Project Flat Top was a United States Army project during the Vietnam War to convert , a World War II-era seaplane tender, into a forward theater, offshore helicopter repair facility. Helicopters had been used during the Korean War to ferry wounded and supplies. Some US combat officers recognized the possibility of using armed helicopters to provide close air support. But other organizations and branches strenuously objected to allowing the Army to deliver ordnance via aircraft. The Army Staff in The Pentagon responded slowly to a study from the Army Aircraft Requirements Review Board chaired by Lieutenant general (LTG) Gordon B. Rogers that suggested adopting helicopters for use in a combat role. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara bypassed Secretary of the Army Elvis Jacob Stahr Jr. and directed LTG Hamilton H. Howze, the Army's first director of aviation, to conduct a review of the tactical possibilities suggested by the study. The Howze Board report received by McNamara in September 1962 proposed huge changes in Army doctrine, prescribing an airmobility doctrine integrating helicopters into combat.
With helicopters increasingly at the center of Army doctrine as a result of the Howze Board's recommendations, it became apparent that a logistical gap would arise between the operational area and repair bases in the US. Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) John Sullivan, a respected Army aviator, conceived of the idea to convert a ship into a floating helicopter repair facility. Sullivan was named by General Frank Besson, commanding general of the newly formed United States Army Materiel Command (AMC), to lead the project.
After considerable research, Sullivan and his team selected the World War II USS Albemarle (AV-5). When progress slowed for almost a year, Sullivan bypassed Army leadership and persuaded influential Congressman Mendel Rivers of South Carolina, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, to support the project. New shops, instruments, technology, communications, and storage were added to the ship over 15 months at a cost of $25 million. Rechristened as , a civilian United States Merchant Marine (USMM) crew was chosen to operate the bridge, engine room, and man the ship's watches. This was a controversial move that generated concern about their placement near a combat zone and their potential treatment under the Geneva Conventions. US Army soldiers staffed the multiple repair shops that were equipped with custom facilities that could repair or fabricate parts to factory standards.
The ship offered the same echelon of depot-level service available in the U.S. at the Army Aeronautical Depot Maintenance Center in Corpus Christi, Texas while it served off the coast of South Vietnam for 6½ years. The soldiers repaired as many as 20,000 aircraft components a month and saved the military millions of dollars. When the war was drawing down, the ship left for the U.S. in late 1972. On 17 July 1975, after more than 36 years of service, the ship was scrapped.
Background
At the beginning of the 1960s, the US Army evaluated a concept called FAMF (Floating Aircraft Maintenance Facility), a way to support aircraft far abroad on a mobile ship. The Army Materiel Command established a top-level Project Management Office called “Project Flat-Top”. It was originally envisioned the project would acquire and convert a mothballed WWII US Navy small aircraft carrier.
In October 1961, LTC John F. Sullivan was selected by the Army Chief of Transportation in the US Army Transportation Materiel Command (TMC) to study production management at the Army Aeronautical Depot Maintenance Center (ARADMAC). In January, 1962, Sullivan passed a highly selective screening process and was temporarily assigned to attend the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. When he returned to ARADMAC in May he was appointed Director of Production Control.
On 20 August 1962, the Howze Board proposed significant changes to Army doctrine, including the use of helicopters for reconnaissance, command and control, troop transport, attack gunships, aerial rocket artillery, medical evacuation, and supply. In response, Sullivan suggested to his superiors at ARADMAC that the Army should build a ship-based helicopter repair facility, similar to the Aircraft Repair Unit-Floating (ARU(F)) of World War II.
Sullivan had fought in World War II during 1942 in New Guinea as a 1LT and air controller in the 107th Quartermaster Company, 126th IR, 32nd Infantry Division, the first to be transported into combat as a division. Wounded in an air crash, he returned to duty and was assigned to an Aviation Ordnance Maintenance Company in Townsend, Australia.
Once Sullivan persuaded his immediate superiors at ARADMAC to support the idea of a floating aviation repair depot, it took him more than two years to win over the heads of the Supply and Maintenance Command and then the Transportation Materiel Command. Sullivan assumed broad responsibility for initial development of a "floating aircraft maintenance facility" (FAMF) and put considerable effort into selling it to senior Army leadership. Sullivan wrote a number of reports and held conferences to advance his idea. He spent so much time in Washington D.C. that he was given a second office there. Sullivan made trips to Germany, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Hawaii, both coasts of the United States and many bases between, gathering information.
Sullivan then successfully sought the attention and approval of General Frank S. Besson, who had recently been appointed as commanding officer of the newly formed United States Army Materiel Command (AMC). The formation of AMC represented a major reorganization within the Army, consolidating all seven Army technical services: the Offices of the Quartermaster General, the Chief of Ordnance, the Chief of Engineers, the Surgeon General, the Chief Signal Officer, the Chief Chemical Officer, and the Chief of Transportation. Besson's success later resulted in his receiving the Merit Award of the Armed Forces Management Association in 1963.
On 17 June 1964, Besson relieved LTC Sullivan of his role as Director of Production Control and assigned him full time as project officer of Project Flat Top. In August 1964 Besson directed the Transportation Materiel Command to explore the feasibility of using a ship as a floating maintenance facility to provide helicopter support in the Far East.
Ship selection
Sullivan's mission was to create a floating aircraft maintenance facility. Choosing a specific ship, planning and designing the changes for its new use, and then converting the ship was a complex, lengthy, frustrating, and expensive effort. Sullivan originally assumed that the selected ship would be one of the US Navy's World War II escort carriers. A special team, including several enlisted men who had started as aircraft mechanics trained by the Air Force in the mid-1950s, crawled through 17 mothballed World War II vessels of all sorts: escort carriers, tank landing ships, cargo ships, and seaplane tenders. They found that the cost of reactivating one of the mothballed escort carriers would be prohibitive.
They also reasoned that the aircraft destined for repair would not be in flying condition anyway and that a seaplane tender already came equipped with some shops. They finally chose the recently decommissioned World War II Curtiss-class seaplane tender USS Albemarle. Compared to a , Albemarle was longer: 527 ft 4 in (160.73 m) vs. 495 ft (151 m), drew less water: 21 ft 1 in (6.43 m) vs 23 ft 3 in (7.09 m) vs, and was slightly faster: 20 kn (23 mph; 37 km/h) vs. 18 kn (33 km/h; 21 mph).
Sullivan had to convince the Navy to give up a vessel to another service branch, which was highly unusual, particularly after the interservice difficulties following the establishment of the United States Air Force when the Army wanted organic fixed-wing aviation assets. The Army, which had been accused by the Air Force of beginning another "Air Corps", found the Navy wary of the Army's attempts to get its own "aircraft carrier", but the Navy agreed as long as the Army paid the costs of converting the ship.
Conversion Reactivation
Albemarle was laid down in Camden, New Jersey by the New York Shipbuilding Company on 12 June 1939. She was launched on 13 July 1940 and was commissioned into the fleet on 20 December 1940 as USS Albemarle (AV-5).
On 6 February 1956, Albemarle was selected for conversion to tend Martin P6M Seamaster jet flying boats. During the transformation, the aft portion of the ship was lowered to berth a seaplane. The ship was equipped to serve as a highly mobile seadrome capable of supporting jet seaplanes anywhere. Albemarle was recommissioned at Philadelphia on 21 October 1957. The Seamaster program was cancelled in 21 August 1959 before the ship had a chance to carry out its new mission.
After nearly two decades of service as a Curtiss-class seaplane tender, Albemarle was decommissioned on 21 October 1960. She was consigned to the Norfolk group of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet and later transferred to the James River, Reserve Fleet. She was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 1 September 1962.
On 7 April 1964, Albemarle was moved from the James River Fleet near Fort Eustis in Newport News, Virginia. On 7 August 1964, the United States Maritime Administration transferred the ship, earmarked for conversion to a floating aeronautical maintenance facility for helicopters, back to the Navy. On 27 March 1965 the ship was reinstated on the Navy Vessel Register and on 16 April 1965 she received a new name and classification as USNS Corpus Christi Bay (T-ARVH-1), named for Corpus Christi Bay, the ship's future home port. The ship's designation, "T-ARVH-1", classifies the ship as (T) civilian-crewed (USMM), (AR) repair ship, (V) aircraft, (H) helicopter and, (1) the first in a series. The ship was transferred to Military Sealift Command (MSC) on 11 January 1966. By law, MSC ships are not commissioned warships, are unarmed, and are prefixed with "USNS", for United States Naval Ship, instead of "USS", for United States Ship.
Design and construction issues The project team had to design multiple shops. This was a cumbersome process because of the technology at the time. For each design, craftsmen built a three-dimensional model that was used to estimate funding required. Sullivan continued to advance his idea up the chain of command to the Department of the Army and then the Department of Defense. The project slowed down for almost a year and threatened to stall altogether over a host of issues, including legal gray area issues about a civilian crew under the Geneva Convention in a combat zone, the costs of conversion, and interservice concerns.
Eventually Sullivan contacted Congressman Mendel Rivers of South Carolina, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Rivers was an ardent supporter of the military and the war in Vietnam. Sullivan talked to Rivers about using the Charleston Naval Shipyard in his district for the ship conversion project. Rivers believed that Congress should set the priorities for the Secretary of Defense and he successfully persuaded Robert McNamara to support the project.
Sullivan repeatedly traveled between ARADMAC in Corpus Christi, the shipyard in Charleston, and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. to resolve the many challenges inherent in converting Albemarle to a floating helicopter repair depot. The project's initial cost, estimated at less than $5 million, ballooned with design changes to $25 million (equivalent to $ million in ). The ship also required standing up two Aircraft Maintenance Battalions. The battalions would alternate manning the ship and augmenting the ARADMAC at Corpus Christi when not deployed.