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The USS West Point, formerly The SS America carried dad overseas
The USS West Point at sea photographed by a New Zealand Hudson bomber
Life aboard the USS West Point from the 70th Infantry Association Home Page
The hospital ship "Thistle" brought him home
Here is a brief history of the SS America / USS West Point The "America" as she was first named, was designed by Messrs, Gibbs & Cox of New York and built by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Docking Company. Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt did the christening honors on the last day of August in that otherwise politically tense summer of 1939. A day later, Hitler had ordered his forces to invade Poland. World War II had started, Bright and sparkling in the following summer, the 33,500-Ton America, the flagship of the entire US Merchant Marine, had to be detoured. Instead of risky North Atlantic crossings for which she was intended, she was sent, although temporarily, to the safer waters of the Caribbean and on trans-Panama Canal cruises to California. Less than a year later, in the summer of 1941, she was called to duty, converted to a troop carrier and repainted in drab military grays as the specially disguised USS West Point. The "America" was the largest merchant ship built at this time-"The Queen of the luxury liners"-in just 11 days she was stripped of her finery and converted into the U.S. Navy's largest troop carrier and renamed the U.S.S. "West Point". Over the next four and a half years she was to complete 149 missions, covering 436,126 nautical miles carrying a total of 450,000 troops to all the main war zones. All her wartime missions were made alone without the protection of convoying war ships. Her safety depended on her speed alone, she was able to outrun anything the enemy sent against her-even submarines were no match. The "West Point" traveled alone through enemy waters maintaining almost peacetime schedules across the Atlantic, without the loss of a single passenger. She began her war time career with a near disaster in Singapore harbor when Japanese planes scattered shrapnel on her weathered decks and dropped bombs within 50 yards of her gigantic hull. For the next four years her history is dotted with close escapes-and although battered and beaten she came through the wartime period unscathed. She delivered over half a million troops and other personnel to ports as diverse as. Auckland, Rio De Janeiro and Liverpool. In continuous service throughout the war, the "West Point" made as many as 24 crossings of the Atlantic in a single year, before being decommissioned in 1946, She was released back to her original owners, renamed the S. S. "America" and returned to her Trans-Atlantic duties. The U.S.S.West Point carried as many as 8500 troops at one time. Bob went to France on this ship, leaving Boston Dec. 7, 1944 and arriving in Marseilles France Dec. 16, 1944. There were 7,764 passengers on this voyage of 4,034 miles. Because of the vast number of troops they were only fed twice each day.For more detailed information click on the USS West Point picture.
Information is from the 70th Infantry Division Association Home Page
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