Hi Derek - all my shots of these vessels, some in Southampton, some in Barry are all dated September 1973.
Aeolus is still in USN colours, Alber J Meyer is MSC colours, I'm scanning at the moment, will post soon

Allan

Allan

Hello REG and davidships. Firstly many thanks to you both for the interesting and helpful information you have posted. As to the date of the photo I took shots of Neptune, Aeolus and Flyer all at Southampton at the same time and my slide mounts give the date as September 1972. I have looked at the service record for Neptune and Aeolus and they were in the North Atlantic on operations which it states concluded in September 1972, which seems to corroborate that this date is correct. Derek

Are you sure about the date? She was commissioned in 1953 as USS NEPTUNE (ARC-2) and not decommissioned until 1973, during which time she carried normal all-grey colours. Here still in USN colours at Barry in 8/1973 (if that date correct). It should have been after that that she became USNS NEPTUNE (T-ARC-2), in Military Sealift Command colours, as here.

A very good quality photograph of a very obscure vessel. USNS Neptune was an old cable layer, originally completed in 1946. She and sister-ship USNS Albert J Myer were the last operational U.S. Naval vessels to be powered by steam reciprocating engines. USNS Neptune operated in support of the Top=Secret SOSUS program (see link below). Ships such as USNS Neptune kept a very low profile. Few people, even in the U.S. Navy, knew about vessels such as this, let alone ever saw them, and few photographs of them were ever taken.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOSUS