Book is 8" x 10½" Paper Back with 28 pages
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Amphibious/Attack Transports were designed to sail to the site of amphibious operations carrying assault troops and support equipment. APA/LPAs had the capacity to hold a full battalion of troops. The APA disembarked troops with the ships own landing craft. The APA would then stand off the beachhead ready to evacuate troops, casualties, and prisoners of war. In order to carry out its primary mission APAs had to provide all facilities for the embarked troops including, berthing, messing , medical and dental care, and recreational facilities. All APAs in the Navy inventory on 1 January 1969 were redesignated LPAs.
Presented to her Crew
Adair participated in Operation "Magic Carpet" carring troops home four times; Guam-San Francisco;
Samar-San Francisco; Okinawa-San Diego; and China-San Francisco. At 1500 troops per trip that means she took at least 6000 troops back home. On her 1st trip to San Franciso she was reconfigured to carry more troops, (500) in place of trucks and tanks. So that means she may have carried a total of 7500 troops back home.
Note: The records of ships used to carry troops to their theaters of operations were destroyed intentionally in 1951. "According to our [U. S. National Archives] records, in 1951 the Department of the Army destroyed all passenger lists, manifests, logs of vessels, and troop movement files of United States Army Transports for World War II." (Sorry, but there was no word on why the records were destroyed.) Thus there is no longer an official record of who sailed on what ship, though there are still valuable sources that can be found.....Wesley Johnston
Makin Island also
Carpet". Plans started around
1943 when the U.S. faced the problem of
to return service personnel back to the states after the war ended.
of over 7 million service personnel overseas it was decided to let the
"War Shipping Administration" draw up plans on how to do it.
The Army with its troopship's and the Merchant Marine cargo ship's converted to troopers, they started to move personnel from Europe in late June of 45. The Navy because of the Pacific war did not release it's ship's until Japan quit.
My understanding of "Magic
that it started
in late June of 45 and finished around September of 46. Over 8 million
service personnel returned stateside. The whole operation included over
700 U.S. merchant ship's, British troopers like the "Queen's", U.S.
Navy and Coast Guard vessels.
Bill Longo, firstname.lastname@example.org
The unique nature of operations that require use of APA ships and the diverse composition of the forces involved demand timely political and military decisions from a wide spectrum of organizations, commands, and agencies. Operations may involve single or split APA deployments or a combination of airlift, sealift, and APA. The organization and responsibilities of the various commands and agencies discussed in this section are not intended to be all-inclusive and are provided only as a start point for more in-depth planning. Detailed coordination, flexibility, and provision for rapid deployment are the organizations' key characteristics.