Qualla: USS Chiron https://qualla.com/uss-chiron en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:09 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/b/7/uss-chiron-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: USS Chiron https://qualla.com/uss-chiron USS Chiron: Introduction https://qualla.com/uss-chiron/ Photo credit U.S. Navy, Public domain. Some warships serve for decades. USS Chiron served for five months and twenty-seven days. Laid down in an Illinois river town in the last winter of World War II, she arrived in the fleet just as the fleet stopped needing her. Her story is not one of battle honors. It is the quieter story of a ship built for a war that ended before she could reach it - and the unlikely second act that carried her, under a different flag and a different name, to a reef off the coast of Brazil.

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Image: U.S. Navy | Public domain

]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/b/7/uss-chiron-wp/7pb7-uss-chiron-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full USS Chiron: Built on the Illinois River https://qualla.com/uss-chiron/ Photo credit U.S. Navy, Public domain. Chiron began life as USS LST-1133, a tank landing ship ordered as part of the vast construction program that put thousands of amphibious hulls into the water during World War II. Before she could be completed as an LST, the Navy reclassified her as a motor torpedo boat tender - a...

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Image: U.S. Navy | Public domain

]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/b/7/uss-chiron-wp/7pb7-uss-chiron-built-on-the-illinois-river.mp3 0:06 2 full USS Chiron: A Short Peacetime Career https://qualla.com/uss-chiron/ Photo credit U.S. Navy, Public domain. By the time conversion was finished, the war in Europe was over and Japan had surrendered. Chiron was recommissioned, sent south from Norfolk on 1 November 1945, and reached Miami on 4 November to support the PT boats of Motor Torpedo Squadron 42. She tended them for a month - se...

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Image: U.S. Navy | Public domain

]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/b/7/uss-chiron-wp/7pb7-uss-chiron-a-short-peacetime-career.mp3 0:06 3 full USS Chiron: A Second Life Under Argentina's Flag https://qualla.com/uss-chiron/ Photo credit U.S. Navy, Public domain. What happens to a warship the Navy no longer wants? Chiron's answer was the standard postwar answer: she was sold for commercial service. On 19 May 1947 she was transferred to Argentine owners, and by 1948 she was sailing under the Argentine flag as the motor vessel Altamar. Her ...

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Image: U.S. Navy | Public domain

]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/b/7/uss-chiron-wp/7pb7-uss-chiron-a-second-life-under-argentinas-flag.mp3 0:06 4 full USS Chiron: The Wreck on Manoel Luís Reef https://qualla.com/uss-chiron/ Photo credit U.S. Navy, Public domain. On that spring voyage, Altamar was carrying a cargo of grain from Cabedelo, on Brazil's northeastern coast, toward Belém at the mouth of the Amazon. Her route took her across Manoel Luís Reef, a shallow coral complex off the coast of Maranhão that has been a mariner's hazard for ...

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Image: U.S. Navy | Public domain

]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/b/7/uss-chiron-wp/7pb7-uss-chiron-the-wreck-on-manoel-lu-s-reef.mp3 0:06 5 full USS Chiron: Small Ship, Long Story https://qualla.com/uss-chiron/ Photo credit U.S. Navy, Public domain. Chiron is not a famous name in naval history. She did not fight at Leyte Gulf or cover the beaches at Okinawa. Her place in the record is as a small example of a large pattern: the American industrial surge that built warships faster than the war could consume them, and the long ...

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Image: U.S. Navy | Public domain

]]> Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/7/p/b/7/uss-chiron-wp/7pb7-uss-chiron-small-ship-long-story.mp3 0:06 6 full