Construction and U.S. Navy Service
Dexter began life as the United States Navy Barnegat-class seaplane tender USS Biscayne (AVP-11). She was laid down on 27 October 1939 by Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton, Washington, launched on 23 May 1941, and commissioned into the U.S. Navy on 3 July 1941. She operated as a seaplane tender in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, West Africa, and North Africa during the first half of World War II. Converted into an amphibious force flagship and redesignated AGC-18 in 1943, Biscayne served in the Mediterranean in 1943–1944, seeing action in the amphibious landings in Operation Avalanche at Salerno, Operation Shingle at Anzio, and Operation Dragoon in southern France. She then served in the Pacific in 1945, serving at Iwo Jima, in the Okinawa campaign, and in the Philippines before the war ended. Postwar, she served in Korea and China. She was decommissioned on 29 June 1946.
Read more about this topic: USCGC Dexter (WAVP-385)
Famous quotes containing the words construction, navy and/or service:
“No construction stiff working overtime takes more stress and straining than we did just to stay high.”
—Gus Van Sant, U.S. screenwriter and director, and Dan Yost. Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon)
“Give me the eye to see a navy in an acorn. What is there of the divine in a load of bricks? What of the divine in a barber’s shop or a privy? Much, all.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We too are ashes as we watch and hear
The psalm, the sorrow, and the simple praise
Of one whose promised thoughts of other days
Were such as ours, but now wholly destroyed,
The service record of his youth wiped out,
His dream dispersed by shot, must disappear.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)