USS Bayfield (APA-33) was a Bayfield-class attack transport built for the United States Navy during World War II, the lead ship in her class.

Bayfield was originally laid down as SS Sea Bass under a Maritime Commission contract on 14 November 1942 at San Francisco, California by the Western Pipe and Steel Company.

On 11 March Bayfield made the short run to Plymouth and joined a group of amphibious ships that then set course for western Scotland.

On 29 March she bore the flag of Commander, Force "U" (Rear Admiral Don Pardee Moon) and served as headquarters for planning the landings on "Utah Beach."

She joined with other Normandy-bound ships in practicing a variety of maneuvers and tactical operations during short underway periods until 26 April, when full-scale rehearsals took place through 4 May.

Passing along a swept channel marked by lighted buoys, Bayfield and the other transports reached their designated positions early on the morning of 6 June and debarked their troops.

As its target, "Camel" Force assaulted the best defended section of the coast, an area where the Argens River flows into the Mediterranean, and the hard fighting there kept Bayfield in the vicinity of the Golfe de Fréjus for almost a month.

Bayfield debarked troops from the 4th Marine Division on D-Day, 19 February, and while anchored off Iwo Jima for the remainder of the month served both as a hospital and a prisoner-of-war ship.

Ten days later, Bayfield departed San Francisco, bound via Eniwetok, Marshall Islands for Subic Bay and Zamboanga in the Philippines.

Following repairs, the ship carried occupation troops to Korea in November 1945 and January 1946, returning from each voyage with a full contingent of veterans.

In March, the attack transport was ordered to Pearl Harbor for "Operation Crossroads", the atomic bomb tests scheduled to take place at Bikini Atoll in July.

Based at Norfolk, Virginia she operated along the eastern seaboard and in the West Indies until mid-August 1950, when the outbreak of hostilities in Korea on 25 June called her back to the Pacific.

During the next two years, Bayfield made three more cruises to the Orient and performed special duty in August and September 1954, assisting in the evacuation of refugees that resulted from the partition of Vietnam into a communist north and a democratic south.

As one of more than 40 amphibious ships employed in "Operation Passage to Freedom", the transport provided food, shelter, and care to the evacuees as she carried them south to Saigon.

She returned to San Diego on 9 October and commenced a routine of alternating local training operations along the West Coast with deployments to the Far East.

In February 1961 Bayfield changed home port from San Diego to Long Beach where she served as the flagship for the Commander Amphibious Squadron (PhibRon) 7.

The transport embarked elements of the 1st Marine Division and headed through the Panama Canal to support forces engaged in the quarantine of Cuba.

Bayfield also carried cold weather training called "Operation Backpack" at Pohang, South Korea and joined the Nationalist Chinese in exercises near Taiwan during the first two months of 1964.

She disembarked her Marine contingent at Buckner Bay, Okinawa, in mid-March and headed back to the West Coast, arriving in Long Beach on 6 April.

Bayfield returned to the West Coast in December and resumed local training missions in the Long Beach and San Diego operating areas early in 1966.

Bayfield embarked on another tour of duty in the Far East on 28 December, refueled at Pearl Harbor early in January 1967, and continued on westward.

The ship served as a floating barracks at Da Nang until 15 February 1967 and then sailed for Okinawa to take on Marines and equipment for rotation to the Vietnamese combat zone.

During that operation, Bayfield anchored at the mouth of the Cua Viet River, and her embarked Marines went ashore to rotate with units that had been serving eight miles upriver at Dong Ha.

In August 1965 she participated in Operation Starlite was the first major offensive regimental size action conducted by a purely U.S. military unit during the Vietnam War.

A board of inspection and survey found the transport to be "unfit for further service", and her name struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 October 1968.