Stuff You Should Know
USS Pyro was an ammunition ship laid down on August 9, 1918 and launched on December 16, 1919. It was commissioned on August 10, 1920 under Comdr. John Sisson Graham's command and served in the US Navy for 4 years until it was decommissioned on September 10, 1924. During this period, the ship operated between the ports from Puget Sound on the West Coast, to the north of the East Coast. Some of the ports where the ship operated were Mare Island, San Francisco, San Pedro, San Diego, Balboa, Guantanamo Bay, Norfolk, Philadelphia and New York. Although it was an ammunition ship that carried explosives, it also carried general loading and passengers. On July 1, 1939, the ship was commissioned again, this time under Comdr. Robert Stevenson Haggart's command. It was assigned to the Naval Transportation Service, a major command of the US Navy, and managed to complete five voyages to the East Coast and five to Pearl Harbor in order to carry ammunition, general loading, but also passengers by August 1941. After several operations to Australia, it was decommissioned on June 12, 1946, and struck from the Naval Register the same year, on 3rdof July.