Monthly Archives: July 2002

GHOST SHIPS – THE UNKNOWN PRE-WAR US NAVY GLOBE-CIRCLING VOYAGE

From mid to late January 1942, as Singapore lay under siege, the U.S. Navy landed 20, 000 British troops from America’s three most important former ocean liners.  A globe-circling voyage – the longest of the war – but unknown for decades.  How it happened, and why it remains unknown today.   The July 2002 PROCEEDINGS (U.S. Naval Institute) history feature.

SS Washington
SS Washington, 1941, in San Francisco before conversion. Large American flags warned U-boats of U.S. neutrality
First Class dining room on SS Washington
First Class dining room SS Washington before hasty conversion into USS Mount Vernon (AP-22)

An August 1941 meeting between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill yielded more than the Atlantic Charter.  The leaders set plans to move British troops to the Middle East in three former U.S. ocean liners.  But after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the orders changed, and the mighty liners became “the ghost ships of Task Force 14.”

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