USS Big Horn (AO-45) - Pacific Fleet, 1945

Pacific Fleet, 1945

Although she kept her Coast Guard crew, Big Horn was returned to Navy control on 1 February 1945 and redesignated IX-207 two days later. Over the next five weeks, the ship was converted into an oil shuttle and storage vessel before departing for the Pacific on 11 March. After loading 84,000 barrels (13,400 m³) of oil at Aruba, Netherlands West Indies, on the 18th, she passed through the Panama Canal on 21 March and reported to the Service Force, Pacific Fleet, that same day.

Steaming west, Big Horn stopped at Pearl Harbor in early April before sailing on to the Marshall Islands, where she anchored at Ulithi on 1 May. Assigned to Service Squadron 10 (ServRon 10), the shuttle tanker carried oil to Kossol Roads and Peleliu in the Western Carolines in early May before moving on to Tacloban in the Philippines later in the month. Returning to Ulithi on 3 June, she loaded more oil and delivered it to Leyte on the 9th. Over the next eight weeks, Big Horn carried out three more of these shuttle missions from Ulithi to Leyte. The tanker sailed to Okinawa on 11 August and she was at that island on 15 August 1945, when her crew heard the news of the Japanese surrender.

Departing Okinawa on 29 September, Big Horn steamed to Japan, where she was assigned duty as a station tanker at Nagoya on 3 October. She remained there through January 1946. After transferring her cargo of oil to Beagle (IX-112), the shuttle tanker got underway for home on 25 February. After a refueling stop at Pearl Harbor, she passed through the Panama Canal in early April and moored at Mobile, Alabama, on 15 April.

Big Horn then proceeded to New Orleans, Louisiana. She was decommissioned on 6 May 1946, and her name was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 3 July 1946. Berthed at Orange, Texas, the ship was subsequently delivered to the Maritime Commission for disposal on 22 November 1946.