USS Cimarron (AO-22) UNREP Quick Tours
What follows are
sharable sea stories
about CIM's
Connected Community Afloat that
knew how to work hard and play together!
Photo # NH 97824: USS Cimarron
Photo #: USN
1116887 USS Hornet (CVS-12)
Underway on 9 August 1968
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USS Cimarron, first of the
Navy's many World War II era T-3 type oilers was built at
Chester, Pennsylvania. She went into commission in March 1939 and
transported oil along the west coast and to Hawaii during her
first year of service.
In mid-1940, Cimarron entered the Philadelphia Navy Yard
to receive her armament and other features required for her
intended combat support employment. Upon completion of this work
in the Spring of 1941,
she began operations in the Atlantic that lasted
until March 1942, when she transited the Panama Canal
to join the Pacific Fleet.
Cimarron's first Pacific war undertaking was to provide oil for the carriers and other ships involved in the April 1942 Doolittle Raid on Japan. In June she replenished ships taking part in the Battle of Midway. During the rest of 1942 and into 1943, the oiler took part in the Guadalcanal campaign and the early stages of the Central Solomons campaign.
She spent the rest of the war supporting the advance across the central Pacific and up toward Japan. After the fighting stopped in August 1945, Cimarron remained in the Far East to assist with occupation efforts until early 1946.
During the later 1940s, Cimarron transported oil from the Persian Gulf to the Pacific.
She also operated in Asiatic waters during the Korean War, making four deployments to the war zone in 1950-53. Following the end of that conflict, her pattern of regular trans-Pacific voyages to support the Seventh Fleet continued for some sixteen more years, including Vietnam War & First Fleet REFTRA support operations in 1965-68.
Following nearly three decades of
Navy service, during much of which she was the oldest ship on
continuous active duty, USS Cimarron was decommissioned in
San Diego on October 1968 . . . after a major port-side UNREP
approach collision caused by USS Hornet (CVS-12).
CIM was sold for scrapping in 1969; however, her capable crews'
"Can Do Spirit" lives in memories of her countless underway
replentishment (UNREP) missions and global goodwill port visits!
Source: This page features all our views of USS Cimarron (AO-22).
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Click [X] in frame for UNREP photo |
USS Hornet (CVS-12) USS Cimarron (AO-22) and USS Nicholas (DD-449), during underway replenishment activities off the North Viet Nam coast - circa 1966. At that time - these three ships already accumulated nearly 75 years of Navy service between them. Official U.S. Navy Photograph. |
Fred Weiss 146k | ||
USN Ships--USS Hornet (CV-12,
later CVA-12 & CVS-12) Sequel:
Upon CIM’s decommissioning in 1968, her PAO The Sernas of New Mexico Archive
US Naval Institute: Oral History of David Richardson, Vice Admiral ...
New and Secondhand Naval Books, Kits, and
Photoetched Brass Sale 679. United States Navy Camouflage
Schemes 1943-45, The Floating Drydock, n.d., s/b comb-bound,
no text,
Return to CIM-PAO Sequel
Angler's Delight
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