The SS ''Davidson Victory'' (172) was launched by the
Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation
Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation was a World War II emergency shipyard located along the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States. The shipyard built nearly 600 Liberty and Victory ships between 1941 and 1945 under the Emergency Shipb ...
in
Portland, Oregon, United States, on 27 February 1945. The ship's
United States Maritime Commission designation was VC2-S-AP3, Hull Number 172. One of a series of
Victory ships named after institutes of higher education, the ''Davidson Victory'' was named after North Carolina's
Davidson College
Davidson College is a private liberal arts college in Davidson, North Carolina. It was established in 1837 by the Concord Presbytery and named after Revolutionary War general William Lee Davidson, who was killed at the nearby Battle of Cowan� ...
, from which more than 200 books along with "charts, etchings and pictorial publications, of the college" were given to the ship's library.
She sailed unescorted from the
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a large tidal estuary in the U.S. state of California, and gives its name to the San Francisco Bay Area. It is dominated by the big cities of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.
San Francisco Bay drains water from a ...
area in spring 1945 with a cargo of naval munitions bound for
Ulithi Atoll in the Western Caroline Islands, operated by the
Pacific-Atlantic Steamship Company. There she served as one of many floating ammunition depots for what was at the time the world's largest naval base. Like other "ammo" ships, the ''Davidson Victory'' was stationed at a safe distance from the anchored fleet due to her volatile cargo. She left Ulithi in the summer of 1945 en route to the
Philippines to prepare for the
invasion of the Japanese home islands when the
Japanese surrender was announced. After the surrender the ship was directed back to the Bay Area to unload its remaining cargo and discharge its
United States Navy Armed Guard and cargo crew. Due largely to its late entry into the war, the ''Davidson'' "never heard a shot