S/S Major Stephen W. Pless Photos
This page collects the S/S Major Stephen W. Pless photographs into a dedicated archive so the ship, crew, and voyages can stand on their own. The images cover crew life aboard ship, the military helicopters we operated with, and port visits to Japan. The Denmark photographs taken from her decks and ashore during this period are collected on the Denmark page.
The S/S Major Stephen W. Pless was a Sgt. Matej Kocak-class cargo ship, 821 feet in length, built in 1983 at Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. in Chester, Pennsylvania. She was later operated by Military Sealift Command as USNS Maj. Stephen W. Pless (T-AK-3007). The ship is named for Major Stephen W. Pless, a U.S. Marine helicopter pilot who received the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Vietnam War. She was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in March 2023 and arrived in Brownsville, Texas in 2025 for scrapping.
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S/S Major Stephen W. Pless — 2003 to 2005
These photographs document life and work aboard the Pless during port calls and operations in Japan and northern Europe. The military helicopters were a regular part of the world we worked in during that stretch.
Crew aboard the Pless during a port call in Japan.
Lin and me aboard the Pless, March 21, 2004.
An Apache helicopter on deck — the kind of cargo that made the Pless a different kind of ship.
Another helicopter on the Pless deck.
A Huey on deck, an old warhorse sitting on a working ship far from any battlefield.