Zuni (AT-95) was laid down on 8 March 1943 at Portland, Oregon, by the Commercial Iron Works; launched on 31 July 1943; sponsored by Mrs. J. J. O'Donnell; and commissioned on 9 October 1943.

Zuni completed shakedown training late in October and on the 28th reported for duty with the Western Sea Frontier, The following day, she departed Puget Sound, bound for Kodiak, Alaska.

In extremely heavy weather during the voyage south, the towlines to both barges parted; and Zuni experienced great difficulty in keeping herself afloat.

On 1 December, the tug was reassigned to Service Squadron 2 (ServRon 2) and departed Seattle that same day with a barge in tow, bound for Oakland, California.

After repairs at Oakland, the tug headed west for the New Hebrides on 27 December 1943, in company with four cargo ships, and arrived in Espiritu Santo at the end of January 1944.

Late in September, she towed a different floating dry dock, ARD-17, to the Palau Islands where, during the first 18 days of October, she provided support services to the combined forces invading Peleliu.

At that point, she received urgent orders to rendezvous with Houston after that light cruiser had been damaged by two torpedoes during a Japanese aerial blitz to answer Task Force 38's raids on Okinawa and Formosa.

Soon another set of urgent orders sent her to aid another light cruiser, Reno, which had been torpedoed in the Philippines, off the San Bernardino Strait, on 3 November by Japanese submarine I-41.

During the latter month, she towed the disabled merchantman SS John B. Floyd into Ulithi and conducted a solitary cruise to eastward of the Philippines.

While attempting to save LST-727 on 23 March 1945, Zuni was stranded on Yellow Beach on Iwo Jima when a broken towline fouled her anchor and propeller.

She lost two crewmen, Frederick Francis Palkovics, 18, of Elizabeth, N.J., and James Michael Byrnes, in the disaster, and suffered a broken keel and holed sides.

It joins the Navy destroyer USS Arthur W. Radford 120 feet below the ocean’s surface on the Del-Jersey-Land Reef, which is managed by Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland.