Embroidered USN ServRon 10 patch - Ulithi Atoll embroidered Beans, Bullets and Black Oil

Ulithi is a municipality and atoll located 191 kilometres east of the Yap Islands, 87 km west of Fais Island, in the western Caroline Islands in the Pacific Ocean. During the Pacific War, the Caroline Islands came under US control in 1944, which established a major advanced naval base with floating docks from October 1944 at Ulithi.

A Service Squadron (ServRon) was a United States Navy squadron that supported combat units at sea. The United States Navy made use of service squadrons from their creation in 1943 until the early 1980s. At the time of their creation during the Second World War, they enabled the US Navy to operate across vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean for extended periods. ServRon established temporary forward bases to allow fleets to spend less time in transit and more time in combat.

Ulithi, a small volcanic atoll in the central Pacific, is an example of a site converted into a forward supply base. With the naval base at Ulithi for overhaul, repair and resupply, many ships were able to deploy and operate in the western Pacific for a year or more without returning to a major port facility. Among the ships operating in the service squadrons were tankers, refrigerated vessels, ammunition transports, supply ships, floating docks and repair ships. They supplied diesel, ammunition, aviation fuel, foodstuffs and all other provisions. The floating docks and dry docks were equally important. At Ulithi, they allowed many ships damaged by enemy action or Pacific storms to be repaired without having to travel thousands of miles back to a major US naval base. Ulithi is as far from the US naval base at San Francisco as the San Francisco base is from London, England.

Having a large fully operational port in the centre of the Pacific was a significant asset for US Navy operations.