The liner was acquired by the Navy from the Clyde Mallory Steamship Line on 22 July 1940, renamed Solace (AH-5); converted into a hospital ship at the Atlantic Basin Iron Works, Brooklyn, N.Y., and was commissioned on 9 August 1941, Captain Benjamin Perlman in command.

A crew member filming from the deck of that ship, an Army medical doctor named Eric Haakenson, captured the precise moment of USS Arizona's explosion.

[4] Honoring the rules of the Geneva Convention, the attacking Japanese aircraft did not hit Solace due to her white paint and red crosses.

On the 22nd, the hospital ship departed New Zealand and proceeded via Pearl Harbor to the west coast of the United States.

After picking up 391 casualties (of whom 125 had been brought by landing craft directly from the beachheads at Eniwetok and Parry Island), she returned to Pearl Harbor on 3 March.

While the shores and hills were still under bombardment, she began taking on battle casualties, many directly from the front lines.

From 1 November 1944 – 18 February 1945, she served as a station hospital ship at Ulithi, providing medical and dental care for the 3rd and 5th Fleets.

Solace anchored within 2,000 yards (1,800 m) of the beach, but enemy shells fell within 100 yd (91 m) of her, and she was forced to move further out.

She made three evacuation trips from Iwo Jima to base hospitals at Guam and Saipan, carrying almost 2,000 patients, by 12 March.

Solace arrived at San Francisco on 22 July and was routed to Portland, Oregon, for an overhaul that lasted until 12 September.

She was then assigned to "Operation Magic Carpet", transporting homecoming veterans from Pearl Harbor to San Francisco.

Solace was decommissioned at Norfolk on 27 March 1946, struck from the Navy List on 21 May, and returned to the War Shipping Administration on 18 July.

The scrapped lead was moved to the construction of Corlulu Ali Pasha mosque in Halic, Istanbul, to build the dome of the fountain.