USS Antares (AK-258)

The U.S. Navy acquired Nampa Victory on 23 July 1951 and renamed her Antares on 26 July 1951, when she also was classified as a cargo ship (AK) and designated AK-258. After conversion for naval service by the Maryland Drydock Company at Baltimore, Maryland, she was commissioned at Baltimore on 12 February 1952 as USS Antares (AK-258) with Commander Grant O. Hansen in command. Her title was transferred to the U.S. Navy on 31 May 1956, by which time she already had been in active Navy service for over four years.[2]

During the first seven years of her U.S. Navy career, Antares operated as a cargo carrier between ports on the United States East Coast, in the West Indies, and along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. During the autumn of 1958, she earned the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for her support for the ships and troops engaged in the U.S. intervention in the 1958 Lebanon crisis.

Anticipating her conversion to a general stores issue ship (AKS), Antares was redesignated AKS-33 on 1 April 1959. She entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia, in June 1959 to receive modifications to allow her to perform underway replenishment of other ships. The work was interrupted in August 1959 in order that she might conduct refresher training in Cuban waters and then make a two-month deployment to the Mediterranean Sea. In November 1959, she resumed her conversion overhaul at Norfolk Naval Shipyard.

Antares returned to active service in February 1960 to begin work as a general stores issue ship, which dictated a new pattern of employment in which she and the general stores issue ship USS Altair (AKS-32) were to alternate as station underway replenishment ship for the United States Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea. Whichever of the two was not on that duty would serve as backup while on the United States East Coast and in the West Indies.

Late in 1961, Antares received an additional mission when she was designated a support ship for fleet ballistic missile submarines deployed abroad, and she spent October and November 1961 receiving additional modifications at Norfolk Naval Shipyard and at Charleston, South Carolina, to enable her to carry out this additional duty. Between January and May 1962, she operated out of Norfolk, Virginia, conducting stores ship training and participating in a multiship exercise in the West Indies. In June 1962, she loaded supplies at Charleston and then steamed to Scotland on her first resupply voyage to the fleet ballistic missile base at Holy Loch. She returned to Norfolk on 25 July 1962 and then conducted local operations and went alongside a repair ship for repairs.

Antares departed Norfolk in September 1962 to relieve Altair in the Mediterranean Sea. That deployment proved to be a long one, since Altair's overhaul in the United States was delayed by the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, making Altair unable to relieve Antares at Naples, Italy, until 30 May 1963. Antares finally returned to Norfolk early in June 1963 and, following repairs alongside the repair ship USS Cadmus (AR-14), operated along the United States East Coast for the remainder of 1963.

Following a resupply mission to the fleet ballistic missile base at Holy Loch in January 1964 and participation in the annual "Springboard" exercise near Puerto Rico, Antares returned to Norfolk later in the spring of 1964 to prepare for inactivation.