In the first years after the war, a number of them were used as aircraft tenders.

Her personnel went ashore daily to clear debris from the hangars and the surrounding area in order to make the base operable, thereby relieving the congestion at aircraft tenders.

After installation of her armament, the lighter-than-air aircraft tender departed Philadelphia on 2 March, touching at Hampton Roads, Virginia and Charleston, South Carolina en route to the Florida coast.

The most successful plane had been the British design, and indeed experiments in Britain had been proceeding with the support of Winston Churchill, including converting initially ferries and liners into aircraft tenders and aircraft carriers.

Tanks, guns, ambulances, lorries, cars, motor-cycles, searchlights, Bren-gun carriers, repair vans, aircraft tenders, listening apparatus, heavy howitzers, field cookers, petrol wagons, and every other conceivable type of army vehicle littered the scene in one vast higgledy-piggledy jumble for miles on either side of him and as far as he could see.

The first group of APDs (APD-1 through APD-36) were converted from one Caldwell class, 17 Wickes class, and 14 Clemson class "flush-deck" destroyers built during and after World War I. Some of these had been previously converted to aircraft tenders or other uses.