Meant to be a wartime stopgap and quickly discarded by the US Navy and Royal Navy, the ships of the Tacoma Class went on to sail every ocean for another 50 years.
Ninety-Five of the Tacoma class frigates were commissioned. Originally planned to number 99 ships, four were canceled before they could be completed. Of the remainder an interesting tale arises:
Twenty-one of the frigates were completed for the British Royal Navy for anti-submarine work in 1943-45. They served under the names of crown colonies and never saw US service, they were all returned to the US after the war and most were immediately sold for scrap after being disarmed. One, the former HMS Caicos lived as the survey ship Trinadad in the Argentine Navy before being broken up in 1970. The only other former British ships to have a postwar life were the ex HMS Tobago and ex-HMS Papua. They were used as merchant ships in Egypt and ended their life when they were scuttled as block ships during the Suez Canal Crisis in 1956.
Seventy –four frigates were completed for and commissioned by the US Navy, of which 28 were loaned briefly to the Soviet Union and returned by 1949. One of these was sunk under a Soviet flag in 1948 in an accident. The US Navy decommissioned and disposed of all of its remaining frigates between 1946-1953. Twenty -Seven of these new warships were scrapped outright and broken up before their fourth birthday. The remaining forty-six warships were given away or sold as military aid to friendly countries.
These included ships given one each to Belgium, Peru, and Ecuador. The Netherlands used an unarmed pair, renamed after clouds, as weather stations until 1963. Another matching pair of frigates was also given to Argentina, while her Latin American compatriots Columbia was given three and Mexico four. Four more were given to France, one of which the La Place (former USS Lorain PF-93) was sunk by an uncharted naval mine in 1950. Three were given to Cuba which continued to use them under Castro as late as 1970. Post war Japan was given no less than eighteen frigates. In Japanese service they formed the backbone of the new Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force through the 1970's when they were replaced by Japanese manufactured ships. The Republic of Korea sailed four ships, including the namesake USS Tacoma (PF-03), the first ship of the class which retired for good in 1973 and remains as a floating museum under her Korean name- Taedong. The Dominican republic received two ships one of which, the USS Pueblo (PF-13) existed under the name General Gregorio Luperon in the Dominican Republic navy before being scrapped as late as 1982, long after most of her sister ships had been retired.
The awards for the longest operational life however go to a pair of frigates transferred to Thailand. The USS Glendale (PF-36) and the USS Gallup (PF-47) were given to Thailand in 1951 and remain there as landlocked museum ships, leaving service as the HTMS Tachin (PF-1) and HTMS Prasae (PF 2) until being withdrawn from the sea in June 2000. These ships served on active service for more than 55 years.
Not a bad accomplishment for ships designed to be temporary.
The copyright of the article The Post War Life of the Tacomas in Military History is owned by Christopher Eger. Permission to republish The Post War Life of the Tacomas in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
My interest in the Tacoma Class frigates, derives from a single incident,
told in my manuscript in preparation "Narrations of War in Cuba."
During 1958 I was one of Castro's rebels in the Sierra Maestra. At the end
of summer the irregular picket of my guerrilla group known locally as
"Los Escopeteros de Mojena" and operating in the foothills south
of the town of Guisa. We receive orders to set aside our weak weapons,
revolvers, .22 caliber rifles and assorted shotguns and report to the
heights of the Sierra Maestra for retraining as an assault group with
military weapons. As we were on the way after long days of difficult
marches we passed along the heights of the main ridge of the Sierra through
a place called "Mar Verde." From there through the tree we could
see the Caribbean (more or less north of Jamaica) far below. There we were
warned not to wander into the open in case we would be seen by "La
Fragata," because if we did that the vessel would open fire.
BTW Beginning to have an idea of what was coming I left the Castro
forces in January 1959, after being shot at "accidentally" twice.
In April 1961 I was jailed by Castro...
My question is would
the three inch guns of that Tacoma class frigate (which of the three I do
not know) reach us. We were, judging by Google Earth at about 3,000 feet
and perhaps 5 or 6 miles as the crow flies from the sea which as you know
is quite deep there above the Deep of Bartlett.
May 20, 2009 4:44 PM
Christopher Eger :
Larry,
The 3"/50 caliber gun (Mark 22) used by the Tacoma
class Patrol Frigates of the Cuban navy was a dual purpose anti-aircraft
and surface target weapon used by the U.S. Navy throughout WWII and into
the Cold War. It fired fixed AA (Anti-aircraft) or HC (High Capacity)
rounds consisting of a projectile and a cartridge case crimped to the
projectile. The average weight of the round was 34 pounds. The projectiles
weighed about 13 pounds including a burster charge of 0.81 pounds for the
AA round and 1.27 pounds for the HC round. The initial velocity of the
round was 2,700 feet/second with a maximum range of 14,600 yards at 45
degrees elevation and a ceiling of 29,800 feet (9,100 m) at 85 degrees
elevation. The gun could fire at a rate of 20 rounds/minute.
Neither of these rounds were ideal for shore bombardment but this
did not stop several fire missions made by PF's in the Philippines in
1944-45 and in Korea 1950-53 against shore targets.
The
Mark 22 was capable of making an elevated shot to some 8 miles away.
However these guns were manually laid so actually hitting a target such as
a small cluster of infantry on a mountain side would be hard to say the
least. This fire could of course had been adjusted by observers. Also by
the 1960s most of the ammunition for the 3" guns would be at the far
end of its life span so performance would have not been ideal but should
still be capable of performance inside the design envelope.
Bottom line is: if your unit had poked over that rim long enough, La
Frigata could have in fact ruined your whole day had the crew wanted to.
Jul 9, 2007
