But I did not know that it was acquired by the U.S. Navy on Oct. 16, 1940, and converted into use as a seaplane tender. She was renamed the USS ... scouted waters approaching the harbor searching for ...

Long before aircraft carriers dominated the seas, vessels known as seaplane tenders were the only way ... was even responsible for locating the German battleship Bismarck during the Royal Navy's ...

and that one of my first jobs would be to go to Hamburg to bring back a newly arrived seaplane tender from England. For this purpose I had been allocated two German ex-sailors — Stegman and Somers.

They helped detect the German battleship, the Bismarck, in 1941. But they would never even have reached the sky without the tenders that serviced them. "All seaplane bases had tenders to bring ...