Moctobi was laid down as AT‑105 by Charleston Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. at Charleston, South Carolina on 7 October 1943. She was launched on 25 March 1944 with Mrs. Wade C. Harrison as her sponsor. The tug was reclassified ATF‑105 on 15 May 1944 and commissioned into the United States Navy at Charleston on 25 July 1944.
Assigned to Service Squadron 10, Moctobi operated out of Ulithi until the end of the war in the Pacific. There she carried out the harbor duties necessary to prepare ships of the task forces for their strikes against the enemy. During the Battle of Iwo Jima she served on a standby basis with the Support Force and at the conclusion of the campaign towed USS Marl(IX-160) from Saipan to Ulithi.
On 30 March 1945 Moctobi sailed with units of the fast tanker fleet and joined the Logistic Support Group off Okinawa. During the next 47 days she provided at-sea support for ships of the 5th Fleet, thence returned to Ulithi on 12 May. After completing a round trip to Leyte Gulf, she sailed on 3 July with other ATFs to support the 3rd FleetBombardment Force. She served at sea during the closing weeks of the war and arrived Yokosuka, Japan, after the cessation of hostilities. The tug began supporting occupation operations on 29 August and aided in the landing of initial occupation forces in the Tokyo area. She towed American and Japanese ships and supported demolition operations of Japanese suicide boats and submarines along the eastern coast of Honshu.
Post-war service
Moctobi arrived at Okinawa in October 1945 and for more than two months assisted the salvage of the many ships damaged by typhoons. On Christmas Eve she sailed for Pearl Harbor with floating dock USS ARD‑29 in tow. She returned to the US west coast in May 1946 and later that year deployed once again to the Far East. She operated in the Philippines until June 1947, returning to the United States. She began pre-inactivation overhaul at San Francisco on 1 December and decommissioned on 30 June 1948. Assigned to the Pacific Reserve Fleet on 27 August, she was berthed at Alameda, California.
On 8 November 1950 Moctobi was recommissioned at San Francisco. After training, she deployed to the Far East and by November 1951 had touched Midway, Eniwetok, Kwajalein, Guam, Subic Bay, Sasebo, Yokosuka, Inchon, Pusan, Okinawa, Taiwan, and Daecheongdo, Korea. In September she conducted salvage operations on the frigate ROKS Apnok(62) off Abru Somu Island, North Korea, towing the damaged ship to Pusan thence to Yokosuka for repairs. After overhaul at Pearl Harbor, between April and September 1952 she made several towing trips to Johnston Island and the Marshall Islands.
From November 1952 the tug was deployed on towing and search and rescue duties in the Aleutians from Dutch Harbor to Attu. Thereafter, from her base at Pearl Harbor, Moctobi spent more than three decades constantly employed throughout the Pacific, including classified operations for the Atomic Energy Commission. An unusual task in 1963 was to tow the iron-hulled clipper ship Falls of Clyde from Seattle to Honolulu to become a museum ship. In November and December 1964, Moctobi participated in a chemical warfare experiment off Hawaii under Project SHAD code-named Flower Drum II, which dispersed VX nerve agent tagged with radioactive phosphorus-32 from a towed barge.[2]
Decommissioning and sale
USS Moctobi (Lion left) with USS Quapaw (Tiger right) at Richmond Shipyards, California in April, 2011
USS Moctobi was decommissioned on 30 September 1985 at Long Beach, California and laid up in the Pacific Reserve Fleet, Bremerton, Washington. She was struck from the Naval Register on 27 January 1992.
Following Congressional approval in 1996 for transfer to the Northeast Wisconsin Railroad Transportation Commission, she was handed over on 29 December 1997 to the Ontonagon County Economic Development Corporation on behalf of the Escanaba and Lake Superior Railroad, along with five other obsolete sister tugs.[3] They were intended for a new trans-Lake Superior freight car barge service between Ontonagon and Thunder Bay, Ontario,[4] though it has been suggested that the company sought the tug's four General Motors engines (24 in all) to use in their locomotives.[5] The project was abandoned in October 1999, shortly before title would have passed to the railroad company.[4]Moctobi remained in lay-up between 1997 and 1999.
^"Archived copy". mcm.dhhq.health.mil. Archived from the original on 27 April 2014. Retrieved 24 September 2022.((cite web)): CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
This article includes information collected from the Naval Vessel Register, which, as a U.S. government publication, is in the public domain. The entry can be found here.
Photo gallery of USS Moctobi at NavSource Naval History
_underway_-_DPLA_-_543ce69d16d180fbbf9dca0817848d47.jpeg)
United States
