USS LST-939 was a 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...

  in commission from 1944 to 1948.

LST-939 was laid down on 21 July 1944 at Bethlehem-Hingham Shipyard, Inc., Hingham, MA. and commissioned on 14 September 1944. During World War II LST-939 was assigned to the Asiatic-Pacific Theater and participated in the Asiatic-Pacific campaign, and the assault and occupation of Okinawa, Gunto from April through June of 1945.

Service history

During World War II, LST-939 was assigned to the Pacific Theater of Operations. LST-939 left New York Harbor

New York Harbor

New York Harbor refers to the waterways of the estuary near the mouth of the Hudson River that empty into New York Bay. It is one of the largest natural harbors in the world. Although the U.S. Board of Geographic Names does not use the term, New York Harbor has important historical, governmental,...

 in the fall of 1944 arriving in Havana

Havana

Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

, Cuba, and then transited the Panama Canal

Panama Canal

The Panama Canal is a ship canal in Panama that joins the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. Built from 1904 to 1914, the canal has seen annual traffic rise from about 1,000 ships early on to 14,702 vessels measuring a total of 309.6...

, and went on to Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor, known to Hawaiians as Puuloa, is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet...

, Hawaii. She was refueled in Pearl Harbor and went to Guadalcanal

Guadalcanal

Guadalcanal is a tropical island in the South-Western Pacific. The largest island in the Solomons, it was discovered by the Spanish expedition of Alvaro de Mendaña in 1568...

 where it was attacked by a Japanese suicide swimmer caring several packages of explosives and two grenades.. The attack was successfully repelled. LST-939 departed and next beached at Dulag Leyte Gulf

Leyte Gulf

Leyte Gulf is a body of water immediately east of the island of Leyte in the Philippines, adjoining the Philippine Sea of the Pacific Ocean, at . The Gulf is bounded on the north by the island of Samar, which is separated from Leyte on the west by the narrow San Juanico Strait, and on the south by...

 in the Philippines on 4 February 1945 and then transited on to Guam.

LST-939 participated in the amphibious assault of the beach at Gunto in Okinawa, where it was attacked by a kamikaze

Kamikaze

The were suicide attacks by military aviators from the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, designed to destroy as many warships as possible....

. The kamikaze was successfully destroyed in mid-air by anti-aircraft fire (AA), but a piece of the aircraft struck the forward deck. On landing in the Okinawa amphibious assault one crew member standing above the front door was killed by an incoming exploding coastal defense artillery shell and the executive officer Lieutenant (j.g.) George Keat was temporarily blinded. The ship was later damaged the same day in a collision with in the same amphibious assault. LST-939 is known to have transited through Saipan

Saipan

Saipan is the largest island of the United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands , a chain of 15 tropical islands belonging to the Marianas archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean with a total area of . The 2000 census population was 62,392...

.

Following the war, LST-939 performed occupation operations in the waters surrounding the Home Islands of Japan

Japanese Archipelago

The , which forms the country of Japan, extends roughly from northeast to southwest along the northeastern coast of the Eurasia mainland, washing upon the northwestern shores of the Pacific Ocean...

. She entered Japanese waters in the Port of Tokyo

Port of Tokyo

Port of Tokyo is one of the largest Japanese seaports and one of the largest seaports in the Pacific Ocean basin having an annual traffic capacity of around 100 million tonnes of cargo and 4,500,000 TEU's....

 shortly after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date.For six months...

. LST-939 continued to perform occupation duty in the Far East and saw service in China until mid-March 1946

Decommissioning and disposal

LST-939 was decommissioned on 22 June 1946, and struck from the Naval Register on 31 July 1946. The vessel was sold for scrapping on 12 June 1948, to Walter W. Johnson Co., Seattle, WA.