Two if by Sea, Cam Ranh Edition

Some 55 years ago, Southeast Asia. Loading a 6th Battalion, 32nd Field Artillery Regiment M107 175mm self-propelled howitzers onto USNS LST-546. Photos by David D. Lozano, B Battery 6/32ed Artillery. Cam Ranh Bay for a move to the DMZ 1971. Hattip Big Guns of the Vietnam War group on FB. The gator, a 328-foot 1,600-ton LST-542-class tank landing ship, was a war baby, built at the Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron Company, Evansville, Indiana, and commissioned on 27 March 1944, serving in the Pacific with LST Flotilla Thirty-Seven. In mothballs from 1946 to 1952, she was transferred to the Military Sea Transportation Service (today’s Military Sealift Command), where she served in a non-commissioned status as USNS LST-546 until 15 July 1972. With the Vietnam drawdown, she was transferred to the Philippines as BRP Surigao del Sur, first leased then sold, and served until 1988 when she was sold, presumably for breaking. As for the 6/32ed, known as the “Proud Americans,” they constituted in…