laststandonzombieisland

As a wrap of our coverage of the 40th anniversary of the 1983 invasion of Grenada, we take a look at the unique surface action group that arrived to assist in the peacekeeping phase of the operation, which ran roughly through November and December when the last U.S. combat troops were withdrawn– that of hydrofoils operating with a frigate mothership.

Mid-November 1983 found the newly commissioned Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate USS Aubrey Fitch (FFG-34), along with the two equally new Pegasus-class hydrofoil patrol boats, USS Aquila (PHM-4) and Taurus (PHM-3) in Guantanamo Bay “for the purpose of testing the feasibility of operating those types of ships in the same task organization.”

As noted by Fitch’s DANFS entry, she assumed tactical control of the hydrofoils and jetted over to Grenada:

Demands incident to the continuing American presence in Grenada, however, overtook the experiment and sent Aubrey Fitch and her two consorts south to the tiny republic. Duty in the waters adjacent to Grenada lasted until mid-December when the warship returned to Mayport.

All three were eligible for the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for Urgent Fury.

Aquila and Taurus would return to their homeport at Key West on 16 December and spend the rest of their career in unsung law enforcement support work in the Caribbean and off Central America, being decommissioned as a class in 1993 with their sisters and disposed of in 1996.

Fitch lasted a little longer. Decommissioned on 12 December 1997, the frigate was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 31 May 1999 and sold for scrap shortly after.

Sadly, there are no photos I can find of Fitch and her two ‘foils operating together in Cuba-Grenada Oct-Dec 1983, which is tragic, but drink in these were taken of the ships separately early in their careers.

Cue USCG

As for what happened from a maritime perspective after Fitch and her PHMs returned home, the answer is that the Coast Guard took over the task of policing Grenada’s waters for the next year, and it should be pointed out that two HC-130s and the 378-foot Hamilton-class cutter USCGC Chase (WHEC 718), which was deployed from 23 Oct – 21 Nov 1983, served during the shooting-part of Urgent Fury, earning the deploying units the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for their service.

The follow-on Operation Island Breeze USCG Grenada Getaway response was a WWII-era 180-foot Balsam (Iris) class buoy tender that served as the mothership for three rotating 95-foot cutters drawn from the Florida-based Seventh Coast Guard District, allowing the small boat crews to get some showers and better food as well as mechanical support from the tender’s extensive onboard workshop.

On 8 December 1983, the Cape-class patrol cutters Cape Gull (WPB-95304), Cape Fox (WPB-95316), Cape Shoalwater (WPB 95324), and the tender Sagebrush (WLB-399) arrived off of the island of Grenada to replace U.S. Navy surface forces conducting surveillance operations after the U.S. invasion of the island earlier that year.

The Capes used three crews, Green, Blue, and Red, rotating out every 30 days, and used backpack HF radio sets borrowed from the Army to communicate with the forces ashore. Support shoreside for the roughly 100-man force came from two 20-foot containers in port converted into shops.

For air support, they had HC-130Hs out of Clearwater fly over occasionally, taking off and recovering at CGAS Borinquen, as well as a weekly logistics run.

They would remain on station until 3 February 1984 when replaced by a similar group, a task that would run through the end of the year.

The WPB/WLB force was rotated out roughly every three months in 1984 and saw the buoy tender USCGC Mesquite (WLB 305), her sister USCGC Gentian (WLB 290), and the 140-foot icebreaker (!) Mobile Bay (WTGB 103) which sailed from Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Meanwhile, the number of WPBs was cut from three to two. 

The sum, as detailed by ADM James S. Gracey, USCG:

After a few days, the Navy figured out that patrolling around the island to keep people from coming on or going off, additional people coming on or other people from escaping, wasn’t working very well with Navy PCs or whatever they were using, whereas our smaller patrol boats would do the job very well. So we took over. We were there long after everybody else had gone home doing this operation and other things that the Coast Guard always does when we are someplace. That was Grenada.

A lasting legacy of the USCG in Grenada was the reformation of the Grenadian Coast Guard, an organization that endures today, with a little help from its northern neighbor.