She was laid down under a Maritime Commission contract (MC hull 680) on 15 January 1943 at Alameda, California, by the Bethlehem Steel Corp., and launched on 22 April 1944.

After service in both the Pacific and European Theaters of World War II, the Coontz was decommissioned and stricken from the Navy list in April 1946.

After pausing briefly at Pearl Harbor she reached Ulithi, in the Western Carolines, on 23 January and served there as station ship until 19 March when she headed homeward.

Underway soon again, she paused at Eniwetok, Saipan, and Guam en route to Ulithi which she reached on 28 August, almost a fortnight after Japan capitulated.

After disembarking troops at Nagasaki on 6 November and at Nagoya two days later, Admiral R. E. Coontz then made two round-trip voyages between Yokohama and Seattle.

Stricken from the Navy list in April 1946 and turned over to the War Department, the ship underwent a period of repairs and alterations and was renamed General Alexander M. Patch, honoring General Alexander McCarrell Patch, commander of the victorious U.S. Army XIV Corps at Guadalcanal, and of the Seventh Army in the invasion of Southern France in 1944 and Germany in 1945.

Late in 1961, in the international tensions spawned by the Soviet Union's closure of access to West Berlin, General Alexander M. Patch participated in the massive lift of American troops to Europe.

Transiting the Panama Canal, the two transports reached Vung Tau, South Vietnam, on 13 August, ending the longest (12,358 nautical miles) point-to-point troop lift in the 17 years that MSTS had been in operation.