APA Love

So, one of the areas I'd seen a while back were records for the "Assistant Industrial Manager, Astoria Oregon." I had already done a "smash & grab" for photos and had turned over photos to Navsource on APA-157 Napa, APA-160 USS Deuel, APA-166 USS Fond Du Lac, APA-169 USS Gallatin, and APA-195 USS Lenawee.

But there was a little bit of camouflage documentation, not a lot, but just enough to pique my interest in seeing what might else be there. Yesterday I finally got around to pulling the five boxes around those photos and looking through the first two of them at least, before I ran out of time. I found records covering 25 of the ships, which was enough in my opinion to finally start doing auxiliaries for ShipCamouflage.Com.

Behold the first page: Haskell Class APAs. As you can see, it's nowhere near done, but it's a credible start. For the most part it appears that the ships, when first commissioned, were in dazzle schemes, with the odd-numbered ships receiving Measure 32 Pattern 6A and the Even ships receiving Measure 32 Pattern 4T, but there are a few exceptions here and there. Later ships appear to have commissioned directly into Measure 21, and most were repainted as far as I can see in 1945 to Measure 21, with a few in Measure 22.