USS Big Horn (AO-45)

USS Big Horn (AO-45)

USS Big Horn (AO-45/IX-207) was a Q-ship of the United States Navy named for the Bighorn River of Wyoming and Montana.

Gulf Dawn, a single-screw oil tanker, was built in 1936 at Chester, Pennsylvania, by the Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Corp. and operated by the Gulf Oil Corporation. Acquired by the Navy on 31 March 1942, she was renamed Big Horn and given the hull designation symbol AO-45 on 3 April 1942. Her conversion began at the Bethlehem Shipyard in Brooklyn, New York. She was commissioned 15 April 1942, under the command of Commander James A. Gainard, USNR, formerly master of SS City of Flint, which had become the center of an international incident at the beginning of the war, and was later sunk by a U-boat.