USS San Carlos (AVP-51) was a built for the United States Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

 during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. San Carlos, named after San Carlos Bay, Florida, was in commissioned from 1944 to 1947 and earned three battle stars for service in the Pacific during World War II. After eleven years in reserve, San Carlos was converted to oceanographic research ship USNS Josiah Willard Gibbs (T-AGOR-1)—named after American scientist Josiah Willard Gibbs

Josiah Willard Gibbs

Josiah Willard Gibbs was an American theoretical physicist, chemist, and mathematician. He devised much of the theoretical foundation for chemical thermodynamics as well as physical chemistry. As a mathematician, he invented vector analysis . Yale University awarded Gibbs the first American Ph.D...

—and placed in service as a non-commissioned ship of the Military Sea Transportation Service from 1958 to 1971. In December 1971, the ship was transferred to the Hellenic Navy

Hellenic Navy

The Hellenic Navy is the naval force of Greece, part of the Greek Armed Forces. The modern Greek navy has its roots in the naval forces of various Aegean Islands, which fought in the Greek War of Independence...

 as Hephaistas (A413), a motor torpedo boat

Motor Torpedo Boat

Motor Torpedo Boat was the name given to fast torpedo boats by the Royal Navy, and the Royal Canadian Navy.The capitalised term is generally used for the Royal Navy boats and abbreviated to "MTB"...

 tender. Hephaistas was struck from the rolls of the Hellenic Navy in April 1976.

World War II: Seaplane tender

San Carlos was laid down on 17 September 1942 by Lake Washington Shipyard

Lake Washington Shipyard

Lake Washington Shipyards was a shipyard in Houghton, Washington on the shore of Lake Washington. Today the shipyards are the site of the lakeside Carillon Point business park...

 at Houghton

Houghton, Washington

Houghton is one of the lakeside neighborhoods of the city of Kirkland, Washington. Consisting mostly of upscale, single-family homes, Houghton overlooks Lake Washington and is one of the wealthier districts of the Eastside suburbs of Seattle. The village was named for Willard Houghton, a local...

, Washington. She was launched on 20 December 1942, sponsored by Mrs. Henry D. Batterton, and commissioned

Ship commissioning

Ship commissioning is the act or ceremony of placing a ship in active service, and may be regarded as a particular application of the general concepts and practices of project commissioning. The term is most commonly applied to the placing of a warship in active duty with its country's military...

 on 21 March 1944 with Lieutenant Commander

Lieutenant Commander

Lieutenant Commander is a commissioned officer rank in many navies. The rank is superior to a lieutenant and subordinate to a commander...

 De Long Mills in command.

After shakedown

Shakedown (testing)

A shakedown is a period of testing or a trial journey undergone by a ship, aircraft or other craft and its crew before being declared operational. Statistically, a proportion of the components will fail after a relatively short period of use, and those that survive this period can be expected to...

, San Carlos departed Southern California

Southern California

Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...

 on 1 June 1944. Arriving at Green Island

Nissan Island

Nissan Island is the largest of the Green Islands of Papua New Guinea. It is located at , about 200 km east of Rabaul on New Britain and about 200 km northwest of Bougainville....

 on 25 June 1944, she engaged in air-sea rescue

Air-sea rescue

Air-sea rescue is the coordinated search and rescue of the survivors of emergency water landings as well as people who have survived the loss of their sea-going vessel. ASR can involve a wide variety of resources including seaplanes, helicopters, submarines, rescue boats and ships...

 operations in the northern Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of . The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal...

 from 26 June 1944 to 3 September 1944, and at Morotai Island, shortly after its capture from the Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese, from 18 September 1944 to 30 September 1944.

Arriving off Leyte

Leyte

Leyte is a province of the Philippines located in the Eastern Visayas region. Its capital is Tacloban City and occupies the northern three-quarters of the Leyte Island. Leyte is located west of Samar Island, north of Southern Leyte and south of Biliran...

 in the Philippine Islands on 18 October 1944 at the beginning of the Philippines campaign

Philippines campaign

Philippines campaign may refer to various military campaigns that have been fought in the Philippine Islands, including:-Spanish colonial period :...

, San Carlos fueled battleship

Battleship

A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...

 and cruiser

Cruiser

A cruiser is a type of warship. The term has been in use for several hundreds of years, and has had different meanings throughout this period...

 observation floatplane

Floatplane

A floatplane is a type of seaplane, with slender pontoons mounted under the fuselage; only the floats of a floatplane normally come into contact with water, with the fuselage remaining above water...

s. She shot down one Japanese plane on 21 October 1944. Arriving at San Pedro Bay

San Pedro Bay (Philippines)

San Pedro Bay is a bay in the Philippines, at the northwest end of Leyte Gulf, about 15 km east-west and 20 km north-south. The bay is bounded on the north and east by Samar and on the east by Leyte Island. It is connected by San Juanico Strait to Carigara Bay of the Samar Sea. The...

, Leyte, on 24 October 1944, she tended seaplane

Seaplane

A seaplane is a fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing on water. Seaplanes that can also take off and land on airfields are a subclass called amphibian aircraft...

s there and downed another Japanese plane on 27 October 1944.

Departing on 4 November 1944, she made a cargo

Cargo

Cargo is goods or produce transported, generally for commercial gain, by ship, aircraft, train, van or truck. In modern times, containers are used in most intermodal long-haul cargo transport.-Marine:...

 trip to Humboldt Bay, New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

, returning to San Pedro Bay on 18 November 1944. Arriving at San Juanico Strait

San Juanico Strait

San Juanico Strait is a narrow strait in the Philippines. It separates the islands of Samar and Leyte. At its narrowest point, the strait is only wide, said to be the narrowest strait in the world. It is crossed by the San Juanico Bridge....

 on 22 November 1944, she shot down another Japanese plane on 26 November 1944 and tended seaplanes there until 22 January 1945. After duty at Mindoro Island in February 1945, she tended seaplanes near Cavite

Cavite

Cavite is a province of the Philippines located on the southern shores of Manila Bay in the CALABARZON region in Luzon, just 30 kilometers south of Manila. Cavite is surrounded by Laguna to the east, Metro Manila to the northeast, and Batangas to the south...

, on Luzon

Luzon

Luzon is the largest island in the Philippines. It is located in the northernmost region of the archipelago, and is also the name for one of the three primary island groups in the country centered on the Island of Luzon...

, from March 1945 until 11 August 1945.

San Carlos arrived at Bremerton

Bremerton, Washington

Bremerton is a city in Kitsap County, Washington, United States. The population was 38,790 at the 2011 State Estimate, making it the largest city on the Olympic Peninsula. Bremerton is home to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the Bremerton Annex of Naval Base Kitsap...

, Washington, on 3 September 1945. After overhaul there, she operated out of Coco Solo

Coco Solo

Coco Solo was a United States Navy submarine base established in 1918 on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Panama Canal Zone, near Colón, Panama....

, Panama Canal Zone

Panama Canal Zone

The Panama Canal Zone was a unorganized U.S. territory located within the Republic of Panama, consisting of the Panama Canal and an area generally extending 5 miles on each side of the centerline, but excluding Panama City and Colón, which otherwise would have been partly within the limits of...

, from December 1945 through May 1946, and out of San Juan

San Juan, Puerto Rico

San Juan , officially Municipio de la Ciudad Capital San Juan Bautista , is the capital and most populous municipality in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 395,326 making it the 46th-largest city under the jurisdiction of...

, Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

, from July 1946 to March 1947. Decommissioned

Ship decommissioning

To decommission a ship is to terminate her career in service in the armed forces of her nation. A somber occasion, it has little of the elaborate ceremony of ship commissioning, but carries significant tradition....

 on 30 June 1947 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard at Philadelphia

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

, San Carlos was laid up in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. San Carlos received three battle stars for her World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 service.

Oceanographic research ship

After eleven years of inactivity, San Carlos was taken out of reserve on 11 July 1958 and assigned to the U.S. Navy's Military Sea Transportation Service for conversion to an oceanographic research ship by Mobile Ship Repair Company of Mobile, Alabama

Mobile, Alabama

Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...

. Alterations to her original design included the installation of six laboratories, a machine shop, a darkroom, a superstructure deck locker for experimental stowage or work, and a deep-sea winch capable of handling up to 40000 feet (12,192 m) of wire rope and 20 long tons (20.3 t) of equipment. In her modified form, she required a crew of 48 and could accommodate a scientific staff of 24.

On 15 December 1958, the ship was renamed USNS Josiah Willard Gibbs, in honor of American scientist Josiah Willard Gibbs

Josiah Willard Gibbs

Josiah Willard Gibbs was an American theoretical physicist, chemist, and mathematician. He devised much of the theoretical foundation for chemical thermodynamics as well as physical chemistry. As a mathematician, he invented vector analysis . Yale University awarded Gibbs the first American Ph.D...

 and re-designated as T-AGOR-1, an oceanographic research ship. On 18 December 1958, she was placed in non-commissioned service as a United States Naval Ship

United States Naval Ship

United States Naval Ship or USNS is the prefix designation given to non-commissioned ships that are property of the United States Navy.-Overview:...

 under control of the Military Sea Transportation Service.

Josiah Willard Gibbs became the principal research vessel of the Hudson Laboratories of Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, under contract to the Office of Naval Research

Office of Naval Research

The Office of Naval Research , headquartered in Arlington, Virginia , is the office within the United States Department of the Navy that coordinates, executes, and promotes the science and technology programs of the U.S...

. For thirteen years she provided transportation, accommodations, and working spaces for American scientists and technicians investigating physical, chemical, and biological properties of the ocean. She was dedicated primarily to research in the physics of the ocean, particularly the propagation of sound

Sound

Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...

, as part of efforts by the Office of Naval Research to improve the U.S. Navy's submarine

Submarine

A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...

 and anti-submarine warfare capabilities. Her relatively large size allowed her to handle heavier weights at greater depths and provide greater stability for delicate scientific measurements than any other oceanographic research vessel then in use. Her large deep-sea winch and auxiliary propeller

Propeller

A propeller is a type of fan that transmits power by converting rotational motion into thrust. A pressure difference is produced between the forward and rear surfaces of the airfoil-shaped blade, and a fluid is accelerated behind the blade. Propeller dynamics can be modeled by both Bernoulli's...

 gave her the capability to investigate even the deep ocean trenches scattered throughout the world.

Josiah Willard Gibbs was taken out of service on 7 December 1971 and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register

Naval Vessel Register

The Naval Vessel Register is the official inventory of ships and service craft in custody of or titled by the United States Navy. It contains information on ships and service craft that make up the official inventory of the Navy from the time a vessel is authorized through its life cycle and...

 the same day.

Hellenic Navy career

Josiah Willard Gibbs was transferred to the Greek Navy on 15 December 1971. She then became the Greek

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 motor torpedo boat tender

Motor torpedo boat tender

Motor torpedo boat tender is a type of ship used by the U.S. Navy during World War II. The Motor torpedo boat tender's task was to act as a tender in remote areas for patrol boats and to provide the necessary fuel and provisions for the torpedo boats she was responsible for...

Hephaistas (A413). She was stricken by the Greek Navy in April 1976.