LST 640

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.

LST-542 Class Tank Landing Ship Keel Laid May 27 1944 - Launched August 31 1944 USS LST-640 Commissioned September 18 1944 - Decommissioned April 30 1946 Struck from Naval Register July 19 1946 LE YI (Commercial Service) (alt: 乐怡 / Lè Yí / Leyi / Le I / Lei) Name in traditional Chinese is "樂怡". Listed in Lloyd's Register of Shipping 1952 as "LU YI" and owned by Board of Trustees for Rehabilitation Affairs of China (BOTRA) Flagged Chinese WAN YOU (Commercial Service) (alt: 万有 / Wàn Yǒu / Wanyou / Wan Yu / Wanyu) Name in traditional Chinese is "萬有". Google romanizes it to “Wàn Yǒu”. Listed in Lloyd's Register of Shipping 1953 but named "WAN YIU". Owned by China Merchants Steam Nav. Co. and flagged Chinese Transfer likely occurred in 1951 based on name change date in Lloyd's (exLuYi-51). ZHONG QUAN LST-202 (Taiwanese Naval Service) (alt: 中权 / Zhōng Quán / Zhongquan / Chung Chuan / Chungchuan) Acquired by the Chinese Navy in September 1954 and renamed Name in traditional Chinese is "中權". Google romanizes it to "Zhōng Quán". Wikipedia calls it "Chung Chuan". Lost in battle January 10, 1955

 

[Note on transliteration of Chinese glyphs to English (roman/latin) letters:
In the main section of Ship Name and Designation History, we provide the ship names in both a romanized alphabet and Chinese glyphs.
The primary name (ie, LE YI) is given in separated Pinyin without diacritics. In the "(alt: xxx)" section, additional forms are provided:
(alt: 乐怡 / LÈ YÍ / LEYI / LE I / LEI)
(Simplified Chinese glyphs / separated Pinyin with diacritics / concatenated Pinyin without diacritics / separated Wade-Giles / concatenated Wade-Giles)
Alas, you can find any of these versions (and others) used by sources - which makes text searches rather painful.

 

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

 

NO LST-640 POSTMARKS AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME

DATE FROM to DATE TO

Note:

 

Other Information

LST-640 earned two battle stars for World War II service

Awards, Citations and Campaign Ribbons...
China Service Medal (extended) - American Campaign Medal - Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal (2) - World War II Victory Medal - Navy Occupation Service Medal (with Asia clasp) - Philippine Liberation Medal (1)

 

Additional History

For more on the ship's history in the Chinese Navy, see 海軍傳奇登陸艦中權號 長眠蘭嶼海底 "Navy's legendary landing ship Zhōng Quán rests on the seabed of Orchid Island"

 

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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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