Transocean founder Orvis Marcus Nelson was an Air Transport Command (ATC) pilot during World War II.

Upon the end of the war in August 1945, he was sent to Okinawa, where he and several other aviators attempted to organize a new Japanese domestic airline with assistance from United Air Lines.

The new airline would fulfill an ATC contract to provide military airlift service between San Francisco and Honolulu using surplus C-54 aircraft.

ONAT's first flight operated on March 18,[4][5] and thereafter the airline carried many American soldiers and sailors home from the South Pacific theater.

[9] In 1956 the CAB approved the transfer of the operating authority to the new Transocean Air Lines and TCC became a holding company for the airline and its subsidiaries.

[11] In 1948 Transocean began to operate twice weekly service between Caracas and Rome after making a deal with the Venezuelan government.

[12] The Chinese Nationalist Air Force hired Transocean to ferry 157 Curtis C-46 transport aircraft from California to Shanghai in 1948.

[11] In 1952 Transocean entered into a wet lease agreement to operate cargo flights for Scandinavian Airlines.

Thereafter, the company attempted a reorganization with outside financing so that it could procure new aircraft, but by the time CAB approval was obtained in 1959, Transocean was already in dire financial straits.

[15] A half-century after the airline's demise, nearly 200 of their former employees – and now their children and grandchildren – are members of the Taloa Alumni Association.