I have been kicking some Moto-Tug questions around with a friend who retired from the USN as a Commander and who spent a lot of time on carriers. Now, remember that the Moto-Tugs were made up under USN contract. He made an educated guess that BNO = Bureau of Naval Ordnance.
Is this as good a guess as any? I don't know of anything else in the Ford system of naming and numbering that would equate to BNO.
He also put me in touch with a retired Navy Captain who was on active duty on carriers during the Korean war. This retired officer believes that the Ford Moto-Tugs were unable to handle the weight of the F-9 Crusader fighter jets that reached the fleet around 1954, thus they were replaced with more powerful tugs.
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