USNS General William O. Darby (AP-127/T-AP-127)

The USNS General William O. Darby was an Admiral W. S. Benson–class transport vessel initially named after a naval leader but renamed after a Fort Smith (Sebastian County) war hero after it was turned over to the U.S. Army.

The vessel was first named for William S. Sims, a Canadian-born sailor whose thirty-seven-year career after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, culminated in commanding the U.S. Navy’s activities around Great Britain during World War I. He died in 1936.

The keel for the USS Admiral W. S. Sims was laid down on June 15, 1944, at the Bethlehem-Alameda Shipbuilding Corporation at Alameda, California. The ship was christened by Anne Hitchcock Sims, the admiral’s widow. The 9,676-ton Sims was 608 feet long and seventy-five feet wide with a draft of twenty-six feet and six inches. Installation of weapons and fire-control systems for the transport was canceled after World War II ended. The ship was commissioned on September 27, 1945.

The Sims conducted several voyages for the navy, transporting troops from the Philippines, Okinawa, and Korea. The ship was decommissioned on June 21, 1946, and transferred to the Army Transport Service. The Sims was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on July 3, 1946.

After the transfer, the transport was renamed the USAT General William O. Darby in honor of Fort Smith’s William Orlando Darby, who had led a famed Ranger battalion during World War II before being killed by artillery fire in Italy on April 30, 1945. The army converted the vessel to service as a peacetime transport between January and October 1948.

The ship retained the Darby name when the navy reacquired the ship on March 1, 1950, being reinstated on the register as the USNS General William O. Darby (T-AP-127) on April 28, 1950. The transport, which had a civilian crew, made numerous voyages between New York and Bremerhaven, West Germany, in support of U.S. forces in Europe. During one trip, the Darby took a one-hundred-mile detour after receiving an SOS from a German freighter in the Bay of Biscay, with thirteen volunteers navigating thirty-foot waves to bring a badly burned sailor to the transport for medical attention.

The vessel transferred to the Pacific in June 1953, bringing veterans of the Korean War home until January 1954. The Darby was sent to the Mediterranean in 1956 as part of the Sixth Fleet’s peace-keeping operations there, and then spent most of the next ten years transporting troops to and from Europe.

In August 1965, the General William O. Darby returned to the Pacific to transport troops from the United States and South Korea to fight in the Vietnam War; the vessel earned one battle star. The ship underwent an overhaul at New York in early 1967 and was placed in ready reserve status in the James River in Virginia on July 1.

The Darby lost its name in June 1976 when a proposal was made to loan the ship to the State of Maryland to serve as a prison, becoming the AP-127 after army officials objected to a prison hulk being named for a war hero. The prison plan fell through, and the vessel was moved to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in October 1981. In July 1982, the ship’s name was changed again, this time to IX-510, as it became a floating barracks for navy crews when their vessels were being overhauled.

In April 1991, the transport was returned to the James River, and it was struck from the Naval Register in October 1993. The former General William O. Darby was transferred to the Maritime Administration in May 1999. On September 27, 2004, Marine Metals of Brownsville, Texas, was awarded a contract to scrap the vessel, and it was towed to Brownsville in February 2005 to be dismantled.

For additional information:
“Admiral W. S. Sims (AP-127).” Dictionary of American Fighting Ships/Naval History and Heritage Command. https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/a/admiral-w-s-sims.html (accessed March 1, 2024).

“General William O. Darby (AP-127/T-AP-127).” U.S. Maritime Administration. https://vesselhistory.marad.dot.gov/ShipHistory/Detail/1854 (accessed March 1, 2024).

“General William O. Darby.” Dictionary of American Fighting Ships/Naval History and Heritage Command. https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/g/general-william-o-darby.html (accessed March 1, 2024).

“No Name (IX 510).” Naval Vessel Register. https://www.nvr.navy.mil/SHIPDETAILS/SHIPSDETAIL_IX_510.HTML (accessed March 1, 2024).

“Sims (DD-409).” Dictionary of American Fighting Ships/Naval History and Heritage Command. https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/s/sims-i.html (accessed March 1, 2024).

“USNS Admiral W. S. Sims (AP-127) 1945-2005.” Naval Historical Center. https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/OnlineLibrary/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-g/ap127.htm (accessed March 1, 2024).

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System