LST-944 was a tank landing ship, and the hull number was her name. She was an LST-542-class ship. Bethlehem-Hingham, at Hingham, Massachusetts, laid her down on 11 August 1944. The launch day is not one day. NavSource prints 3 September 1944. The Dictionary and uboat.net print 13 September 1944, and that is the launch date followed here. The Navy commissioned her on 4 October 1944. The commissioning line names Lieutenant Joseph Harry Floyd of the Naval Reserve. The dated command list starts him on 4 December 1944 and relieves him in September 1945. Both are kept. NavSource's class figures are the same 328 feet, 50-foot beam, and 11.6-knot trial printed for the other ships of the class. The ultimate gun battery printed with those figures is a design, not a count verified for this hull.
She went to the Pacific in LST Flotilla 25, Group 73, Division 146. NavSource's captions put her at Pearl Harbor between 8 December 1944 and 22 January 1945, in the training that built up the Iwo Jima assault. The battle star for that assault runs from 20 to 28 February 1945. On 23 March, after that window, a Navy photograph shows her beached on Yellow Beach with one or both engines out, and Zuni (ATF-95) alongside to hold her in the surf. Zuni's own history tells that job as a separate thing from the grounding: the tug gave this landing ship power for a run to the beach, and stayed alongside while the Army's 506th 90 mm antiaircraft battalion went ashore, and then, on 23 March, grounded while trying to save LST-727. The photograph's caption puts the LST-944 scene on 23 March. She was not sunk.
Her second star is the assault and occupation of Okinawa Gunto, 17 April to 7 June 1945. On 23 July 1945 she was one of the landing ships moored at the Yonabaru pier, in a Navy photograph of the 21st Naval Construction Battalion. The caption reads, from right to left, LST-819, LST-879, LST-681, LST-926, this ship, an unnamed hull, LST-715, LST-918, LST-871, and two more unnamed hulls. She earned two battle stars.
Lieutenant (junior grade) Byron Eugene Ritter of the Naval Reserve had her from September 1945. NavSource ends his command, and her commission, on 9 December 1945. The Dictionary decommissions her on 19 December 1945. She was struck on 8 January 1946. On 26 September 1947 she was sold to the Boston Metals Company of Baltimore for scrap. She was not sunk in the war.
A note on sources. The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships entry for LST-944 gives the lay-down, the 13 September launch, the 4 October commissioning, the two campaigns in February and from April through June, the 19 December 1945 decommissioning, the 8 January 1946 strike, the 26 September 1947 sale, and the two battle stars. NavSource gives the 3 September launch, the 9 December decommissioning, the campaign windows day by day, the Pearl Harbor training captions, the Yellow Beach caption, and the two commands, credited there to Wolfgang Hechler and Ron Reeves. The Yonabaru photograph is Navy negative 204 of the 21st Naval Construction Battalion. The separation between the powered beaching and the 23 March grounding is the Dictionary entry for Zuni.
