LIGNITE IX 162

Ship Name and Designation History

This section lists the names and designations that the ship had during its lifetime. The list is in chronological order.

Trefoil Class non-self propelled concrete-hulled barge Keel Laid 8 December 1943 at Barrett & Hilp, Belair Shipyard, San Francisco, CA Launched 26 February 1944 Converted for use as an Army and Marine Corps stores barge LIGNITE IX-162 Acquired by the Navy and placed in service 26 September 1944 Grounded at Buckner Bay, Okinawa on 9 October 1945 by Typhoon Louise Refloated on 16 October 1945 Towed to Hong Kong in March 1946 by USS Chimariko ATF-154 Towed to Subic Bay, Luzon, in May 1946 Placed out of service 6 August 1946 Returned to the War Shipping Administration 7 August 1946 Struck from the Naval Register 28 August 1946 Final Disposition: while under tow ex-Lignite broke away during a typhoon in December 1947 and grounded off Eli Malk in the Palau Islands

 

Conflicting History Data

NavSource provides the following for the ship's final disposition:
"while under tow ex Lignite broke away during a typhoon and went aground on the fringing reef off Eli Malk in the Palau Islands"
No date for this event is given other than it occurs after the ship is transferred to the Maritime Commission for disposal (in 1946)

Shipscribe says that following the transfer to the Maritime Commission in 1946, the ship went to the U.S. Army on 4 February 1947.
For the final disposition, it says: "Grounded and badly damaged Dec. 1947, declared constructive total loss."
There is no mention of a typhoon being the cause, but the technical report "A Summary of Palau’s Typhoon History (1945-2013)"
by the Coral Reef Research Foundation (published in 2014), lists a typhoon in November 1947 that came within 18 nautical miles of Palau as well
as a tropical storm in December 1947 that came within 115 nautical miles of Palau.

Therefore, the final disposition used in the "Ship Name and Designation History" is a combination of data from NavSource and Shipscribe.

Regarding usage by the U.S. Army in 1947: I could find no evidence supporting Shipscribe's assertion so I left it out for now.

 

Naval Covers

This section lists active links to the pages displaying covers associated with the ship. There should be a separate set of pages for each name of the ship (for example, Bushnell AG-32 / Sumner AGS-5 are different names for the same ship so there should be one set of pages for Bushnell and one set for Sumner). Covers should be presented in chronological order (or as best as can be determined).

Since a ship may have many covers, they may be split among many pages so it doesn't take forever for the pages to load. Each page link should be accompanied by a date range for covers on that page.

1. Covers Page 1     (DATE RANGE)

 

Postmarks

This section lists examples of the postmarks used by the ship. There should be a separate set of postmarks for each name and/or commissioning period. Within each set, the postmarks should be listed in order of their classification type. If more than one postmark has the same classification, then they should be further sorted by date of earliest known usage.

A postmark should not be included unless accompanied by a close-up image and/or an image of a cover showing that postmark. Date ranges MUST be based ONLY ON COVERS IN THE MUSEUM and are expected to change as more covers are added.
 
>>> If you have a better example for any of the postmarks, please feel free to replace the existing example.

 

Postmark Type --- Killer Bar Text	Postmark Date	Thumbnail Link To Postmark Image	Thumbnail Link To Cover Image

 

Locy Type 2z

1946-02-03

The ship had no postal facilities, so the cover was posted either aboard another ship or ashore.

 

Other Information

LIGNITE earned the China Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal w/ 1 Battle star, the World War II Victory Medal, the Navy Occupation Service Medal (with Asia clasp) and the Philippines Liberation Medal during her Naval career.

NAMESAKE - A former name retained.

The ships sponsor was Miss Catherine Barrett.

 

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If you have images or information to add to this page, then either contact the Curator or edit this page yourself and add it. See Editing Ship Pages for detailed information on editing this page.

 

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