Coast Guard History, the War Years, Part 3

[ollie]

The Coast Guard: The War Years

As the thundercloud of World War Two loomed over Europe and the Far East, the United States was woefully unprepared for war, especially at sea. The Navy with a few minor exceptions had an aging fleet; its capital ships were mostly built in the 20’s and 30’s. Aside from the newer Benson-Livermore Class destroyers and the Geary class Destroyers there were few tools in the Navy’s arsenal for convoy duty.

Consequently, even before war was declared by Congress at President Roosevelt’s request, the Coast Guard was folded into the Navy and now had use of the Coast Guard 165 foot gunboats and the 327 foot Secretary class cutters (Named after previous Secretaries of the Treasury). Almost immediately, the Coast Guard distinguished itself in the War. It was a very busy little service indeed. Its ranks swelled to about 180,000 men. In the Pacific Theatre, the Coast Guard manned landing craft and Army Aviation Gas Tankers for the Air Corps.

Only one of the 327’s was home ported in Hawaii during the attack on Pearl Harbor, it was the Coast Guard Cutter Taney. She was the first ship to get under way and fire back at the enemy. The Taney still is afloat. She is now a museum in Baltimore, Maryland.

Landing craft manned by Coasties were dispatched by the Navy to evacuate a group of beleaguered Marines commanded by “Chesty” Puller in September of 1942 on a little known island called Guadalcanal. The small flotilla of landing craft was commanded by Douglas Munro, Signalman 1/c USCG. The evacuation succeeded; but, the Japanese troops stormed to the beaches and poured fire into the departing Marines. Seeing their predicament, Munro placed his Higgins boat between the Japanese troops and Marines, pouring machine gun fire into the enemy troops. The Marines got away; but Munro was killed instantly by a bullet to his neck. He was later awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously.

The Atlantic Theatre was also a very active one for the Coast Guard. The six remaining 327’s were all assigned to escort duty in the North Atlantic where they distinguished themselves to the point where their presence was constantly requested in convoy after convoy. Looking at all the allied Anti-submarine warfare vessels, the 327 was unquestionably the top ranked vessel.

While not as fast as a destroyer on a calm sea, the 327s were designed with phenomenal sea keeping abilities. Where destroyers bows would be buried in heavy seas, the 327 would slice through them. But, perhaps their most telling statistic is that of all allied submarine chasers, the 327 had the highest kill ratio of enemy submarines. In other words, they killed more U-boats per vessel in their class than any other class of ship afloat.

Other notables include the 165 foot CG gunboat Icarus which sunk the first Nazi U-boat in World War Two. Also the Coast Guard Cutter Northland captured a Nazi weather station in Greenland in the first year of the war.

As a precursor to today’s role in homeland security, the Coast Guard also established beach patrols along the many miles of American coast line. As boring as this sounds, it was a Coast Guardsman patrolling a beach with his dog on Long Island New York that discovered a party of Nazi saboteurs landing on the beach. After some tense moments the saboteurs were captured. One testified against them. He survived, the remainder were executed.

Traditionally, people associate the Coast Guard with small boats. But as was the case with the 327’s, they also manned Destroyer Escorts built specifically to sink submarines. Their expertise in small boats, however, earmarked them for yet another dangerous duty. The Mosquito boat (83 foot wooden patrol boats) was used during the invasion of Europe during D day. They were light and shallow of draft, so they were assigned the unenviable task of coming close in shore with the invading allied troops. Their function was to rescue any soldier in trouble in the shallow water. The 83 foot mosquito boats were directly responsible for saving hundreds of lives that day.

Small in number, Coasties played a pretty impressive role during the war and really lived up to their motto “Always Ready.”

ollie

Below left to Right

USCGC General Greene a prohibitionist Buck and a quarter/WW2-USCGC MOHAWK 165 foot gunboat/WW-2USCGC INGHAM 327 foot Secretary Class Cutter.

[Woodmonkey]

Very interesting, Ollie. Thanks for doing this.