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Topic: AGP-5 USS Varunua |
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Frank J Andruss Sr
TOP BOSS
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 Posted on: May 30, 2022 - 5:24am
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Photos aboard the PT Tender USS Varuna AGP-5 from the album of MoMM 3cl Edward Gillin. We do not see very many Tender photos so I was very happy to see these. If you have any tender photos to share please do.
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Dick
Moderator
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Posted on: Jun 2, 2022 - 11:51am
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Thanks Frank . . . we really if ever see anything on the PT Tenders, sad. But these photo are great.
Dick . . .
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Frank J Andruss Sr
TOP BOSS
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Posted on: Jun 2, 2022 - 1:30pm
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Your welcome Dick, I wish more of these Tender photos would pop up, but in asking for them for a long time I get luke warm response
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PRJM3
Advanced Member
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Posted on: Jun 12, 2022 - 8:45pm
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My Dad always spoke fondly of the Varuna, and being from Pittsburgh himself, he never failed to mention that it was built at the Dravo Corporation shipyard on Neville Island in the Ohio River near Pittsburgh. Dravo was a well-established builder of towboats, dredges, barges and other large river craft prior to WWII and they had perfected several manufacturing techniques that increased the efficiency and profitability of this type of shipbuilding. These included welding of large carbon steel structures rather than riveted construction, fabricating the ships in sub-assemblies that were brought together at a common assembly point rather than laying a keel and building a ship from the bottom up, and assembly line style construction that moved the ship from one assembly station to another. Dravo was building sub chasers and mine sweepers early in WWII when the US Government proposed that they apply their construction techniques to much needed LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank). In less than a year the Dravo works was massively overhauled with a system that fed 10 LST final assembly lines, and four other inland manufactures (one ship builder and three bridge manufacturers) converted their facilities to the Dravo LST manufacturing and management processes. At its peak approaching D-Day the Dravo works was launching one LST every 3,5 days, with an overall production rate during the war of one LST every 6.1 days. The five inland shipbuilders working under Dravo management manufactured 724 LSTs, or 68 percent of the of the1,058 LSTs built.
The USS Varuna was originally assembled as LST 14 at the Dravo works but was diverted for outfitting as a PT boat tender. Navsource has details on its movements during the outfitting. Of interest is that LST 10 was also diverted at the Dravo works and became the USS Achelous ARL-1 (Achelous Class Landing Craft Repair Ship) and LST 15 was diverted and became the USS Phaon ARB-3 (Aristaeus Class Battle Damage Repair Ship). The Navsource page for the Phaon has a picture of machine shops on the "tank deck" that look very similar to the Varuna machine shop in Frank's pictures. Although the three ships served different functions they appear very similar in photographs and probably had the same basic capabilities. Well, maybe the Varuna had more woodworking capabilities! Pictures of the Phaon clearly show the outline of doors on the bow that allowed LSTs to launch tanks, except that they are welded shut. Online summaries of some of the Phaon's repair achievements are quite impressive, such as repairing a destroyer that basically lost its entire bridge, restoring it to basic functionality in one week with the two ships tied up together on open water.
Some pictures from Dad's collection follow. RONs 27 and 36 were both operating at Mios Woendi and Biak, which might explain the RON 36 boats nested at the Varuna.
Randy McConnell (Randall J. McConnell III) |
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Frank J Andruss Sr
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Posted on: Jun 13, 2022 - 4:27pm
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Thank you Randy
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