SS Curtiss
ship built in 1969
SS Curtiss (T-AVB-4) is one of two Wright-class aviation logistics support ship converted for the Military Sealift Command by Todd Shipyards in 1987.
History
She was originally laid down on 1 April 1968 at Ingalls Shipbuilding of Pascagoula, Mississippi as SS Mormacksky, ON 521302, IMO 6901830, a Maritime Commission type (C5-S-78a) combination breakbulk, container, Ro-Ro vessel under Maritime Administration contract (MA 222) for Moore-McCormack Lines. Launched 1 December 1968, she was delivered to the Maritime Administration (MARAD) on 25 July 1969 and entered service with Moore-McCormack. After working for that line for only a short time the ship was sold to American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines and renamed SS Great Republic on 19 October 1970. In 1978 she was sold again to Farrell Lines without name change. The ship was turned over to MARAD in 1981.
Converted and renamed SS Curtiss (T-AVB-4) on 14 May 1986, she was assigned to MARAD Ready Reserve Force, (RRF), MSC PM-5 Sealift Program Office, Logistics Prepositioning Force. On 20 August 1990, Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 16 deployed aboard Curtiss. This was the first time a MALS deployed aboard a T-AVB. In 2001, the activation exercise with Curtis named Pacific Provider 21 was held. This exercise was planned and executed by MALS-16 and was the largest activation of the ship since the Gulf War.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “SS Curtiss” as ship built in 1969. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7393448. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1968, 1969 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “SS Curtiss” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.