Eltanin-class cargo ship

The Eltanin class was a group of three small, ice-strengthened cargo ships that Avondale Marine Ways of Avondale, Louisiana, built for the United States Navy in 1957 and 1958 on a Maritime Administration C1-ME2-13a hull. The Avondale hull list shows them as Eltanin (T-AK-270), Mirfak (T-AK-271) and Mizar (T-AK-272), each of 1,850 tons displacement and 266 feet by 52 feet, delivered between October 1957 and March 1958. The Military Sea Transportation Service operated them, and Eltanin ran in a non-commissioned status. Two of the three were later rebuilt as research ships. Eltanin was fitted with laboratories in place of cargo spaces in 1961 and 1962, reclassified as the oceanographic research vessel T-AGOR-8, and made 52 Antarctic research cruises whose magnetic profiles of the sea floor gave key evidence for sea floor spreading. Mizar became the research ship T-AGOR-11 for the Naval Research Laboratory, with a center well for towed search equipment, and took part in the searches for the submarines Thresher and Scorpion. By the hull list Eltanin was scrapped in 1992, Mirfak in 2003 and Mizar in 2005. Avondale is now part of Huntington Ingalls Industries.