An ammunition ship is an

auxiliary ship An auxiliary ship is a naval ship designed to support combatant ships and other naval operations. Auxiliary ships are not primary combatant vessels, though they may have some limited combat capacity, usually for purposes of self-defense. Auxili ...

specially configured to carry

ammunition Ammunition, also known as ammo, is the material fired, scattered, dropped, or detonated from any weapon or weapon system. The term includes both expendable weapons (e.g., bombs, missiles, grenades, land mines), and the component parts of oth ...

, usually for naval ships and aircraft. An ammunition ship's cargo handling systems, designed with extreme safety in mind, include ammunition hoists with airlocks between decks, and mechanisms for flooding entire compartments with sea water in case of emergencies. Ammunition ships most often deliver their cargo to other ships using

underway replenishment Underway replenishment (UNREP) (United States Navy, U.S. Navy) or replenishment at sea (RAS) (North Atlantic Treaty Organization/Commonwealth of Nations) is a method of transferring fuel, munitions, and stores from one ship to another while unde ...

, using both connected replenishment and vertical replenishment. To a lesser extent, they transport ammunition from one shore-based weapons station to another.

In the United States Navy

U.S. Navy ammunition ships are frequently named for volcanos. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, U.S. Navy ammunition ships were converted from

merchant ship A merchant ship, merchant vessel, trading vessel, or merchantman is a watercraft that transports cargo or carries passengers for hire. This is in contrast to pleasure craft, which are used for personal recreation, and naval ships, which are ...

s or specially built on merchant ship hulls, often of Type C2. They were armed, and were crewed by naval sailors. Several of them were destroyed in spectacular explosions during the war, such as , which exploded in the

Admiralty Islands The Admiralty Islands are an archipelago group of 40 islands in the Bismarck Archipelago, to the north of New Guinea in the South Pacific Ocean. These are also sometimes called the Manus Islands, after the largest island. These rainforest-cov ...

on November 10, 1944, and the

Liberty ship Liberty ships were a ship class, class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Although British in concept, the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost cons ...

, which was hit by a single

kamikaze , officially , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, intending to d ...

attack near the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

on December 28, 1944, and which was captured on film by an amateur photographer on a nearby vessel. The ship disintegrated in seconds with the loss of all hands. , and were hit by kamikaze aircraft at

Okinawa most commonly refers to: * Okinawa Prefecture, Japan's southernmost prefecture * Okinawa Island, the largest island of Okinawa Prefecture * Okinawa Islands, an island group including Okinawa itself * Okinawa (city), the second largest city in th ...

and sank. The last U.S. ammunition ships, the , have been replaced by the s, which also include carrying dry and refrigerated cargo.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ammunition Ship Ship types Auxiliary ships

In the United States Navy

See also

References