USS Wildcat (AW-2), was a Stag-class tanker, built for the United States Navy during World War II, the only U.S. Naval vessel to be named for Felis silvestris. Originally projected as the Liberty ship tanker SS Leon Godchaux; however, before her construction began, the ship was allocated to the Navy. She was classified as IX-130, an unclassified miscellaneous vessel, and renamed Wildcat on 27 October 1943 and acquired by the Navy under a bareboat charter from the War Shipping Administration. Her keel was laid down under a Maritime Commission contract (Z-ET1-S-C3, MCE hull 1934) on 16 November 1943 at New Orleans, Louisiana, by the Delta Shipbuilding Company. She was launched on 7 January 1944 sponsored by Mrs. Leonie Godchaux Mayer, reclassified AW-2 on 4 February 1944, delivered to the Navy at New Orleans on 16 February, and commissioned as USS Wildcat (AW-2) the following day, 17 February 1944. Soon thereafter, the ship was shifted to Tampa, Florida, for hull alterations by the Tampa Shipbuilding Company, and was decommissioned at Key West, Florida, on 10 April 1944. At the naval operating base there, Wildcat underwent the balance of the conversion from tanker to water distilling ship into the autumn of 1944. She recommissioned at Key West on 15 October 1944. Service history Wildcat conducted shakedown training in the Gulf of Mexico before she underwent post-shakedown alterations at the Todd Shipbuilding Company in Galveston, Texas. Wildcat departed Galveston on 5 December, bound via the Panama Canal Zone for the western Pacific. She transited the canal and at Balboa underwent minor repairs from 11 to 21 December to her engineering plant before she got underway on the latter day for the Admiralty Islands. She made port at Manus on 23 January 1945 and, two days later, shifted to Humboldt Bay, New Guinea. Attached to Service Squadron 9, 7th Fleet, Wildcat soon sailed in convoy for the Philippines and, on 6 February, dropped anchor in Leyte Gulf, off the municipality of Dulag, on the eastern coast of Leyte. Two days later, the ship moved to San Pedro Bay, Leyte, where she remained into April, distilling and issuing fresh potable water to small craft and merchant vessels. She received a tender availability alongside the from 11 to 18 April before shifting to Calicoan Island to transfer her deck cargo to SS Ben Ruffin. Wildcat then returned to San Pedro Bay on 23 April to resume