Mixed Feelings Storis turns 63

[ollie]

Oldest Coast Guard cutter celebrates 63 years

According to the Associated Press, the oldest cutter in the Coast Guard fleet will celebrate 63 years of service on Friday.
The Storis was built by the Toledo Shipbuilding Company and commissioned in 1942. It saw action in World War Two in the North Atlantic while assigned to prevent the establishment of Nazi weather stations in Greenland.

In 1948, the Storis changed its homeport to Juneau, where it supplied medical treatment to Native villages and surveyed uncharted waters in the Arctic.

The Storis and two other cutters -- now decommissioned -- completed a historic transit of the Northwest Passage and circumnavigation of the North American continent in July of 1957. Soon after, the Storis was transferred to its present homeport in Kodiak.

The Storis continues to patrol the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea.
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In one way it is a pleasure to see that she is still out there doing her job,yet her very existance is indicative of the apathy that congress feels for the Coast Guard. In what other MODERN navy is there a 63 year old ship that still plows the rough seas of the arctic.

Recently, the congress laid all kinds of platitudes at the Coast Guard's feet for their performance in Katrina. We'llsee if they really mean it now. Want to take bets to see if the Storis reaches 70 years old?
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ollie


Storis Homepage

http://www.uscg.mil/d17/cgcstoris/