USS Elmore
The APA Gallery
The US Navy commissioned nearly 250 attack transports (APA's) during WWII. Some of those ships were part of the D-Day invasion of Normandy in France. Most APA's, however, were assigned to the Pacific theater where they were ideally suited to the island hopping campaign that occurred in the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. As VE (Victory in Europe) Day approached, those transports were ordered to the Pacific Ocean towards the end of the war with Japan. In both campaigns, amphibious warfare was perfected by the US Navy, the Marine Corp and the Army. The attack transports were an essential component of this new type of warfare. They were the amphibians that brought the war to the very shores of the enemy.
Below are links to expandable summary cards of every attack transport. (Think of these as the equivalent of baseball cards – a picture with some stats.) The number of battle stars that each ship earned is summarized by a number within parenthesis next to a star – (5*). The class of each ship is also indicated. If you wish to learn more about any particular ship, a link is available to the website navsource.org for that vessel within each of the summary links below. NavSource is an incredible resource designed to document the photographic history of the U.S. Navy. It is one of the absolute best resources on the internet.
Source: NavSource.org
