Gilliam - class attack transport The " Gilliam " - class attack transport was a class of attack transport built for service with the US Navy in World War II . Like all attack transports , the purpose of the " Gilliam " s was to transport troops and their equipment to foreign shores in order to execute amphibious invasions using an array of smaller amphibious assault boats carried by the attack transport itself . Like all the attack transports , the " Gilliam " - class was heavily armed with antiaircraft weaponry to protect itself and its cargo of troops from air attack in the battle zone . History . The " Gilliam " - class utilized the Maritime Commission ( MARCOM ) ' s Type S4 - SE2 - BD1 hull . All 32 vessels of the class were built under MARCOM contracts by the Consolidated Steel Corporation of Wilmington , California . The first of the ships , the , rolled off the Wilmington ways on 28 March 1944 and was commissioned on 1 August 1944 . The rest rapidly followed , a new " Gilliam " - class vessel rolling of the shipways at an average of roughly one per week until April 1945 . The " Gilliam " s , with less than half the displacement , were significantly inferior in both troop and cargo carrying capacity to the previous class of attack transport , the " Bayfields " , and also slightly slower . It is not clear therefore why they were produced but probably it was simply because attack transports were at this time a much - needed type and the Navy chose to utilize any available shipbuilding capacity to acquire them . World War II service . As they arrived relatively late in the war , " Gilliam " - class ships did not get much chance to see combat . Some of the earlier vessels saw action at either the battle of Luzon or the battle of Iwo Jima and later at the invasion of Okinawa , while later vessels saw combat either at Okinawa alone or not at all . Regardless , all of them spent a considerable part of their time on troop transport , cargo and other support missions . Postwar missions . In the immediate postwar period , the " Gilliam " s , like most other classes of attack transport , were initially utilized to transport US troops for occupation duties - in Japan , China , Korea and other Far Eastern locations formerly occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army - and later as participants in Operation " Magic Carpet " , the giant sealift organized to bring hundreds of thousands of demobilizing soldiers back to the United States . Operation " Crossroads " . At the end of the war , the US Navy found itself with far more ships than it required in peacetime . Some of these ships were dispensed with in Operation " Crossroads " , the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946 . These tests were designed to assess the effects of nuclear detonations on shipping . For the purpose , the Navy collected somewhere between 70 and 90 unwanted ships to use as targets , some captured from the enemy and some of the Navy ' s own . Since the " Gilliam " - class had an inferior transport and cargo capacity to many of the other attack transport classes , it was an obvious candidate for disposal . 17 of the " Gilliam " - class were duly selected to act as targets in the tests . In the event , one - - was reprieved , so exactly half of the class ' 32 ships were designated as targets . Of these , a few were sunk by the atomic bombs themselves , while a number of others which received heavy doses of radiation were examined for a period before being disposed of in target practice in 1947 or 1948 . A few were found to have mostly escaped the radioactive fallout and were taken back to the United States . These survivors , along with the rest of the class , were decommissioned in late 1946 - early 1947 and saw no further service with the Navy ( although it is unknown whether some may have been later sold for commercial service ) . The sole exception was the , which although decommissioned along with the remainder of the class , remained in use with the Navy as a training ship until 1 September 1968 . Other than this one vessel , it appears the entire class of ships saw barely more than two years service of any description before being scrapped . References . See the individual ship entries at DANFS Online ( APA - 57 to APA - 88 ) . Information on those vessels missing at this site ( " Appling , Audrain and Gasconade " ) can be found at Navsource Online ( " Audrain " ) , or at the Hyperwar website ( see " Gasconade " and " Appling " ) . An alternative reference for dates and basic information is the Attack Transport Index page of Navsource Online .