Ammunition ship

An ammunition ship's cargo handling systems, designed with extreme safety in mind, include ammunition hoists with airlocks between decks, and mechanisms for flooding entire compartments with sea water in case of emergencies.

To a lesser extent, they transport ammunition from one shore-based weapons station to another.

[1] U.S. Navy ammunition ships are frequently named for volcanos.

Several of them were destroyed in spectacular explosions during the war, such as USS Mount Hood, which exploded in the Admiralty Islands on November 10, 1944, and the Liberty ship SS John Burke, which was hit by a single kamikaze attack near the Philippines on December 28, 1944, and which was captured on film by an amateur photographer on a nearby vessel.

[4] The last U.S. ammunition ships, the Kilauea class, have been replaced by the Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ships, which also include carrying dry and refrigerated cargo.