USS Ara
1942 Crater-class cargo ship
USS Ara (AK-136) was a Crater-class cargo ship commissioned by the US Navy for service in World War II. Ara is named after the constellation Ara. She was responsible for delivering troops, goods and equipment to locations in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater.
Construction
Ara was laid down on 17 July 1941, under a Maritime Commission (MARCOM) contract, MC hull No. 69, as the Liberty ship SS Daniel Boone, by California Shipbuilding Corporation, Terminal Island, Los Angeles, California; launched on 14 January 1942; sponsored by Mrs. J. K. Doolan; acquired by the Navy under a bare-boat charter on 3 December 1943; renamed Ara (AK-136); and commissioned on 4 January 1944.
Service history
Ara sailed on 7 February for the Territory of Hawaii. Upon her arrival at Pearl Harbor, the ship reported to Service Squadron 8 for duty. On 4 March, Ara sailed in a convoy bound for the Marshall Islands and discharged her cargo at Majuro and Kwajalein Atolls. Ara left the Marshalls on 14 April; made a brief stop at Pearl Harbor on 28 April; and then the ship got underway for Port Hueneme, California. After loading new cargo, Ara was back in Pearl Harbor on 29 May.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 1942 Crater-class cargo ship. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7867359. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “USS Ara” 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.