Altamaha was laid down on 19 December 1941 at Tacoma as Maritime Commission hull 235, by the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation. She was launched on 25 May 1942. Mrs. Thomas S. Combs sponsored her. Captain J. R. Tate commissioned her on 15 September 1942.
On 27 October she sailed for San Diego with Kendrick (DD-612). On the way Kendrick reported a submarine and three torpedoes. No one on Altamaha saw them. The two ships reached San Diego on 31 October. She sailed in convoy on 3 November, reached Espiritu Santo on 24 November, and Noumea on 28 November, where she trained and flew. She was back at Espiritu Santo on 30 December, touched Nandi in Fiji on 13 January 1943, and in early February put cargo ashore at Funafuti. She reached Pearl Harbor on 10 February with Air Group 11, delivered that group to Nandi on 28 February, and through March carried replacement aircraft out to Palmyra, Johnston Island, and Midway.
From April into July 1943 she worked off the California coast. In July she took Army airplanes to Brisbane, then to Karachi, where she delivered twenty-nine of them on 28 August. She called at Melbourne and entered Mare Island on 8 October for overhaul. A later run put her in Brisbane on 30 November. In March 1944 she embarked Composite Squadron 6 and, with four destroyer escorts, patrolled about 300 miles east of the Marshalls against submarines on the Pearl Harbor supply line. The group reported two contacts and received credit for neither.
She then joined the replenishment ships. On 17 December 1944, in the Philippine Sea with Task Group 30.8, heavy seas stopped a transfer of pilots to Buchanan (DD-484). By the next morning the weather was a typhoon. She rolled twenty-five to thirty degrees, and almost half the aircraft on board broke loose and went over the side. The forward elevator pit flooded. She kept on with the replenishment group into February 1945, serving Third Fleet ships and calling at Guam, Manus, and Ulithi, then touched Pearl Harbor on 15 February and Alameda on 26 February. Hunters Point repaired a propeller damaged in the typhoon.
Through the last months of the war she carried planes, ammunition, and supplies among Alameda, San Diego, Pearl Harbor, Guam, Saipan, Eniwetok, Kossol Roads, and Samar. After the capitulation she overhauled again at Hunters Point, sailed for Pearl Harbor on 22 October, and joined the ships bringing men and equipment home. On 15 January 1946 she headed for Tacoma. She went out of commission, in reserve, on 27 September 1946. She received one battle star. Redesignated CVHE-18 on 12 June 1955, she was struck on 1 March 1959 and sold on 25 April 1961.