laststandonzombieisland

Pre-Mayberry, actor Andy Griffith, exempted from service at age 18 in 1944 due to a herniated disk,  made a couple of military service comedies during the late 1950s: the better-received Korean War-set USAF-based No Time for Sergeants, and the lesser-known Onionhead.

In Onionhead, Griffith portrayed country simple Cook 3rd Class– now known as a Culinary Specialist Third Class (CS3)– Alvin Woods, who signs up for the Coast Guard during World War II and is assigned to the fictional buoy tender USCGC Periwinkle, cue laugh track and burned cinnamon roll hilarity.

Periwinkle somehow sinks an enemy U-boat, and Wood/Griffith ends up with the girl in the end.

Based on a novel by William R. Scott, a native Oklahoman who served in the USCG during “the Big Show,” the movie was filmed at Coast Guard Base Alameda and Yerba Buena Island circa 1958, with at least some footage of the USCGC Yamacraw (WARC-333) making it to the finished, albeit ill-received, movie.

Yamacraw was a very interesting ship.

Constructed during WWII at Point Pleasant, W. Va., by the Marietta Manufacturing Co as Hull 480, a 1,320 ton, 188-foot Coastal Artillery mine planter for the U.S. Army as USAMP Maj. Gen. Arthur Murray (MP-9), she was delivered to the Army on 1 October 1942.

After serving on the East Coast during WWII, once the threat of Axis invasion passed, Randolph transferred to the Navy on 2 January 1945. She was then converted into an auxiliary minelayer by the Navy Yard, Charleston, S.C., and commissioned there on 15 March 1945 as USS Trapper, designated ACM-9, a Chimo-class auxiliary minelayer, Lt. Richard E. Lewis, USNR, in command.

Her armament included one 40mm Bofors mount and four 20mm mounts, and she was fitted with both listening gear and radar.

It was planned that she was to take part in the last push for the Japanese home islands in late 1945/early 1946, but that never materialized, and she only made it as far as Pearl Harbor by the time the Pacific War ended.

Trapper arrived at Kobe on 25 November 1945 and operated out of that port repairing minesweeping gear until 1 February 1946, when she shifted her base of operations to Wakayama for a month. She was then sent back stateside and arrived at San Francisco on 2 May, where she was decommissioned.

Transferred to the USCG on 20 June 1946 for use as a cable layer, USCGC Yamacraw (WARC-333), after a traditional cutter name, ex-Trapper/ex-Murray was struck from the Navy list on 19 July 1946.

She remained in USCG custody until early 1959.

This included filming of Onionhead and a 1957-1958 lease during the International Geophysical Year to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for acoustic studies of the North Atlantic and Mediterranean. In that task, the ship towed a cable that recorded ambient sound in the ocean, plus a thermistor chain for measuring temperature.

The Navy then re-acquired the old Army mine ship on 17 May 1959, painted her haze gray, kept the USCG name, and redesignated her as ARC-5, a cable repair ship.

The difference as told by two Jane’s entries:

As a Naval auxiliary, she operated from Portsmouth to Bermuda and spent much of her at-sea time conducting research projects for the Office of Naval Research and for the Bell Telephone Laboratories.

On 2 July 1965, Yamacraw was decommissioned by the Navy for a second and final time, transferred to the permanent custody of the Maritime Administration, and struck, again, from the Navy list.

Her final fate is unknown.