Let others call themselves the greyhounds of the sea, sleek and swift. The U. S. Coast Guard’s 327-foot cutters have been the nation’s maritime workhorses—dependable, versatile, and possessed of an astonishing longevity. The first of the seven cutters in this class named for former U. S. Treasury secretaries was commissioned in 1936; the last survivor, the Ingham (WHEC-35), is still operating today, 52 years after her launching. In between, the 327s battled through the “Bloody Winter” of 1942-43 in the North Atlantic-fighting off German U-boats and rescuing survivors from torpedoed convoy ships. They went on to serve as amphibious task force flagships, as search-and-rescue (SAR) ships during the Korean War, on weather patrol, and as naval gunfire support ships during Vietnam. Most recently, these ships-that-wouldn’t-die have done duty in fisheries patrol and drug interdiction, which is what the Ingham is still doing now out of Portsmouth, Virginia. Built for only $2.5 million each, in terms of cost-effectiveness we may never see the likes of these cutters again.
The story of the 327-foot Coast Guard cutters begins as the service was emerging from the Prohibition Era and the long “Rum War” of the 1920s and early 1930s. Because air travel was expanding, Coast Guard officials believed that cutter-based aircraft would be essential in future search-and-rescue operations. During the 1930s, there was an increase in narcotics smuggling from the Far East and increasing concern about Japanese fishing and intelligence gathering in the North Pacific. The building of the 327s was an attempt to meet these needs with a 20-knot cutter capable of carrying an aircraft in a hangar.
The Coast Guard’s preliminary design efforts were based on the recently completed Lake-class cutters. At the same time, the Navy was developing a 20-knot, 2,000-ton gunboat design known as the Erie (PG-50). After comparing the two designs, the Coast Guard decided to build the Secretary- class cutters as heavily modified versions of the Erie class. Thirty-two preliminary designs were drawn up before the final Secretary version was settled on. The Erie- and Secretary-class designs carried the same machinery plant, and their hulls below the waterline were identical—a standardization that cut design and construction costs, since Navy yards were building both classes.
The Philadelphia Navy Yard laid down the first four Secretary-class keels on 1 May 1935. Two more were laid down at New York and one at Charleston, South Carolina. All the cutters were completed in 13 to 16 months and commissioned in 1936-37 as the Bibb (WPG-31), the Campbell (WPG-32), the Duane (WPG-33), the Alexander Hamilton (WPG-34), the Ingham (WPG-35), the Spencer (WPG-36), and the Taney (WPG-37). Constructed of steel, the cutters displaced 2,350 tons and measured 327 by 41 with a 12-foot draft. Two geared turbines provided propulsion. Total shaft horsepower of 5,250 gave the ships a maximum speed of 19.5 knots. At cruising speed of 13 knots, their radius was 7,000 miles; at maximum speed it was 4,200 miles. The cutters carried single-engine floatplanes and were initially armed with two single, 5-inch/51-caliber guns, two 6-pounders, and one 1-pounder. Each was manned by 16 officers and 107 men in peacetime and 21 officers and 215 men during wartime.
As was customary, the Navy recommended and funded the armament and the Coast Guard maintained it. The ships’ ample size left room for adding new armament and electronic systems as they developed. This contributed greatly to the class’s phenomenal longevity and versatility.
Immediately after commissioning, three of the new cutters deployed to the Pacific to help counter the alarming increase in narcotics traffic. By March 1937, all seven were in service. They experienced few teething problems, and from the beginning were popular ships.
After war broke out in Europe in 1939 all of the Secretary-class cutters except the Taney were transferred to the Atlantic, sharing the Grand Banks patrol with Navy Destroyer Division 18. In 1940, six of them began performing weather and neutrality patrols, operating up to 1,800 miles from the U. S. coast. Their ocean weather reports were vital to the ferrying of aircraft to Britain and to the operations of the Royal Air Force, and continued until the United States entered the war. At that point Coast Guard-manned converted merchant ships took over the weather patrols and the cutters transferred to convoy duty.
Before this time the 327-foot cutters had picked up an influential Navy admirer. Rear Admiral Ernest J. King, the newest member of the Navy General Board and the one assigned the lead role in cruiser and destroyer affairs, was acutely aware after the outbreak of war in Europe of the Navy’s need for numerous antisubmarine warfare and convoy escort ships. Though there was general agreement on the need, there was little consensus in the Navy as to what type of ship was required. King proposed to save precious time by building Navy long-range escorts based on the plans of the Coast Guard cutters. But internal bickering about details of displacement, speed, and armament delayed the Navy’s building of the escorts. By the time the first destroyer escort reported to the U. S. Atlantic Fleet in late spring 1943, the Battle of the Atlantic had been decided. Still another year was to pass before the first U-boat was sunk by a destroyer escort.
At the bottom line, the record is vividly clear. The late-arriving destroyer escorts obtained a kill rate of 0.1 U-boats per ship. The 327s achieved a rate of .57 per ship—the highest kill ratio of any antisubmarine warfare ship type in World War II. More to the point, the cutters were available as a proven prototype in 1939.
While the escort design was being decided, the 327s continued their vital weather patrols in the Atlantic. In May 1940 the United States also assumed protection of Greenland following the German occupation of Denmark. The Duane and other cutters equipped with aircraft conducted surveys of both coasts of Greenland for future airfield and base sites. Guns and personnel were landed to protect the cryolite mine at Ivigtut. Throughout the war, Greenland maritime operations remained primarily a Coast Guard function.
In September 1941 the Secretary- class cutters reported to the Navy, and by November had begun escorting convoys bound for Britain. Following the entry of the United States into the war, the cutters completed updating their armament, which then consisted of two 5-inch/51 -caliber, four 3-inch/50-caliber, and eight 20-millimeter guns; larger depth charge racks; and six K-guns. Electronics included SC radar, QC sonar, and British HF/DF. As the war progressed, hedgehog, improved radar, and some 40-millimeter gun mounts were added. The roomy, stable ships accommodated this additional armament with little loss of speed or seaworthiness. By summer 1942, all modem U. S. destroyers had been withdrawn from the northern trade convoys because of pressing demands for them in the Pacific and elsewhere. When German Admiral Karl Doenitz began deploying his U-boat fleet to the North Atlantic in September 1942— after it had been partially withdrawn earlier in the year—the major burden of guarding transatlantic convoys to England fell on the Royal Navy, aided by a small U. S. contingent of old flush-deck destroyers and the 327s.
The first blow of the new German offensive fell in early November 1942, when eight U-boats attacked eastbound Convoy SC-107 and sank 16 ships. The attack ended after the Ingham and the USS Leary (DD-158) and USS Schenck (DD-159) arrived along with covering aircraft from Iceland. The ensuing six months of the Bloody Winter brought one battle after another in the mid-ocean “Greenland Air Gap,” where Allied aircraft could not provide air cover.
The Secretary-class cutters played a key role in the eventual Allied victory. Nearly half of their escort missions in that winter resulted in enemy contact, and every U-boat sunk in those battles by a U. S. vessel fell victim to a 327- foot cutter. One cutter, the Alexander Hamilton, was torpedoed and sunk, and the Campbell had to be towed in, badly damaged after a bitter mid-ocean fight. More than 650 Allied survivors were rescued by the cutters, under often appalling conditions.
In May 1943, Britain assumed sole responsibility for North Atlantic trade convoys while the United States did the same for the Central Atlantic, where the Secretary-class cutters took up duty. By early 1944, intelligence from the broken German code was steadily revealing U-boat concentrations. That, as well as long-range air cover, roving escort carrier groups, and abundant convoy surface escorts made U-boat attacks on the U. S.-Mediterranean convoys prohibitively costly.
With the number of available escorts increasing and German U-boat activity decreasing, the 327s were withdrawn from convoy escort in mid-1944 and converted into amphibious command ships (AGCs). The ships needed only moderate alterations: expansion of the deck housing and superstructure, rearmament with 5-inch/38-caliber, 40-millimeter, and 20-millimeter guns, and refitting with new radars, 35 radio receivers, and 25 transmitters. Though the ships’ displacement increased from 2,350 to 2,750 tons, they lost only half a knot in speed.
From southern France to Corregidor to Okinawa to the final landings in Borneo, the Secretary-class AGCs participated in 14 invasion assaults. Some met only light opposition, but the Taney was under fire for 14 weeks at Okinawa, and in one six-week period went to general quarters 119 times.
After World War II the 327s returned to Coast Guard control and were converted to ocean station vessels (OSVs). In 1946, all were assigned to ocean station duty. This was to be their primary role for the next two decades. Though they supplied essential weather and navigation information for the rapidly expanding international aviation routes, the long, rough patrols were tedious for most Coast Guardsmen. But there were moments of high drama. Among her 327-foot peers, the Bibb was the undisputed rescue champ, saving more than 400 lives in just six years. In 1947 she rescued all 69 people from the Bermuda Sky Queen seaplane when it ditched in the sea midway between Newfoundland and Ireland. The following year, the Bibb rescued 48 persons from the schooner Gaspar after driving to the distressed vessel through 40-foot seas.
The 327s also continued to perform SAR, fishery patrols, training cruises, and regular military readiness training with the Navy. Cutters were assigned SAR duties on the routes to Korea and in the Formosa Strait in 1950-53, during which time they rescued 26 downed aviators. Early in 1967, the Navy requested further Coast Guard assistance in Operation Market Time, off Vietnam. On 24 April 1967, Coast Guard Squadron Three of five high-endurance cutters was formed at Pearl Harbor, and two days later sailed to join Squadron One, which had been in Vietnam since 1965. Less than a month later, the new squadron carried out its first naval gunfire support mission. During the next four and a half years, all types of high-endurance cutters served on these tours, including all of the 327s, then approaching their 35th year. They interdicted enemy coastal traffic, provided gunfire support for Army units, landed commandos, performed SAR. supported small inshore patrol craft and psychological warfare operations, and established clinics in which the ships’ medics treated the native population. The offshore patrols involved none of the grim battles of the 1942-43 Atlantic war. but on the night of 29 February-1 March 1968 the biggest surface action of the Vietnam War took place. Three enemy trawlers were sunk and one turned back by three high-endurance and five 82-foot Coast Guard cutters and inshore Navy patrol craft.
When the last Vietnam deployments concluded in December 1971, the cutters of Squadron Three had cruised 1.3 million miles, inspected more than 50,000 vessels, and fired 77.000 rounds. The experience was to prove useful in the coming drug war.
By 1977, satellite weather information and the ability of aircraft to fly over most weather made the ocean station program unnecessary. It was terminated, and the 327-foot cutters began interdicting the heavy drug traffic between South America and the United States. (In mid-1980, many of the cutters were diverted from this duty to assist more than 100,000 Cuban refugees fleeing to the United States in every form of water craft. The Ingham, for example, engaged in 54 SAR cases involving 1,588 Cuban refugees.)
As the Coast Guard pursued them more aggressively, drug runners invested huge sums of their illicit profits in ever-newer and faster planes and boats. They developed new techniques for concealing smuggled drugs and evading the Coast Guard and law enforcement agencies. The Coast Guard responded with increased patrols and new detection methods, an intensified multiagency intelligence effort, and assistance from the other armed forces. Hundreds of drug runners have been seized or sunk, though hundreds of others manage to evade the patrols along the several thousand miles of U. S. coastline.
In the continuing battle, the Ingham, the grand old lady of the 327s, continues to live up to her well-earned reputation. In 1985, for instance, the Ingham seized a number of smugglers and rescued the crew of a sunken merchant ship in the South Atlantic. The year before her 1986 decommissioning, the Taney—by then the Ingham’s sole surviving sister—captured a drug vessel 800 miles off the Florida coast with a cargo of drugs valued at $140 million, an all-time record seizure.
From Greenland to Cape Horn, from Indonesia to Suez, in peace and war and in numerous and varied roles— from the terror of night battles with U-boats to the tedium of weather patrol—the rugged and versatile 327-foot cutters have indeed proved to be ships for all seasons.