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USS Taconic was an Adirondack-class amphibious assault command ship serving the United States Navy for the entirety of her sailing career. Ordered and laid down during the fighting of World War 2 (1939-1945), she was not completed and acquired by the service until well after the fighting has ended. Her hull was laid down on December 19th, 1944 by North Carolina Shipbuilding Company of Wilmington, NC, and she was launched to sea on February 10th, 1945. The Navy took her into service on March 6th, 1945, and formally commissioned the vessel on January 17th, 1946.

Her conversion work to an Amphibious Force Flagship was undertaken by Atlantic Basin Iron Works of Brooklyn, New York. For her time at sea, Taconic fought under the nickname of "Mighty T". Her formal name stemmed from the Taconic Mountain range of the Appalachians found in the state of New York.

Amphibious Force Command Ships differ from more common warships in that they were completed with additional communications, working spaces, and berths for fleet-level commanders and associated staff personnel. The vessels - essentially Command and Control (C2) mobile platforms - operated within the existing fleet by offering coordination of at-sea vessels.

The Adirondack-class numbered just three ships, these built from the period spanning 1944 to 1945 and serving until 1969. Named ships of the class were USS Adirondack (AGC-15), USS Pocono (AGC-16), and USS Taconic (AGC-17). All served long enough to be scrapped after their usefulness had run out.

The vessel has a conventional silhouette with the bulk of her structural weight concentrated at midships. Masts were positioned fore, center, and aft along the design. The warship displaced 7,356 tons under light load and 14,133 tons under full load. Aboard was a complement of 633. Dimensions included an overall length of 459.1 feet with a beam of 63 feet and a draught of 24 feet. Power was derived from a geared steam turbine developing 6,000 horsepower to a single shaft astern. Armament was purely defensive in nature, led by 2 x 5" /38 caliber deck guns backed by 3 x 40mm Bofors Anti-Aircraft (AA) automatic cannons in twin-gunned mountings and 6 x 20mm Oerlikon AA cannons in single-gunned mountings.

Taconic's first assignment was with the Atlantic Fleet as the West geared up for a prolonged "Cold War" against the Soviet Union in the post-World War 2 world. She undertook various exercises during this time and was given an overhaul in June of 1949 at her homeport - Naval Station, Norfolk. In 1951, she was used in the motion picture "The Frogmen". Other exercises then followed, these in conjunction with other NATO units. In 1958, she was on hand for the Lebanon Crisis and, in 1963 and 1965, was stationed in Caribbean waters near Haiti and the Dominican Republic during local unrest.

By January of 1969, her hull was reclassified from the original "AGC-17" to the new "LCC-17" (joining sister-ship USS Pocono (AGC-16) becoming LCC-16. In this guise, she only served a year longer for, on December 17th, 1969, she was set in reserve. After being stripped of her military usefulness, her depleted hulk was sold for scrapping, this on April 6th, 1982, bringing about a formal end to her sailing career that spanned over twenty years of service.

Sisters Adirondack saw decommissioning in February of 1955 and was scrapped as soon as November 1972. Pocono was not scrapped until December 1981.©MilitaryFactory.com

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