulithi and Manus into full-service fleet repair bases. A cruiser could come alongside with torpedo damage and sail away with new hull plating. The repair ships made the Pacific advance possible by eliminating the need to send damaged ships home. Read more

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Battle Damage Repair Ships (ARB)

Battle Damage Repair Ships (ARB)

Emergency Combat Repair

Converted from LST hulls and designed to go where the fighting was - literally beaching alongside damaged ships in forward areas too dangerous for full-sized repair ships. ARBs carried welding equipment, hull repair materials, and damage control teams that could patch a ship enough to get it back to a tender or shipyard. They operated at Okinawa and the Philippines, repairing kamikaze damage on ships that couldn't be moved. Emergency rooms for wounded warships, built on landing craft that could drive onto any beach. Read more

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Landing Craft Repair Ships (ARL)

Landing Craft Repair Ships (ARL)

Fix the Boats That Hit the Beach

Also converted from LST hulls, ARLs specialized in repairing the amphibious fleet - the landing craft, LCIs, LCTs, and LCMs that took damage running onto hostile beaches. They carried spare propellers, ramps, hull plates, and engines specific to amphibious craft. At every major Pacific and European landing, ARLs anchored offshore and repaired landing craft fast enough to send them back for the next wave. Thirty-nine ships dedicated to keeping the amphibious force operational under fire. Read more

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Floating Dry Docks Shipyards That Sailed to the War

Small Floating Dry Docks (AFD/AFDL)

AFD-1 - AFDL-47

Small Floating Dry Docks (AFD/AFDL)

Auxiliary Floating Docks - Light

Small sectional floating dry docks that could lift destroyer escorts, submarines, minesweepers, and patrol craft out of the water for underwater hull repair, propeller replacement, and bottom painting at forward bases. Towed to anchorages across the Pacific, they eliminated the need to send small combatants back to Pearl Harbor or the West Coast for routine drydocking. A submarine returning from a war patrol could get its hull scraped and propellers inspected without leaving the forward area. Read more

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Medium Floating Dry Docks (AFDM)

AFDM-1 - AFDM-14

Medium Floating Dry Docks (AFDM)

Auxiliary Floating Docks - Medium

Medium floating dry docks capable of lifting destroyers, light cruisers, and large auxiliaries. Sectional steel construction meant they could be partially disassembled, towed across oceans, and reassembled at forward bases. At Ulithi, Manus, and Espiritu Santo, AFDMs drydocked damaged destroyers alongside repair ships - creating complete shipyard capability thousands of miles from the continental United States. Several remain in active Navy service today, stationed at bases worldwide. Read more

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Large Floating Dry Docks (AFDB)

AFDB-1 - AFDB-9

Large Floating Dry Docks (AFDB)

Auxiliary Floating Docks - Big

The largest floating structures the Navy ever built. AFDB large floating dry docks could lift battleships and aircraft carriers out of the water - 90,000-ton capacity in a dock that was itself towed across the Pacific in sections. AFDB-1 at Manus could drydock anything in the fleet. The concept was audacious: build a drydock big enough for a battleship, tow it 4,000 miles through submarine-infested waters, anchor it at a coral atoll, and use it to repair the ships that got hit. The Navy did it repeatedly. Read more

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Auxiliary Repair Docks (ARD/ARDM)

Auxiliary Repair Docks (ARD/ARDM)

Repair Docks with Machine Shops

REPAIR EQUIPPED

Floating dry docks with their own built-in machine shops, welding stations, and repair facilities. Where standard floating docks just lifted ships out of the water, ARDs could actually fix them while they sat in the dock. Submarines, destroyer escorts, and minesweepers could be lifted, have their hulls repaired, propellers replaced, and underwater fittings overhauled - all without a tender alongside. Self-contained drydock and repair shop in one hull. Several ARDMs still operate at Navy bases today. Read more

Heavy Lift & Crane Ships Moving the Unmovable

Auxiliary Crane Ships (T-ACS)

T-ACS-1 - T-ACS-6

Auxiliary Crane Ships (T-ACS)

Container Discharge at Sea

Converted container ships fitted with twin pedestal cranes capable of discharging cargo containers at ports with no crane infrastructure. In a contested logistics scenario - a beach, a damaged port, a pier in a country without container handling equipment - T-ACS ships could unload an entire cargo ship using their own cranes. Part of the Maritime Prepositioning Force and Ready Reserve Fleet, these ships represent the Navy's ability to project logistics ashore anywhere in the world, even where the port infrastructure doesn't exist yet. Read more

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Hospital Ships Mercy at Sea

Hospital Ships (AH / T-AH)

Hospital Ships (AH / T-AH)

The White Ships

Painted white with red crosses, brightly illuminated at night, and unarmed under the Geneva Convention, hospital ships operated alongside the fleet at every major battle of WWII. USS Comfort, USS Solace, USS Relief, and their sisters received casualties directly from the beaches by boat and helicopter. At Okinawa, kamikaze pilots attacked hospital ships despite their protected status, USS Comfort was hit on April 28, 1945, killing 28 and wounding 48. The white ships went everywhere the fleet went and treated everyone who was brought aboard. Read more

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Intelligence & Surveillance The Ships That Watched and Listened

Radar Picket Ships (AGR)

Radar Picket Ships (AGR)

Early Warning Sentinels

Long-Range Radar

Converted Liberty ships and other hulls fitted with long-range radar and stationed at fixed ocean picket stations to provide early warning of Soviet bomber attacks approaching North America. Part of the DEW Line-at-sea concept, AGRs operated at lonely stations in the North Atlantic and Pacific, maintaining radar watch 24 hours a day. Miserable duty - weeks on station in heavy seas, doing nothing but watching a radar screen. Replaced by shore-based over-the-horizon radar and AWACS aircraft in the 1960s. The ships the Cold War forgot. Read more

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Surveying Ships (AGS)

Charting the Ocean Floor

Every chart the fleet uses to navigate was surveyed by a ship like these. Surveying ships map the ocean floor, measure water depths, identify underwater hazards, and produce the hydrographic data that becomes naval navigation charts. During the Cold War, T-AGS ships mapped the ocean floor for submarine operations - identifying thermocline layers, undersea ridges, and deep channels that SSBNs could use to hide. Today, the Pathfinder-class T-AGS ships (T-AGS-60 to T-AGS-67) continue the mission. Submarines can't hide in water that hasn't been surveyed. These ships survey it. Read more

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T-AGOS-1 - T-AGOS-23

Ocean Surveillance Ships (T-AGOS)

SURTASS Submarine Trackers

Towed Array Sonar

DETECTION RANGE

The most secretive auxiliary ships in the fleet. Stalwart-class and Victorious-class T-AGOS ships tow the Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) - miles-long passive sonar arrays that detect submarine acoustic signatures at ranges the Navy doesn't discuss publicly. They feed data directly to shore-based processing centers as part of the Integrated Undersea Surveillance System. Impeccable-class SWATH-hull ships (T-AGOS-23) represent the latest evolution. Civilian-crewed by MSC, these ships have been quietly tracking submarines for four decades. The ocean surveillance mission that began with SOSUS hydrophone arrays now rides aboard these ships. Read more

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Rescue & Salvage Saving Ships and Submariners

Rescue and Salvage Ships (ARS)

The Last Call Before a Ship Is Lost

First Commissioned

Firefighting + Tow

When a ship is burning, sinking, grounded, or dead in the water - salvage ships respond. Diver-class (ARS-5) ships of WWII raised sunken vessels at Pearl Harbor and pulled ships off reefs across the Pacific. Bolster-class (ARS-38) ships served through Korea and Vietnam. Today's Safeguard-class (ARS-50) carries deep-sea diving teams, heavy towing gear, firefighting equipment, and salvage pumps. They've pulled destroyers off sandbars, towed disabled carriers, fought fires on burning ammunition ships, and recovered classified equipment from the ocean floor. Four ships - always forward deployed, always the last resort. Read more

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Submarine Rescue Vessels (ASR)

Saving Submariners

First Commissioned

Deep Sub Rescue

Purpose-built to rescue the crews of sunken submarines. The McCann Rescue Chamber - first used in 1939 to save 33 men from USS Squalus at 240 feet - was the pioneering system. Chanticleer-class and Pigeon-class ASRs carried the Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle (DSRV), capable of mating with a disabled submarine's escape hatch at depth and extracting crew. When USS Thresher was lost in 1963 and USS Scorpion in 1968, the submarine rescue force proved that some depths are beyond rescue - but the mission endures. Today, the Submarine Rescue Diving and Recompression System (SRDRS) is flyable by C-5 aircraft to wherever it's needed. Read more

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Fleet Support & Services The Unglamorous Essentials

Distilling Ships (AW)

Fresh Water for the Fleet

Ships whose sole mission was producing fresh water - 120,000 gallons per day from seawater distillation plants. At forward bases across the Pacific, distilling ships provided the drinking water, boiler feed water, and washdown water that sustained entire anchorages full of warships. Before reverse osmosis made every modern warship self-sufficient, fresh water was a critical logistics commodity. Four ships converting seawater to survival. The most boring and most essential auxiliary in the fleet. Read more

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Net Laying Ships (AN)

Harbor Defense Nets

First Commissioned

Before sonar and ASW patrols, the primary defense against submarine and torpedo attack in harbors was a steel anti-torpedo net stretched across the entrance. Net laying ships installed, maintained, and recovered these nets. On December 7, 1941, the anti-torpedo nets at Pearl Harbor had been opened for routine traffic - a gap the Japanese midget submarines attempted to exploit. After Pearl Harbor, every anchorage in the Pacific got torpedo nets, and net layers were among the first auxiliaries to arrive at newly captured bases. One hundred three ships dedicated to a defensive technology as old as harbor chains. Read more

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Cable Ships (ARC)

全ての時代

監視ケーブル

ケーブル経路

ケーブル敷設船は、海底に広がる海底通信ケーブルや監視アレイを敷設・保守する船舶です。冷戦時代には、大西洋と太平洋でソ連潜水艦を追跡するSOSUS水中聴音器網を設置・保守しました。今日、USNSゼウス（T-ARC-7）は、海軍が公には認めていない諜報や通信のトラフィックを伝送する軍用光ファイバーケーブルを保守しています。海底のケーブルは、ほとんどの衛星よりも多くの機密軍事データを伝送しています。これらの船がワイヤーを手入れしているのです。 Read more

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水陸両用部隊

輸送艦 (AP/APA/AKA)

兵員と貨物は海岸へ

+ 車両 + 貨物

攻撃輸送艦（APA）は突撃部隊とその上陸用舟艇を輸送した。攻撃貨物艦（AKA）は、それらの部隊が陸上で必要とする車両、弾薬、補給品を輸送した。両者はガダルカナルから沖縄までのあらゆる水陸両用攻撃の基幹を成した。ベイフィールド級APAとアンドロメダ級AKAは、完全に装備された海兵隊連隊を、戦闘に必要なものすべてとともに上陸させることができた。最盛期には、海軍は500隻以上の輸送艦と貨物艦を運用していた。これらはアメリカの工業力と、その力が適用された上陸地点との間の架け橋となった。 Read more

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事前集積と海上輸送デプロイ準備完了 - 場所を選びません

海上事前集積船

海兵旅団、積載し待機中

海兵遠征旅団

海兵遠征旅団が戦闘に必要な戦車、大砲、弾薬、燃料、水、食料、医療品、車両などのあらゆるものを積んだ14隻の船が、ディエゴガルシア、グアム、地中海に停泊していた。危機が発生すると、海兵隊員は最寄りの飛行場に空路で移動し、装備は船で輸送されて彼らと合流する。MPS船は展開時間を数か月から数日に短縮する。湾岸戦争中、ディエゴガルシアからのMPS船は、イラクのクウェート侵攻から数週間以内にサウジアラビアに海兵隊の装備を揚陸させた。これはアメリカのパワープロジェクションの究極の表現である。旅団全体分の装備が、海上を浮遊し、展開準備が整っているのだ。 Read more

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ボブ・ホープ級・ワトソン級

大型中速RO-RO船

車両甲板面積

アメリカ軍の最大のシーリフト船。ボブ・ホープ級とワトソン級LMSRは、戦車、ブラッドレー戦闘車、ストライカー装甲車など、陸軍の重旅団戦闘チームを構成するすべてを、ランプウェイとサイドポートから搭載できる。1隻あたり約40万平方フィートの車両甲板スペースを持つ。これらの船は陸軍を展開させる。イラクの自由作戦中、LMSRは地上戦に投入された装備の90%以上を運んだ。海軍と陸軍は常に多くのことで意見が一致するわけではないが、この点については一致している。シーリフトがなければ、陸軍は展開できない。 Read more

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即応予備役

入港待機船

デイアクティベーション

海上輸送能力

米国海事局

米海事局によって削減された運航状況で維持されている、モスボール状態の貨物船、タンカー、車両運搬船は、急増する海上輸送の必要性に対応するため、5日から20日以内に活動準備が整います。即応予備船隊（RRF）は、現役のMSC船隊が提供できる以上の海上輸送を必要とする紛争に対する国家の保険です。砂漠の盾/嵐作戦中、RRFの船は起動され、物資を輸送しました。しかし問題は、船隊が老朽化しており、平均船齢が45年を超えていることです。即応演習では、出航できない船が露呈しました。RRFはアメリカの海上輸送予備力であり、いざという時に機能するかどうかが重要です。 Read more

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専門的・実験的艦隊の何でも屋

調査船 (AGOR/T-AGOR)

海軍、NOAA（アメリカ海洋大気庁）、および海軍と契約した学術機関が運用する海洋調査船。これらの船は、海洋音響、深海地質、海洋生物、そして海軍の作戦、特に潜水艦戦を直接支援する水中現象を研究しています。水中での音の伝わり方を理解することが、対潜水艦戦の基盤となります。潜水艦またはその追跡者が持つあらゆる戦術的優位性は、これらの船が収集した海洋データから生まれます。純粋な科学と海軍情報の間には、これらの船において境界線など存在しません。 Read more

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ミサイル追跡艦 (T-AGM)

空中の物体を追跡する

テレメトリー

ミサイル追尾

大陸間弾道ミサイル

再入国情報

ICBMやSLBMの飛行試験を追跡するため、ミサイル実験海域の測距帯下流に船舶が配備された。精密レーダー、テレメトリー受信機、光学追跡システムを搭載したT-AGMは、地上局からは観測できない弾道ミサイル実験の性能データを記録した。USNS Observation Islandは何十年にもわたってトライデントミサイルの試験を追跡した。コブラキングレーダーを搭載したUSNSハワード・O・ローレンツェン（T-AGM-25）は、ミサイル追跡と宇宙監視任務を継続している。アメリカの核抑止力がその有効性を証明するのを監視したこれらの艦船は、その役割を果たしたのである。 Read more

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1,500以上

補助動詞の構築

30歳以上

船種

110以上

勤続年数

サポート

艦隊