Pasig-class distilling ship

The Pasig class was a group of four water distilling ships built for the United States Navy during World War II, whose hulls were laid down at the Marinship yard in Sausalito, California as Maritime Commission T2-SE-A2 tankers. The Navy took the ships over while they were building, gave them oiler hull numbers and then redesignated them as distilling ships, because fresh water had become a harder problem than fuel for the fleet in the Pacific. The lead ship, USS Pasig (AW-3), was laid down as Mission San Xavier on 18 May 1944, launched on 15 July 1944 and commissioned on 11 December 1944. Her sister USS Abatan (AW-4) began as Mission San Lorenzo. The ships distilled and issued fresh water to landing craft, patrol vessels and other fleet units at advanced bases such as Ulithi, and Pasig's plant, rated at 120,000 gallons a day, supplied United Nations forces in Korean and Japanese waters for 37 continuous months.