U.S. Soldiers Return Home On The Queen Elizabeth - With her decks crowded with 13,113 American fighting men, the Queen Elizabeth, the world's largest ocean liner, steams up New York Bay on June 29, 1945. Among the homecoming troops aboard are 13,658 men of the U.S. Eighth Army Air Force and general hospital units, as well as 1,200 Navy men and 442 Army nurses. All are returning from the European theater of war, and many will soon see service in the Pacific. The 85,000-ton troop ship made her first voyage across the submarine-infested Atlantic in Larch, 1940. This is her first official visit to New York, since all previous trips were secret. July 27, 1945. (Photo by U.S. Office Of War Information Picture).