SS Ohio was an oil tanker built for The Texas Company (later Texaco). The ship was launched on 20 April 1940 at the Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. in Chester, Pennsylvania. The United Kingdom requisitioned it to re-supply the island fortress of Malta during the Second World War.
The tanker played a key role in Operation Pedestal, which was one of the fiercest and most heavily contested of the Malta convoys, in August 1942. Although Ohio reached Malta successfully, it was so badly damaged that it had to be effectively scuttled in order to offload its cargo, and never sailed again. The tanker is fondly remembered in Malta, where to this day it is considered the saviour of the beleaguered island.
Design and building
Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. built Ohio as hull 190, launching her on 20 April 1940 and completing her that June. She was a skillful compromise, promising broad cargo-carrying capacity to the merchant and speed, balance, and stability to the mariner. Above the waterline her design echoed the outward curve of a schooner's bow, bearing the influence of the old American clipper ship design. She was the lead ship of her class of eight ships, all owned by The Texas Company.
The threat of a rearming Germany and a Japanese Empire bent on military expansion, and the approach of war, influenced Ohios design. Unofficial conversations between military and oil chiefs resulted in a ship of and , 515 feet length overall, and capable of carrying of fuel oil. The ship was completed in the unusually short time of seven months and 15 days.
The Westinghouse steam turbine engines developed 9,000 driveshaft horsepower at 90 revolutions per minute, which gave her a speed of . Ohio was considered the fastest tanker of her era. Her method of construction was controversial. For some years, the issue of welding versus riveting had raged on both sides of the Atlantic. Ohio was welded, with hopes it would prove once and for all its reliability. The ship also had a composite framing system with two longitudinally continuous bulkheads, which divided the ship into 21 cargo tanks.
The ship was launched the day after that scheduled, prompting superstitious fear in the welders, steel-cutters and other craftsmen who had assembled to watch her launch. She was christened in a ceremony presided over by the mother of William Starling Sullivant Rodgers, president of the Texas Oil Company, Florence E. Rodgers, who, grasping the ceremonial bottle of champagne in her hand, pronounced the words:
The ship slid down No. 2 slipway, entering the waters of the Delaware River. The existence of Ohio would, in her initial years, be uneventful and ordinary, plying between Port Arthur and various other American harbors. She set a speed record from Bayonne to Port Arthur, covering in four days and twelve hours, an average of more than seventeen knots.
Malta, "Pedestal" planning and Ohio
In 1942, Britain was waging war in the Mediterranean against the German Afrika Korps and Italian forces in North Africa. Crucial to this theatre of operations was the island of Malta, sitting in the middle of Axis supply lines and, if supplied with sufficient munitions, aircraft and fuel, capable of causing severe shortages to the German and Italian armies in North Africa. Munitions and aircraft were available – during a brief lull in the Axis attacks, for example, the island's defenses were reinforced by 38 Spitfire Mk V aircraft flown in from – but these, along with food and fuel, remained in critically short supply. Successive attempts at resupplying the island had mostly failed; the convoys "Harpoon" (from Gibraltar) and "Vigorous" (from Alexandria, Egypt) saw most of their merchantmen sunk and escort ships damaged by aerial and surface attacks. One of the ships lost during "Harpoon" was Ohios sister ship Kentucky, crippled by a German air attack and then abandoned. The tanker was eventually finished off by the Italian cruisers and and two destroyers.