| abstract | - USS Balduck (APD-132) was a Crosley-class high speed transport of the United States Navy, named after Marine Corporal Remi A. Balduck (1918–1942), who was killed during the Battle of Guadalcanal. For his actions he was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. Balduck's keel was laid down on 17 June 1944 at the Defoe Shipbuilding Company in Bay City, Michigan as a Rudderow-class destroyer escort, designated DE-716. She was re-designated as APD-132, a fast transport, on 17 July 1944, and launched on 27 October 1944, sponsored by Mrs. Mary Verhougstraete, mother of Corporal Balduck. Builders trials before her pre-commissioning cruise were done in Lake Huron. After completion, Balduck sailed from the builder's yard at Bay City to Chicago, Illinois. From there, they went through the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal and down the Chicago River to Joliet, Illinois, where pontoons were attached to the ship so it could be pushed down the Des Plaines River, Illinois River, and Mississippi River as part of a barge train. After arriving at the Todd Johnson Shipyard in Algiers, Louisiana, on the west bank of the Mississippi at New Orleans, the rest of the crew reported aboard, and Balduck was commissioned at New Orleans on 7 May 1945, with Lieutenant R. T. Newell, Jr., USNR, in command.
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