Talk:USNS Kingsport Victory (T-AK-239)

Name

I question USNS Kingsport Victory (T-AK-239) as a good title choice. It is taken from one slice, a mundane one, of the ship's "career" and neither first nor most prominent. The ship's original name was Kingsport Victory and that the ship was operated as an Army transport under that name. When the ships went MSTS in 1950 the Navy then operated the ship as USNS Kingsport Victory until 1961. If we take first name used then Kingsport Victory is correct, but I'd suggest just the name and not with Navy bells and whistles in the name so as to cover WSA/Army/early MSTS. Now, if we take best known, and except for an obscure court case the ship was just a plodding cargo hauler, we have the days of satellite link, presidents chatting and then survey work. All that took place as just USNS Kingsport and the designation was (T-AG-164) as of 14 November 1961. Right now the title is sort of apples and oranges, the 1950—1961 slice of MSTS operation and not the earliest, just Kingsport Victory, or the most significant later name. Strongly suggest either a move to just SS Kingsport Victory (first 1944) without military prefixes or to the best known, the one in most published accounts of the ship, USNS Kingsport and leave the Navy designations to the text. We've had a discussion at WIKISHIPS on the sometimes silly use of these classifications in titles (I'm one for dropping them there) as they are purely administrative changes, Navy "binning" of hulls. Palmeira (talk) 13:43, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I guess the main reason I changed it was to keep consistent with the other ships of its class, they are all named with the (AK) or (T-AK) designation even though they changed in later years. I have no problem with changing it back, I was just going for continuity. Thanks for the feedback.Pennsy22 (talk) 14:36, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

The "its class" is a problem in itself. That too is a Navy administrative thing. The original "class" was Victory type and how the navy put Victories to use, particularly in later years is varied. It was only temporarily in the AK designation. Others of its type were AG, so there was no "class" as such. It is pretty much a misconception to put commercial MARAD type hulls in naval classes since other identical hulls may be entirely different. It is a far cry from built-for-Navy combatants have a lead ship of a "class" that poorly applies to MARAD types taken in by Navy. The multiple "reclassified as" that is more frequent in those not built for Navy hulls in some ships tells that story. By the way, neither "USS" nor a hull classification/designation are part of the ship's name. Officially a ship loses the "USS" even if it goes into major decommissioned refit lasting years—the prefix represents a status of being commissioned. See Ship Naming in the United States Navy at "A Note on Navy Ship Name Prefixes" for the official line:

"The prefix "USS," meaning "United States Ship," is used in official documents to identify a commissioned ship of the Navy. It applies to a ship while she is in commission. Before commissioning, or after decommissioning, she is referred to by name, with no prefix. Civilian-manned ships of the Military Sealift Command (MSC) are not commissioned ships; their status is "in service," rather than "in commission." They are, nonetheless, Navy ships in active national service, and the prefix "USNS" (United States Naval Ship) was adopted to identify them. Other Navy vessels classified as "in service" are simply identified by their name (if any) and hull number, with no prefix."

The hull designations are just administrative handles to group the ships and change more frequently than some may think and are done simply by memo with no renaming involved. I strongly support using the DANFS model here, most particularly for those non combatants, of discussing classification changes in the text and not trying to select one particular hull designation. Palmeira (talk) 15:18, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

DANFS lists it as a Greenville Victory class and calls it Kingsport Victory, but in the first paragraph calls it Kingsport Victory (T-AK-239). I've been going through ships pages and removing "USS" and such from the "Ship name" part of the Ship Info Box. I understand that its not part of the name. I've also tried to correct the "In service" and "In commission" lines too. I think a lot of this is very confusing to people, myself included, but I'm trying to learn and fix entries were I can. I certainly see your point of view on it. My goal has just to get some consistency on the pages but I'm sure not all of them are perfect.Pennsy22 (talk) 03:26, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

DANFS list that "cl" up in the specs line and sometimes mentions it in text (if I recall) and that is very applicable to the built for Navy ships. They even tend to get life-cycle mods in blocks as a group. Where it gets complicated is where commercial types were taken into naval service and even more complicated where ships with varied commercial origins are involved. In particular some of the large vessels built to a MARAD design got modified at the design stage for company objectives, sometimes fairly significantly though not so visibly. I'd have to double check, but I'm pretty sure some of those got sucked into naval service in WW II and lumped in a "class" that defies the "peas-in-a-pod" concept of say a destroyer class with a lead ship and subsequent ships with no significant change. When you start lumping MARAD commercial types into a "class spec" template it may not really apply at all to specific ships even when the Navy called them a class—they were neither built as nor controlled as a naval class would be with block mods and such. Some were built with mods, some got them before Navy and I was recently looking at one old ship that got something like a 50 or more foot hull insertion compared to its WW I "sisters." As you can see from Kingsport that modification for satellite work was significant and very visible and a fairly insignificant WSA/Army/Navy cargo hull scored a string of "firsts" in the space age with real notability under that name. Then she went from white fleet space to gray fleet undersea surveillance where much of the history vanishes. Palmeira (talk) 22:57, 6 June 2015 (UTC)