USS Barnett (AP-11, later APA-5), From: 1940 to 1946. USS Barnett, a 9432-ton transport, was built in 1928 in England as the civilian passenger ship Santa Maria. She was purchased by the Navy in August 1940 and commissioned the following month. During the rest of 1940 and in 1941 she took part in amphibious training exercises in the Caribbean area. In 1942, following the outbreak of war between the United States and Japan, Barnett went to the Pacific, where she participated in the invasion of Guadalcanal in August and the subsequent campaign to hold that island in the face of Japanese efforts to retake it. Reclassified as an attack transport in February 1943, with the new hull number APA-5, Barnett spent that year and the next in the Atlantic war theater. During 1943 she was part of the amphibious forces that supported the landings on Sicily in July and at Salerno in September. During the Sicily operation, on 11 July 1943, Barnett was near-missed by an enemy bomb, which damaged the ship and killed seven of the Army troops on board. The transport was also active during the Normandy invasion in June 1944 and in the invasion of Southern France in August and September 1944. Barnett returned to the Pacific in time to participate in the Okinawa landings in April 1945 and steamed back to the United States shortly after the end of the war with Japan. In May 1946, USS Barnett was decommissioned at Newport, Rhode Island. She was transferred to the Maritime Commission in July 1946. Invasion of Guadalcanal can be found here: Guadalcanal-Tulagi Invasion, 7-9 August 1942, as well as The campaign to hold that Island. And though I do not have her Logs, you can retrieve them from the National Naval Archives. I hope this responds to your question. -Birdymckee
There is no National Naval Archives. The Cruise Logs you seek, if they exist, will be found at the NARA II, College Park, MD. Send an email to: Archives2reference@nara.gov And tell them exactly what you need. The NARA staff will pull the records and send you a letter describing the documents they have and the cost, which is $0.75 per page. Dave
And each day will start a new pge, IIRC, so you're looking at 60 pages minimum, more if hell's-a-poppin'. (I made a mental note to never put that in a deck log again.)
No, you won't find them there. "2. The Ships Deck Logs Section only maintains custody of deck logs for commissioned U.S. Navy ships covering the past thirty years. Every year a calendar years worth of deck logs that reaches the 31 year mark is transferred to the National Archives." Deck Log Section-Ships History Branch, Records Dave
I do believe that those archives are the National Archives the "Naval" was not supposed to be placed in there, my apologies.
Thanks to all. I'll keep hunting. I'm trying to track the Barnett's trip from Tongatabu between 15 May 1942 and 3 June 42. Some sources say she went directly from Tongatabu to San Diego, carrying Flatley and others slated for VF-10, as well as Lexington survivors. But I have some evidence to suggest that she stopped in Pearl Harbor first before continuing to the west coast. Would like to verify this.
