The U.S. Coast Guard's Ingham (WPG-35) served with steady distinction in a career spanning over I 50 years of active service from her commissioning in September 1936 as one of the half-dozen Secretary-class cutters built at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Initially assigned to Port Angeles, Washington, the 327- foot Ingham transferred to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1940 to perform Neutrality Patrol duties. In early 1941, the ship was temporarily operating from Lisbon, Portugal, but was transferred in July to U.S. Navy control. The Ingham then spent two years as a convoy escort in the dangerous waters of the North Atlantic and in the Caribbean, rescuing survivors from a number of sunken merchant vessels and sinking German submarine U-626 on 15 December 1942. In mid-1943, her operations were transferred to the Mediterranean, and in 1944, the Ingham, along with her five sisters, was transformed into an amphibious warfare command ship. In her new guise, the Ingham served as flagship for the Mariveles-Corregidor Attack Group in February 1945, the Tibauan landings on Panay and the Negros Island landing in March, and at Balut Island in July. Returned to Coast Guard control postwar and reconfigured once again for patrol work, the Ingham began four decades of service in law enforcement, weather reporting, and search-and-rescue duties from Norfolk, where she was homeported from 1946 to 1968. From July of that year until the following April, the Ingham operated with Coast Guard Squadron Three in Vietnamese waters and then returned to Virginia and her new homeport at Portsmouth. The Ingham then performed another two decades of steadfast service, adding successes in the war on drugs to her long list of achievements and also doing humanitarian service in rescuing numerous fleeing Cubans during the mass exodus of 1980. By her retirement in May 1988, the Ingham had repaid the nation in peace and war many times over the $2.5 million she cost in the mid-1930s.
Lest We Forget ...
By A. D. Baker III, Editor, Combat Fleets of the World