The Post War Life of the Tacomas
The Frigates of the PF-03 Class Served 14 Different Navies
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.
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