USS Valcour, a 1,766-ton Barnegat class small seaplane tender, was built at Houghton, Washington, and was commissioned in July 1946. After shakedown training at San Diego, she proceeded to the East Coast in September 1946 for duty with the Atlantic Fleet. She then operated out of Norfolk, Va.; Quonset Point, R.I.; Cristobal, Canal Zone; and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba tending seaplanes through mid-1949.

Designated flagship for Commander, Middle East Force, Valcour departed Norfolk in August 1949 for the first of sixteen deployments to the Middle East. She returned to Norfolk in March 1950 and conducted a second tour as Middle East Force flagship between September 1950 and March 1951. In May 1951, while departing Norfolk for independent ship exercises, she suffered a steering casualty and veered across the bow of the collier Thomas Tracey. The ensuing collision ruptured an aviation gasoline fuel tank and started a raging fire that took the lives of 36 men. After a major firefighting and salvage operation, she was brought back into port the following day. Valcour then underwent an extensive overhaul, during which air conditioning was installed and her 5"/38 gun was removed to compensate for the added weight.

Between 1952 and 1965 Valcour deployed every year to the Middle East as one of a trio of ships that served alternately as flagship for Commander Middle East Force. Through 1961 Valcour followed a highly predictable schedule, departing Norfolk in January, relieving USS Duxbury Bay (AVP-38) upon arrival on station, being relieved by USS Greenwich Bay (AVP-41), and returning to Norfolk in August. Highlights of this service included the boarding, salvage, and return to its crew of the burning and abandoned Italian tanker Argea Prima in May 1955 and a visit to the Seychelles Islands in 1960. She was the first U. S. Navy ship to call there in 48 years. In around 1960 Valcour received some conspicuous equipment upgrades, including a tripod mast with a newer air search radar and a tall communications antenna which, with its deckhouse, replaced the quadruple 40mm gun mount on her fantail. She completed her fifteenth Middle East cruise in March 1965.

In a 1965 force realignment, Valcour's two running mates were ordered decommissioned and Valcour was selected to be the sole Middle East flagship. As such, she was reclassified AGF-1 in December 1965 and departed the United States for her new home port of Bahrain in April 1966. Though designated the permanent Middle East Force flagship in 1971, in January 1972 she was selected for inactivation. After relief as flagship by La Salle (AGF-3), in November 1972 she arrived in Norfolk following transits of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Valcour was decommissioned in January 1973. In March her stripped hulk was towed to Solomons Island, Md., where it was used by the Naval Ordnance Laboratory for electromagnetic pulse experiments. She was sold for scrap in June 1977.