The Coast Guard decommissioned the cutter Douglas Munro (WHEC-724) in an April ceremony in Kodiak, Alaska, just a few months shy of 50 years after her 1971 commissioning in Boston, Massachusetts. She was the last remaining Hamilton-class high-endurance cutter in the service.
Commissioned in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the 12 378-foot cutters were built for long-range, high-endurance missions, including maritime security, drug interdiction, illegal migrant interception, and fisheries patrols. With more than 500 years of combined service, the versatile Hamiltons took the Coast Guard’s racing stripe around the globe, modeling the maritime rules-based order. They were the first U.S. military vessels powered by a combination diesel or gas-turbine (CODOG) system, comprising two diesel engines and two gas-turbines. They have controllable-pitch propellers.
The fleet of high-endurance cutters is being replaced by 418-foot Legend-class national security cutters (NSCs), which serve as the Coast Guard’s primary long-range asset, with nine in service and two under construction. Compared with the legacy high-endurance cutters, the NSCs’ design provides better sea-keeping and higher sustained transit speeds, greater endurance and range, and the ability to launch and recover small boats from astern. The NSCs and Hamilton class both possess aviation support facilities and a flight deck for helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles. While the 378s’ service to the Coast Guard is complete, the ships all continue their legacies of good maritime governance and reliability after transfer to various foreign militaries.
The now-retired cutter was named for Signalman First Class Douglas Munro, the only Coast Guardsman to earn the Medal of Honor. His actions at Guadalcanal in September 1942—covering the retreat of 500 Marines and intentionally beaching his landing craft to shield them from Japanese weapons—also led to his inclusion on the Medal of Honor wall at the National Museum of the Marine Corps, the only non-Marine listed there. His name continues to grace a cutter, however: the Legend-class cutter Munro (WMSL-755) proudly bears his legacy.
—LCDR Karen Kutkiewicz, USCG
