Late last month, Eastern Shipbuilding Group, Inc. (ESG) hosted the keel authentication ceremony for the U.S. Coast Guard’s future Offshore Patrol Cutter (OPC), USCGC Chase (WMSM 916), at their Nelson Street facility in Panama City.
USCGC Chase is the second OPC laid down, following on class leader USCGC Argus (WMSM 915), is part of a ~25 ship sloop/light frigate/corvette/offshore patrol vessel group meant to replace the over half-decade old 210-foot Reliance– and 30-year-old 270-foot Bear-class medium endurance cutters.
OPC Characteristics: •Length: 360 feet •Beam: 54 feet •Draft: 17 feet •Sustained Speed: 22 Plus knots •Range: 8500 Plus nautical miles •Endurance: 60 Days
The main armament is a Mk 110 57mm gun forward with a MK 38 25mm gun over the stern HH60-sized hangar, and four M2 .50 cal mounts.
I say replace the Mk38 with a C-RAM, shoehorn a towed sonar, ASW tubes, an 8-pack Mk41 VLS crammed with Sea Sparrows, and eight NSSMs aboard and call it a day.
OPC Pickeringwill pay homage to the distinguished combat record of the Quasi-War cutter Pickering.
OPCInghamwill carry the name of a 327-foot “Treasury”-class cutter that served with distinction in World War II. [See Warship Wednesday entry on Inghamhere]
OPCs Chaseand Rushwill bear two cutter names long associated with the Coast Guard, most recently with two high-endurance cutters of the 378-foot Hamilton-class [who put in time on the gun line off Vietnam.]
OPCs Alert and Reliancewill bear the names of two famed workhorses of the medium-endurance cutter fleet.
Original caption: Coast Guard Cutter sinks sub. Heaved up from below by the force of a depth charge, the Nazi U-Boat 175 breaks surface as the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter SPENCER, guns ablaze, bears down on it, full speed ahead. The submarine was sunk on April 17, 1943, in the North Atlantic, as it was approaching inside a convoy of ships ready to attack with torpedoes.
Original caption: Coast Guard Cutter sinks sub. Coast Guardsmen on the deck of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter SPENCER watch the explosion of a depth charge which blasted a Nazi U-Boat’s hope of breaking into the center of a large convoy. The depth charge tossed from the 327-foot cutter blew the submarine to the surface, where it was engaged by Coast Guardsmen. Ships of the convoy may be seen in the background.
USCGC Spencer (WPG-36), a 327-foot Treasury-class cutter, is shown above sinking KMS U-175, in position 47.53N, 22.04W, by depth charges and gunfire some 500 miles SW of Ireland. Assigned to 10. Flottille under skipper Kptlt. Heinrich Bruns, the Type IXC boat had chalked up over 40,000 tons of shipping before Spencer ruined her paint job. Some 41 Germans were picked up from the ocean that day and made POWs for the rest of the war while 13 rode the submarine to the bottom.
Official Caption: “NAZI SUBMARINE SUNK BY THE FAMED CUTTER SPENCER: Effect of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter SPENCER’S fire are visible in this closeup shot of the U-Boat, taken as the battle raged. The Nazi standing by the stanchion amidships disappeared a moment after this picture was taken by a Coast Guard photographer. The U-Boat had been trying to sneak into the center of the convoy.” Date: 17 April 1943 Photo No.: 1512 Photographer: Jack January? Description: The “Nazi” mentioned in the above caption was probably in fact a member of the Coast Guard boarding team–one of the first Americans to board an enemy man-of-war underway at sea since the War of 1812.
Official Caption: “OFF TO RESCUE THEIR BEATEN FOES: A pulling boat leaves the side of a Coast Guard combat cutter to rescue Nazi seamen struggling in the mid-Atlantic after their U-Boat had been blasted to the bottom by the cutter’s depth charges. Two Coast Guard cutters brought 41 German survivors to a Scottish port.” Date: 17 April 1943 Photo No.: 1516 Photographer: Jack January Description: The men in this pulling boat were in fact a trained boarding team led by LCDR John B. Oren (standing in the stern and wearing the OD helmet) and LT Ross Bullard (directly to Oren’s left). With the assistance of the Royal Navy they had practiced boarding a submarine at sea in order to capture an Enigma coding machine and related intelligence material. They were forced to take a pulling lifeboat when the Spencer’s motor lifeboat was damaged by friendly fire.
As for Spencer, named for President Tyler’s T-secretary, she would survive the war and go on to complete a 40-year career.
(Courtesy USCGC Spencer Association)
Decommissioned 23 January 1974 she was used for a further six years as an Engineering Training School and berthing hulk at the CG Yard in Maryland then fully decommissioned on 15 December 1980 and sold the following year to the North American Smelting Company of Wilmington, Delaware.
Her name is currently carried by a 270-foot Bear-class high endurance cutter (WMEC 905), which has been with the Coast Guard since 1986, a comparatively paltry 35 years.
Keep in mind today the real reason why the mail doesn’t run, public employees have a three-day weekend, and why your mailbox is full of tasteless fliers.
USS Indianapolis (CA-35) commissioning pennant, used 15 November 1932, currently enshrined at the Indiana War Memorial. (Photo: Chris Eger)
The frigate-sized National Security Cutter USCGC Hamilton (WMSL 753), with an embarked MH-65 Dolphin helicopter, has been on a European cruise in the U.S. Sixth Fleet area of operations to include a stint in the Black Sea, the first time a cutter has been in that ancient body of water since USCGC Dallas (WMEC 716) visited in 2008. Hamilton has been working closely with U.S. allies who share the littoral with Russia and Ukraine to include the Turks and Georgians.
BLACK SEA (April 30, 2021) U.S. Coast Guard members conduct boat and flight procedures on the USCGC Hamilton (WMSL 753) with Turkish naval members aboard the TCG Turgutreis (F 241) in the Black Sea, April 30, 2021
210502-G-G0108-1335 BLACK SEA (May 2, 2021) USCGC Hamilton (WMSL 753) and Georgian coast guard vessels Ochamchire (P 23) and Dioskuria (P 25) conduct underway maneuvers in the Black Sea, May 2, 2021. (U.S. Coast Guard courtesy photo)
Those with a sharp eye will note the Georgian boats are former U.S.-built 110-foot Island-class cutters, USCGC Staten Island (WPB-1345) and USCGC Jefferson Island (WPB-1340), respectively, which had been transferred in 2014 after they were retired from American service.
Notably, the Georgian Islands are carrying an M2 .50 cal forward rather than the MK 38 25mm chain gun which had been mounted there in Coast Guard service.
Adak Update
Speaking of Island-class cutters, the story of the USCGC Adak (WPB-1333), a veteran of the “American Dunkirk” of Sept. 11th and the past 18 years of tough duty in the Persian Gulf, has thickened. Slated to be sold to Indonesia later this summer as she completes her service, the USCGC Adak Historical Society, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that wants to bring her back from overseas and install her as a museum ship in Tampa Bay, where she would also help with a youth program.
In related news, the 125-foot “Buck and a Quarter” Active-class patrol craft/sub chaser USCGC Morris (WSC/WMEC-147), who saw service during Prohibition and WWII in her 43-year career with the Coast Guard, has been bopping around the West Coast in a series of uses since then the 1970s include as a training ship with the Sea Scouts and as a working museum ship in Sacramento.
USCGC Morris (WPC-147/WSC-147/WMEC-147) late in her career. Note her 40mm Bofors forward, which was fitted in 1942. (USCG photo)
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Adak (WPB 1333) transits at maximum speed. Adak is assigned to Commander, Task Force 55 and is supporting maritime security operations and theater security cooperation in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by: Quartermaster 2nd Class Kendall Mabon/Released)
Commissioned in 1989, U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Adak (WPB-1333), is one of the last remaining 110-foot Island-class patrol boats in the service.
She is also perhaps the most historic.
Serving initially in New York City, operating from the now-closed Coast Guard base on Governor’s Island, she was the on-scene commander for the response to TWA Flight 800. Then, on Sept. 11, 2001, she was the command boat for the “American Dunkirk” seaborne evacuation of more than 500,000 people trapped in lower Manhattan.
Then, deployed to the Persian Gulf in 2003 with three of her sisters, Coalition Warship 1333 carried Navy SEALs and Polish GROM special forces on raids to seize Iraq’s two primary oil terminals intact before they could be destroyed. During that mission, on 23 March 2003, she was one of the first units to capture Iraqi PWs.
Still forward deployed to Bahrain, she has seen more of the Persian Gulf than many, and most of her recent crews have been younger than the aging patrol boat. Slated to be disposed of in the coming months, replaced by a larger and more capable 158-foot Sentinel-class Fast Response Cutter that is already in the Med and on the way to the sandbox, a group wants to bring her back home instead.
From the USCGC Adak Historical Society, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that wants to bring her back from overseas and install her as a museum ship in Tampa Bay, where she would also help with a youth program, a worthy idea that, when the size and condition of the vessel are taken into account, very achievable:
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Adak is slated to be decommissioned on July 14, 2021. The Adak is a historic ship that led the largest waterborne rescue in world history in New York City on September 11th, 2001, and later captured some of the very first enemy prisoners of war in Iraq. Without a budget to bring her home, and due to current limitations on how to dispose of the ship, the Coast Guard is planning to give the USCGC Adak to the government of Indonesia. This ship is a national historic treasure and we cannot let this happen!
Official Caption: Sunday Services on board a Coast Guard destroyer escort in the Atlantic, during the Easter Season, in 1944-45. Here, the ship’s Chaplain Leads the crew in prayer.
National Archives 26-G-3425
For reference, among the myriad of Army- and Navy-owned vessels the USCG operated during WWII in addition to their own, the Coasties ran no less than 30 destroyer escorts in five divisions, including the ill-fated USS Leopold DE-319, the first of its type to be lost in combat.
The two cutters are headed to the Arabian Gulf in support of Coast Guard Patrol Forces Southwest Asia in Bahrain. They are equipped with the CG-HALLTS system, a hailer that has laser and LRAD capabilities, as well as a special S-band radar with full-time 360-degree coverage, and other goodies.
Note the 270-foot Famous-class medium endurance cutter USCGC Mohawk (WMEC-913) in the background– the last class in American service with a MK 75 OTO.
As noted by the Coast Guard:
PATFORSWA works with Naval Forces Central Command to conduct maritime operations forwarding U.S. interests. These efforts are to deter and counter disruptive countries, defeat violent extremism, and strengthen partner nations’ maritime capabilities to secure the maritime environment in the Central Command area of responsibility.
“Rare and wonderful sleep,” a worn-out Marine M1918A2 BAR gunner catches a wink behind what looks like an overturned grade school desk during a break on the push out of the Pusan-Changwon perimeter, South Korea, 1950.
In January 1965, USCGC Hamilton (WHEC-715) the first of the country’s 378-foot High Endurance Cutters– and the largest designed for the service up to that time– was laid down. Equipped roughly as a destroyer escort with six ASW torpedo tubes, sonar, and a 5″/38, they were also the country’s first CODAG engineering suites introduced into service.
The Hamilton-class cutters were one of the first naval vessels built with a combined diesel and gas turbine propulsion plant. “The twin screws can use 7,000 diesel shaft horsepower to make 17 knots, and a total of 36,000 gas turbine shaft horsepower to make 28 knots. The diesel engines are Fairbanks-Morse and are larger versions of a 1968 diesel locomotive design. Her Pratt-Whitney marine gas turbine engines are similar to those installed in Boeing 707 passenger jet aircraft.”
Over the years, they stood on the front line of the Cold War and saw some combat during Vietnam’s Operation Market Time providing naval gunfire support for troops ashore while busting blacked-out munition-laden trawlers poking around the littoral at night. In the 1980s, they FRAM’d with the provision to carry Harpoon AShMs while trading in the old 5-inchers for a 76mm OTO and a CIWS, then continued to soldier on.
When Hamilton struck in 2011, it started a slo-mo fuze on the 12 ships of the class that will burn out at the end of the month with the decommissioning of Kodiak-based USCGC Douglas Munro (WHEC-724), which joined the fleet in 1971– 50 years ago.
U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Douglas Munro in Kodiak, July 2018. USCG Photo/ENS Jake Marx.
From COMDT COGARD, WASHINGTON DC:
UNCLAS ALCOAST 088/21 SSIC 4500 SUBJ: USCGC DOUGLAS MUNRO (WHEC 724) 49 YEARS OF SERVICE 1. On 31 Mar 2021, after 49 years of faithful service to our Nation, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO will transition to In-Commission Special status. This status begins the decommissioning process. Throughout the cutter’s service, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO crews embodied the cutter’s motto – “Honoring the Past by Serving the Present.” 2. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO was named in honor of Coast Guard Signalman First Class Douglas Albert Munro, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for acts of extraordinary heroism in World War II. As the Officer-in-Charge of an eight-craft amphibious landing force during the Guadalcanal Campaign, Munro bravely used his landing craft and its .30 caliber machine gun to shield and protect several hundred Marines who were under heavy enemy fire. He was mortally wounded during this effort, but his actions allowed for the Marines to be extracted by other landing craft. Commissioned on 27 Sep 1971 as the tenth cutter in the Hamilton Class, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO was originally homeported in Boston, MA but quickly moved to its Seattle, WA homeport in 1973. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO again shifted homeport to Honolulu, HI in 1981 and then to Alameda, CA in 1989. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO made a final homeport shift to Kodiak, AK in 2007. 3. Over the course of the cutter’s distinguished career, those who sailed aboard CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO served in a multitude of domestic and international theaters including the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, Persian Gulf and Horn of Africa, and Southeast Asia and Eastern Pacific Ocean. 4. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO’s proud legacy of honorable service to the Nation began in the early 1970s patrolling Ocean Stations Delta, Bravo, and November, providing weather data to trans- Pacific flights, supporting oceanographic research missions, and performing search-and-rescue operations. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO also patrolled the Pacific for decades as a critical enforcer of fisheries regulations, particularly with the international fleets of the former Soviet Union, Korea, Indonesia, and Russia. In 1998, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO interdicted over 11.5 tons of cocaine on a Mexican flagged vessel, the XOLESUIENTLE, in what remains to this day one of the largest single drug seizures in USCG history. The following year, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO seized the motor vessel WING FUNG LUNG, which was attempting to transport 259 illegal Chinese migrants to the United States. In early 2005, at the beginning of a six-month, 37,000 mile global circumnavigation that included support to Operations IRAQI FREEDOM and ENDURING FREEDOM, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO diverted to render assistance to countries affected by the devastating December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO’s legacy was epitomized on March 23, 2008 when the cutter and its embarked MH-65 Aviation Detachment worked with a forward deployed Air Station Kodiak MH-60 to recover 20 survivors of the F/V ALASKA RANGER that sank in the Bering Sea early that morning. The Seventeenth Coast Guard District Commander at the time of the rescue, RADM Arthur Brooks, declared it “One of the greatest search and rescue efforts in modern history.” 5. During the cutter’s last year of service, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO completed 159 days away from homeport patrolling over 23,000 nautical miles in the Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, and Pacific Ocean to enforce laws, treaties, and regulations critical to detecting and deterring Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported (IUU) fishing. This included an operation NORTH PACIFIC GUARD deployment and two Alaska patrols, concluding the cutter’s long legacy of safeguarding mariners in some of the world’s most perilous waters. 6. The decommissioning of CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO comes 10 years after CGC HAMILTON was the first WHEC-378 to be decommissioned in March 2011. CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO’s decommissioning marks the end of service for the 12-cutter HAMILTON class fleet, whose crews proudly served the Nation for more than half a century. The spirit of Douglas Munro will continue to live on in the sixth National Security Cutter, CGC MUNRO (WMSL 755), the second cutter to bear the name of the Coast Guard’s sole Medal of Honor recipient. 7. To current and past CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO crews, Plankowners, Shellbacks (Golden, Emerald, Horned, or otherwise), subjects of the Golden Dragon, Blue Noses, and even Pollywogs: Well Done! Through 49 years of service, CGC DOUGLAS MUNRO crews admirably served the Coast Guard and the Nation. Congratulations and Bravo Zulu! 8. ADM Karl L. Schultz, Commandant (CCG), sends. 9. Internet release is authorized.
As with all 11 of her sisters, Douglas Munro will be given a light refit and transferred to an overseas ally, namely Vietnam, which already operates the former USCGC Morgenthau (WHEC-722) and is slated to receive ex-USCGC Midgett (WHEC-726) this year. The 378s are all currently still afloat and in fleet use with Bangladesh, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka in addition to the Vietnamese ships.
As for her name, that of the service’s only MOH recipient, the Coast Guard commissioned the new Pascagoula-built 418-foot National Security Cutter USCGC Munro (WMSL 755) in 2017, leading to the curious state of the service having two large cutters on its active list named for the hero at the same time.
378-foot Hamilton-class Coast Guard Cutter Douglas Munro (WHEC 724) and the new 418-foot Berthoff-class USCGC Munro (WMSL 755), working together off the Hawaiian Islands, Aug. 29, 2020. USCG Photo
Feb 1943. Official caption: Coast Guard Auxiliary. Guardians of inland waters. The Marblehead unit of the Coast Guard Auxiliary includes among its members Bill Welch, a Boston lawyer, junior commander of the flotilla. He contributes twelve hours a week to patrol duty, during which time he assumes regular Coast Guard status as a temporary reservist.
Photo by Alfred T.Palmer, via Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress) LC-USE6-D-010130
Welch and his flotilla were part of the so-called Hooligan Navy or Corsair Fleet, members of the volunteer Coast Guard Auxillary ordered on 4 May 1942 by Chief of Naval Operations, ADM Ernest J. King to organize into an anti-submarine patrol force officially termed the Coastal Picket Patrol.
Made up primarily of private yachts– the plan was advocated King by the Cruising Club of America– and fishing boats, crewed by their owners, and converted for ASW use, the small craft of all sizes made regular sorties along the American coast into October 1943. Equipped and outfitted with whatever arms and uniforms the service could spare, these vessels were assigned 15-mile patrol squares extending from the beach to the 50-fathom curve.
In all, a remarkable 2,067 converted private motor and sail craft, numbered CGR1 to CGR9040 served with the patrol, with missing numbers in that range for boats that were surveyed but not taken into service.
The program peaked November 1942 with 1,873 boats in commission with the Coast Guard Reserve, a figure that slowly declined from there, dropping below 1,000 in November 1943, under 500 in April 1944, and under 100 in June 1945, with the last craft disposed of at the end of that year.
Private “Commuter Yacht” Aphrodite built by Purdy Shipyard in May 1937, serving as CGR557 Corsair Navy. Schena notes that CGR557 was 73 feet oal, was assigned to the 3rd Naval District, taken into service April 1942, and disposed of in July 1945, at which point there were only 80 CGR vessels left on the roster. She was reportedly used as a chase and security boat for the Elco PT-boat factory in Bayonne, New Jersey, and tapped from time to time during the war to transport President Roosevelt to and from his home at Hyde Park on the Hudson River. She was originally built for Wall Street financier and later Ambassador to the Court of St. James, John Hay (Jock) Whitney of Manhasset, Long Island.
Coast Guard schooner CGR 2502 of the Corsair Fleet on patrol for German submarines. Note the Coastie on the bow with a Thompson gun. The craft is listed as a 90-foot schooner, formerly the Duchess, that was taken into service in June 1942. She served in the 1st Naval District out of Boston until July 1944. NARA 026-g-014-057-003
Coast Guard Hooligan Fleet member, the 97-foot schooner CGR-2469, came to the Olson & Winge Marine Works yard as the Columbia for conversion during World War II. She had been built in 1914 as the King & Winge, one of the most famous ships ever constructed in Seattle, spending the 1920s as a well-known rum runner after her initial years as a halibut schooner. After the war, she would be a pilot boat, yacht, and crabber. She sank in high seas in the Bering Sea, without loss of life, in 1994. Image via the Museum of History and Industry, Seattle.
Coast Guard schooner CGR 2520 of the Corsair Fleet, with another behind her. This vessel is listed as a 52-foot schooner that was taken into service July 1942, decommissioned in December 1943, and disposed of, likely returned to its previous owner, in July 1944. During her wartime service, she served in the 1st Naval District (Maine-Massachusetts) on nearshore/offshore patrol. NARA 026-g-014-059-001
Humphrey Bogart, who served in the U.S. Navy during the Great War as a helmsman of the captured German liner SS Vaterland/USS Leviathan, tried to re-enlist during WWII. When he was rejected because of his age (74), Bogie volunteered for the Coast Guard Temporary Reserve and patrolled the California coast with his 55-foot staysail schooner, Santana, as part of the Hooligan Navy assigned to the 12th Naval District.
“Humphrey Bogart, who starred in Casablanca, Dead End, and The African Queen, first enlisted in the [tag] U.S. Navy during WWI on the USS Leviathan. In 1941, Bogart volunteered with the USCG Temporary Reserves (now the USCG Auxiliary) along with his 1935 Sparkman & Stephen’s designed 55-foot schooner, the Santana, to patrol the Balboa, California area of the West Coast as part of the Corsair Fleet. During this time, Bogart starred in Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and To Have and Have Not. ” At Bogart’s funeral in 1957, a scale model of the Santana was present, Photo and story by The U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary History Division.
Although actual combat with U-boats was slim for the group, they did provide lots of help in so far as OPSEC was concerned as they often shielded coastwise convoys from random small boat traffic and would board vessels to seal their radios in such instances so that random commo traffic wouldn’t accidentally give away positions to those who were listening for that type of thing.
The nicknames of the force were fitting, as the volunteers, at least in the early days of the patrol, ran the gamut from semi-reformed smugglers and rumrunners to boy scout troops and yachtsmen such as the good Mr. Welch, our trusty lookout in the first image.
Hunter Wood, a skilled maritime artist in the New York City area, joined the Coast Guard in WWII and served as a combat artist. He captured a few of these CGR schooners at work.
Eyes Off Shore, 6/7/1943, Coast Guard Reserve schooner of the Corsair Fleet by Hunter Wood NARA 205575831
Coast Guard Corsair on U-Boat Hunt, 2/11/1944, by Hunter Wood NARA 026-g-022-015-001
There was even something of an embrace of the term, with Disney pitching in to make an unofficial insignia, that sadly was never issued to the units and men involved.
