During the second week of January 1942, Commander William N. Thornton, captain of the USS Patoka (AO-9), received a confidential dispatch: Ships bearing rubber and other vital military supplies had left French Indochina bound for German-occupied European ports. Earlier in his naval career, Thornton had served in three battleships and two destroyers, but the Patoka, anchored at Bahai, Brazil, was an oiler, not a warship. That fact, however, didn’t prevent the commander from making a bold request.
With two centerline-mounted 5-inch/51-caliber guns, one forward and one aft; four 3-inch/50 antiaircraft guns; and four 50-caliber machine guns, the Patoka could fend for herself if need be, Thornton apparently reasoned. Consequently, he sought permission to patrol off the coast of Bahia. His request evidently impressed Rear Admiral Jonas H. Ingram, commander of the Atlantic Fleet’s widely dispersed Task Force 3, who had informed Admiral Ernest J. King, the fleet’s commander, on 1 November 1941 that “the spirit of the Force is the Old Spirit of ’76—ready for any call at any time.” Ingram granted Thornton’s appeal on the afternoon of 9 January 1942. At 0708 the next day the Patoka stood out, ready to steam in harm’s way.
The oiler bravely setting out that January morning had been laid down on 17 December 1918 at Newport News, Virginia, by the Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company, for the United States Shipping Board (USSB). Launched on 26 July 1919, the Patoka, the first of a class of eight ships, was delivered to the Navy on 3 September at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia. She was commissioned there on 13 October, with Commander Ernest F. Robinson, U.S. Naval Reserve Force, in command. Less than a month later, the Patoka sailed for Port Arthur, Texas, to load her first cargo. Initially assigned to the Naval Overseas Transportation Service, she steamed to far-flung destinations, such as Scotland and the Azores, and to ports in the Mediterranean and Adriatic.
As the Navy considered how best to use the rigid airship Shenandoah (ZR-1), the Bureau of Construction and Repair envisioned requirements for a tender to enable the dirigible to operate with the U.S. Fleet. Picked for the conversion, the Patoka underwent a transformation at the Norfolk Navy Yard in mid-1924. She received a mast, aft, that would allow an airship to be moored 125 feet above the waterline, accommodations for not only an airship’s complement but a support crew, and facilities to provide helium and gasoline, as well as supplies for the operation of a dirigible.
Reporting to commander, Scouting Fleet, on 1 August 1924, the Patoka moored the Shenandoah off Newport, Rhode Island, on 8 August. A little over two months later, along with the light cruisers Milwaukee (CL-5) and Detroit (CL-8), she provided weather information for the transatlantic flight of the new Los Angeles (ZR-3). But then the Shenandoah was lost in September 1925, the Los Angeles was decommissioned in June 1932, and the Akron (ZRS-4) crashed in April 1933 (among the fatalities was Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, the Navy’s driving force for lighter-than-air aviation). The series of events essentially left the Patoka without a mission, and she was decommissioned at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, Washington, on 31 August 1933.
The ship received a reprieve, however, in the wake of the September 1939 German invasion of Poland. The newly established Neutrality Patrol needed “a vessel to provide logistic support,” Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harold R. Stark wrote, “and to tend aircraft, as a stop gap.” Unlike in 1924, a change of classification accompanied her new role. On 11 October 1939 the Patoka was reclassified as an aircraft tender (heavier than air), AV-6, and, on 11 November, was recommissioned at Bremerton, Commander Clifton A. F. Sprague in command.
Equipped with only the minimum basic facilities (a more complete conversion was envisioned), the Patoka sailed for the East Coast. But when she arrived in Hampton Roads, Atlantic Squadron commander Rear Admiral Hayne Ellis deemed her unsuitable for use as a seaplane tender and recommended that she could best be employed “in her original capacity as an oiler.” Meanwhile, estimates that approximately $1 million would be required for a complete conversion of what was essentially an old and slow ship prompted Admiral Stark to “not believe that the expenditure of this amount of money on [the] Patoka is justified.” Accordingly, on 19 June 1940, the Patoka was reclassified AO-9. As the year ended and 1941 began, she underwent alterations at Norfolk that included the removal of the mooring mast.
Assigned to the Atlantic Fleet’s train in March 1941, the Patoka carried fuel oil and general cargo to fleet units in the Atlantic, Gulf, and Caribbean area through the summer. She made her first voyage to Recife, Brazil, arriving on 23 October 1941, and then carried out a second, making port on 18 November. And that’s where the oiler was when she received word of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After setting out in search of enemy cargo ships on 9 January 1942, the Patoka ended up only encountering the American-flagged tanker Illinois, en route from Santos, Brazil, to Trinidad, on the 11th. The oiler nevertheless proved her versatility in Brazilian waters.
Rear (later Vice) Admiral Ingram used the Patoka as a “triple threat, fuel, supply, stores and repair ship,” considering the last her prime role. Her skilled crew’s myriad work orders included installing depth-charge tracks, repairing holes, and providing services to ships that ranged from light cruisers to minesweepers, Brazilian navy units, and American merchantmen. Necessity prompted Ingram to make her his flagship on 26 August 1942, although he dubbed his quarters “a dog house on the Patoka,” and with the exception of using the Memphis (CL-13) as flagship (22 February–24 March 1943), the admiral flew his flag from the Patoka until 25 April 1943.
Having done her part in winning the Battle of the South Atlantic, the Patoka was overhauled at Norfolk, receiving a modern antiaircraft battery that included two 5-inch/38-caliber dual-purpose guns and four 40-millimeter Bofors twin mounts, and then sailed for Pearl Harbor. Reclassified (for the fourth time) AG-125 effective 15 August 1945, the ship then continued on to the Far East, where she tended minesweepers during the occupation of Japan. Decommissioned on 1 July 1946, she was returned to the War Shipping Administration (the lineal successor of the USSB) on 16 July 1946 and placed in the Reserve Fleet at Olympia, Washington. Stricken from the Navy Register on 31 July 1946, the well-traveled vessel that had serviced a variety of ships much younger than herself—and had perhaps done what few oilers could boast of in that she had flown an admiral’s flag—was sold to Dulien Steel Products Incorporated on 15 March 1948, to be scrapped.
As an epitaph for this truly unique ship, one could easily adapt the words contained in the 4th Fleet commander’s dispatch of 22 March 1945 as the oiler that had truly been “ready for any call at any time” departed the South Atlantic: “To the PATOKA for her long and faithful service, ‘Well Done.’”