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Payette County (LST-1079)

1945-1959 

A county in the state of Idaho. 

(LST-1079: displacement 4,080; length 328'; beam 50'; draft 14'1", speed 11.6 knots; complement 119; armament 8 40-millimeter; class LST-511)

LST-1079 was laid down on 30 March 1945 at Hingham, Mass., by Bethlehem Hingham Shipyards; launched on 27 April 1945; and commissioned on 22 May 1945, Lt. William A. Putnam, Jr., USNR, in command.

After shakedown, LST-1079 loaded pontoons and cargo at Davisville, R.I., embarked marines and loaded ammunition at New York, and sailed on 7 July 1945 for the Panama Canal Zone. She arrived at Coco Solo on 16 July and then proceeded to Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, where she was lying at anchor in West Loch when the Japanese government accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. 

On 21 August 1945 she sailed for Guam via Eniwetok and off-loaded cargo and disembarked passengers on arrival, sailing again on 22 September for Leyte, Philippine Islands. From Leyte she went to Subic Bay and then returned to Guam on 6 November to embark troops for Magic Carpet passage to San Francisco, Calif.

She reached San Francisco on 28 December 1945, three days after Christmas, was assigned to the Nineteenth Fleet and subsequently began preparations for inactivation. LST-1079 was decommissioned in March 1946 and was placed in reserve, berthed with the Colombia River Group of the Pacific Reserve Fleet at Puget Sound, Wash.

Because of fleet requirements brought about by the Korean Conflict, LST-1079 was recalled for active service and moved to the East Coast. She was recommissioned in October 1950 and joined the Atlantic Fleet. Her first assignment took her to Goose Bay, Labrador, in conjunction with services for the U.S. Army. During this voyage she had a close brush with an iceberg which tore a hole in her bow. She was saved from sure disaster by the intentness to duty of her forward lookout during conditions of extremely heavy fog. Sighting the iceberg dead ahead he quickly gave the alarm, and enabled his ship to avoid a head-on collision.

She later moved to a more hospitable climate, operating off in Florida in shuttling general stores between Green Cove Springs, Fla., and Norfolk, Va. During 1954-55, in addition to her normal operations, she was involved in innovative exercises such as LST-helicopter operations, and the use of an LST as a rocket launching platform.

On 1 July 1955 she was named Payette County (LST-1079) and operated with a civil service crew with the Military Sea Transport Service (MSTS) until 1 November 1959 when she was placed out of service and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register. She was sold 18 May 1961 to Zidell Explorations, Inc., Astoria, Ore., and broken up for scrap.

Published: Tue Mar 05 22:04:16 EST 2019