It's been over 30-yrs since the last US Coast Guard cutter left port for a three-week patrol in the middle of the ocean to serve as a floating weather observation platform. And yet the memory of what went on burns brightly in the minds and hearts of the thousands of "Coasties" who, for over a quarter of a century, carried out their assignments with pride and earned the title of "Weathermen of the Sea."
This article is intended to describe what an Ocean Station was, how they came into being, where they were located, what duties were performed and to relate some of the living histories of what occurred during a patrol.
But I'm getting ahead of myself somewhat and must fall back on the person who served as a partial inspiration for this piece. It was no other that the author Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) who is quoted in saying, "Everyone talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it." During his lifetime, weather predictions were based primarily on local observations of temperature, pressure, wind and clouds. Through the use of the telegraph and then the telephone, weather predictions improved but were still more of a connect-the-dots science of identifying where temperature (isotherms) and pressure (isobars) gradients existed. The 20th century really expanded the science of meteorology with the new technologies of radio, radar, and, ultimately, satellites. Uncertainty and speculation, however, still dominated any conversation surrounding the emerging science of meteorology.
The notion of an ocean weather station originated in the early days of radio communications. It was given a boost with the start of trans-oceanic aviation. As early as 1921, the Director of the French Meteorological Service proposed establishing a stationary weather observation ship in the North Atlantic to aid merchant vessels. Anticipation of transatlantic air service also supported the proposal. The concept was slow in its acceptance and implementation.
However, in the 1930s, aviation continued its rapid expansion in a series of record-breaking flights. The much-published loss of Amelia Earhart on 2 July 1937 and the loss of a Pan-Am flight in 1938 due to weather called for action to be taken in the form of upper-air observations using instrumented balloons by the Weather Bureau and the US Coast Guard. Their initial successes served as the catalyst for Cmdr. E.H. Smith of the International Ice Patrol to document a proposal calling for the establishment of a network of ships deployed in the North Atlantic. However, with the US still in the throes of a depression, the government was not predisposed to act quickly in involving dozens of ships. Funding to initiate a pilot program stagnated in Congress.
Well, that's not quite true. There was one person who viewed the subject of weather from a strategic perspective. That individual was none other than our own President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
In the late 1930s, European war clouds were already casting their long shadows on America. England, her allies, and their vast merchant marine fleets depended on meteorological reports generated by their own ships at sea which radioed information back every four hours.
In September 1939, the whole picture changed with the outbreak of war in Europe. The U-boat campaign brought an abrupt end to all radio transmissions by ships at sea, lest they serve as a beacon for hostile submarines to home in on. Germany began the war with relatively few submarines at sea, but early success essentially panicked the maritime fleets of England and others. The result was a radio black-out and the cessation of all meteorological information. All of Europe was essentially in the dark.
Weather information and the ability to predict its events both on land and at sea came to a screeching halt. The US Navy initially attempted to fill the gap in late 1939 by using some of its older destroyers for North Atlantic patrols. These vessels proved to be totally inadequate to withstand the types of weather that the North Atlantic could boil up; especially in winter.
At the time, the external policy of the United States was one of neutrality with adherence to the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1937. It is well known that FDR did push the neutrality envelope wherever he could. In January 1940, the President agreed to the Navy's request for the US Coast Guard to take over several key missions, and the first of these was weather patrols. He directed the establishment of the Atlantic Weather Observation Service using USCG cutters.
By way of background, since June 1939, when President Roosevelt had authorized the USCG to grow from 11,000 to 13,000 personnel, there had been a mad scramble to train the 2000 new recruits and integrate them into the service. Training that number of men was an impossible task because, after years of budgetary neglect, the Coast Guard wasn't prepared to send these kinds of numbers through basic training. With necessity being the mother of invention, many of these new recruits reported directly on board their ships from civilian life and were trained in real time.
Another bold move, at least on the surface, by FDR aimed at bolstering the country's neutrality and isolationist position was the integration of the US Light House Service (USLHS) into the US Coast Guard. The President announced his reorganization plan under which the Bureau of Lighthouses would be transferred from the Department of Commerce to the Department of the Treasury for consolidation within the Coast Guard on 9 May 1939. With the approval of Congress, it became official on 1 July 1939. The transfer meant that civilian USLHS employees would be moved into a military organization. The merger netted a savings of almost 10% of the Lighthouse Service's annual budget.
On the surface, this had the appearance of being a routine administrative procedure. In reality, it wasn't. Roosevelt had felt ham-strung and was anxious to put the country on a wartime footing and, at the same time, help England. One must recognize that the Lend-Lease Act was nearly 1.5-yrs away (enacted 11 March 1941) and that funding was lacking to carry out any measures that could strengthen America's military position. Very quietly, the president reallocated a large piece of the Lighthouse Service's budget to strengthen the Coast Guard. The USLHS at that time employed over 4000 fulltime civilian personnel and over 1100 part-timers. They were offered the choice of joining the Coast Guard at reduced salaries or retiring. Many chose the latter. Only a relatively small number of full-time lighthouse senior personnel chose to become military officers. In addition, the USLHS had maintained a fleet of 64 buoy tenders which now became CG cutters and were subsequently armed. The large (many considered it bloated) budget of the USLHS gave Roosevelt considerable running room to spend monies and bridge the gap until Lend-Lease became a reality.
And so, on 25 January 1940, in cooperation with the National Weather Service, the Coast Guard was authorized by the President to establish two weather observation stations between Bermuda and the Azores. The plan was for cutters to steam within a 100-sq-mi area for a period of 21-days and serve as weather observation platforms. Weather Bureau personnel were assigned to each cutter that went on patrol. The USCGC Bibb and the USCGC Duane were selected to undertake the first weather patrols and Duane set sail from her home port on 2 February 1940, eight-days later arriving on station to start operations.
Ocean station vessels were also assigned to provide navigation, communications, and search-andrescue services for the Pan-Am Clipper sea planes that flew the vital route to Lisbon, Portugal, from the USA via Bermuda and the Azores. This critical link was extremely valuable as it was the major route used by diplomats going to Europe and the evacuation of VIPs through neutral Portugal. Several of our allies also committed to take part in this program. By mid-1940, a third station was established in a more northerly latitude to serve as plane guard for military aircraft flying to Europe.
While all this was going on, several months after invading Poland in September of 1939, the German war machine boldly walked into Denmark on 9 April 1940 and took over that country. The Danes were completely overwhelmed by the size and ferocity of the German blitzkrieg, and surrendered after a few hours of token resistance. Within a month of the Danish capitulation, Germany took control of the Danish weather stations that had been operational in Greenland, and immediately started to provide vital weather information to the German armed forces. In England, the Blitz had started in anticipation of a German invasion of the island nation. Weather information and the ability to forecast conditions over England became a vital element of the German war plans. Furthermore, the desolate bays and fjords along Greenland's coast provided excellent hiding places where German surface raiders and U-boats could rendezvous with re-supply ships.
With the fall of Denmark, diplomatic talks between the US State Department and the Danish government-in-exile's representative in Washington were started. A Dr. Heinrich de Kauffmann and Gov. Eske Brun of the Danish Crown Colony of Greenland were key personnel in these talks. President Roosevelt, already walking a precarious neutrality tightrope, authorized a bold move aimed at seizing the weather initiative from Germany.
The Danes issued a formal request for US protection of their Greenland colony. On 3 May 1940, President Roosevelt officially responded to this request. Many felt that FDR put a lot of pressure on the Danish government in exile to gain an agreement that included an understanding which allowed the United States could use military force if necessary to expel the unwanted Germans.
The US Coast Guard thus was ordered to assume operational control to carry this out, as they were the only armed US service at the time that had both the ships and the experience to operate in Arctic conditions. At that time, Coast Guard cutters were routinely patrolling oif the coast of Greenland as part of the International Ice Patrol. The thinking at the time was that a few more cutters in the area would not raise any suspicion of pending operations. The cutters Campbell and Comanche were dispatched to Gothaab, Greenland, as soon as practical. The cutter Duane and the smaller cutters Modoc and Raritan, as well as the Coast Guard icebreaker Northland followed in August.
A very cautious cat-and-mouse game was played out while a very visible diplomatic protocol was observed as part of the charade. Shortly after Northland reached Greenland, she proceeded up the east coast of the island where one of the three Nazi-crewed Norwegian trawlers had arrived to establish a weather station there.
Northland found one of these trawlers and forced her to stop and with the authority granted by the Danish Colony Manager, took the trawler Ringsel into protective custody. Steaming in company with the Free Norwegian Navy gunboat Fridtjof Nansen, the Northland then helped to eliminate the German weather station located at Torgilsbu, Prince Kristian Sound, at the southern tip of Greenland. The remaining German-crewed vessels cleared the area in quick order.
In addition, at the request of the Danish Government in exile, the United States was invited to find sites for airfields in Greenland. These were needed as refueling sites for bomber and fighter aircraft being ferried directly from Canada to England. All of this took place in anticipation of the Lend-Lease program that was still being formulated. And so was written another chapter in one might call the first volley of the "weather war."
Roosevelt had a definite strategy in mind by the actions that he orchestrated:
1. Establishment of weather stations in the North Atlantic
2. Expel Germany from Greenland and establish airbases and a military presence there and maintain an American sphere of influence on that side of the Atlantic.
3. Incorporate the USLHS into the USCG as a means of funding military preparedness and pre-Lend-Lease activities during a critical period when the United States was supposedly a neutral.
Roosevelt was indeed a strategic thinker because when Lend-Lease was signed in 1941 it not only helped England to survive during the early stages of WWII, it also served to protect the US sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere. Had England fallen during the dark period of her struggle with Germany, bases like Bermuda, Newfoundland, and others would have been denied to Germany.
Looking back at FDR as a leader, he certainly had the instincts and initiatives that protected our democracy during those uncertain times before WWII. Sometimes a leader can't readily fix a specific problem. What a leader can do however is to build a bridge of hope so that a people can endure hardships and make it to the other side. In that, Roosevelt succeeded majestically.
The seven 327-ft secretary-class (named after secretaries of the Treasury) Coast Guard cutters were assigned the task of not only establishing the early Ocean Stations but also to create and document the routines and practices that made them a reality. All seven secretaryclass cutters were pressed into initial service for this task as they were found to be the most-seaworthy and suitable vessels for the assignment. The seven vessels were:
Cutter Namesake
USCGC Bibb (WPG-31)
George M. Bibb
USCGC Campbell (WPG-32)
George W. Campbell
USCGC Duane(WPG-33)
William J. Duane
USCGC Hamilton (WPG-34)
USCGC Ingham (WPG-35)
Samuel D. Ingham
USCGC Spencer (WPG-36)
John C. Spencer
USCGC Taney(WPG-37)
This did not last long because, with the advent of WWII, these cutters were diverted to convoy antisubmarine duties. Their exploits are described in numerous history books and articles. The Hamilton was sunk by a German U-boat on 30 January 1942. The Campbell rammed and sank U-606on 22 February 1943. The Spencer sank U-175 on 17 April 1943. The Taney is the only surviving warship still afloat that was present in Hawaii during the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Taney was tied to Pier 6 in Honolulu and was at General Quarters within 4-min of the start of the attack. She is presently a museum ship at the Baltimore Maryland Maritime Museum.
Throughout the war, weather stations were patrolled by a mix of various vessels that could be spared and they included converted yachts and obsolete tramp freighters. One of these vessels, the CGC Muskeget, was torpedoed about 400-mi south of the Grand Banks with the loss of over 100 men. Many of these miscellaneous vessels were Coast Guard-operated during various periods of the war. The Allied high command never lost sight of the strategic value of accurate weather forecasting. As air traffic continued to build in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, the numbers of weather stations were also increased. Their value as plane guard vessels was also highly recognized. At the height of the global conflict, there were 26 weather ships operating on the Atlantic and 22 on Pacific stations.
In 1944,19 new 303-ft AVer-class frigates were assigned to weather patrols. These vessels initially served as ASW ships but with the widespread introduction of the faster and more-heavily armed Destroyer-Escort (DE) types, they were reassigned. For their size they were very comfortable and sea worthy vessels and were a good fit as weather ships.
Just before the United State's entry into WWII, the USCG was incorporated into the US Navy on 1 November 1941, and became an integral part of it. As war came to an end, the Navy's intention during demobilization was to terminate its roll in weather ship operations. Weather ships were maintained during demobilization but cutbacks took place throughout 1946. For lack of funding, the entire program was on the verge of collapse. Pressure from the transoceanic airline industry and the Weather Bureau however resulted in the establishment of a permanent peacetime program consisting of 13 international stations in 1947. The United States agreed to operate seven of these stations and the United Kingdom would handle two. France, The Netherlands, Norway, and Canada would man one each. These 13 sites were established by the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
The US Coast Guard, having reverted to an independent agency under the Secretary of the Treasury after the war, was assigned responsibility for seven of those stations. They were:
OS Bravo located in the Labrador Sea.
OS Charlie located 520-mi SW of Greenland.
OS Delta located 1300-mi east of Cape Cod.
OS Echo located 820-mi ENE of Bermuda.
OS hotel located 270-mi east of Cape Hatteras.
OS November located between California and Hawaii.
OS Victor located between Midway Island and Japan.
The operation of OC hotel was only from 1952-1954 and again from 1971-1976. All others were manned forthe full duration of the program.
NOTES:
1.) By way of background, a weather patrol lasted 21-days on station. Transit time to the station was usually five- to seven-days depending on the weather. The average time away from home port was five-weeks. Fuel was seldom a problem as the assigned cutters had a substantial range. During the last days of any patrol, the menu choices became somewhat sparse and fresh food was but a memory.
2.) An ocean station consisted of a 210-mi (East-West) by 210-mi (North-South) grid broken down into 10-mi by 10-mi squares each with a two-letter designation. The center square, which the ship usually occupied, was designated OS (Oscar Sierra) for "on station." A radio beacon continuously keys the letters OS to designate the ships position on the grid. Aircraft flying overhead received a position, course and speed by radar tracking, and surface and winds aloft weather data.
3.) During a routine patrol, surface weather observations are taken every three-hours and radioed back to the US Weather Bureau and upper air observations using instrumented balloons are conducted every 6-hrs. Radio transmitters were carried aloft by helium-inflated balloons and were tracked by air search radar. They yielded information on air temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction up to altitudes over 50,000-ft until such time as the balloon reached the reduced pressure of the stratosphere and burst.
4.) To accommodate the unwieldy balloons and their cargos prior to launch, cutters were modified to mount a block-shaped compartment and catwalks at the stern of the vessel on the deck. A severely rolling deck and 40- to 50-kt winds made balloon launches somewhat of a challenge for the civilian weather bureau personnel that sailed with the ship.
For the most part, weathermen got along well with the ship's personnel and they integrated into the ship's daily routine quite well. They lived in wardroom country with the officers. The only complaint ever heard was about their enormous appetites. They certainly got their money's worth at a time when wardroom mess bills seldom exceeded $25 a month.
The establishment on the ocean station program was initially aimed at supporting the Allied air forces fighting in WWII. Getting planes safely across the Atlantic from the States to England meant being able to forecast landing conditions in England. Forecasting was more of an art than a science and achieving it with any degree of accuracy required the integration of the latest weather information from all sources. In the case of the 8th Air Force's bombing campaign, weather forecasting was an absolute life-and-death situation. However, transmitting weather info back to Allied Headquarters meant laying oneself open to the prying ears and eyes of German U-boats and Japanese I-boats. Essentially observations were performed on an at-risk basis until such time as the battle of the Atlantic had been won and the VJ-day declared in the Pacific. Every radio broadcast meant the possibility of enemy radio direction finders homing in on the transmitting vessel. The U-boats and I-boats provided just one more way for the weather to kill you in the North Atlantic or Pacific oceans.
World War II proved without a doubt that accurate weather information provided a strategic and tactical advantage to whoever could predict it most accurately. Following the war, the weather program was nearly cancelled. Weather ships were withdrawn but it was readily apparent to many that an international project which could continue with an accurate weather reporting program in both the Atlantic and Pacific would be of immense value in peacetime. The development of an air navigation system that could utilize favorable upper wind currents, known as pressure pattern flying, had greatly enhanced this value.
After the war, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) encouraged the formation of an international weather and air-sea rescue organization, the operational units being Ocean Station Vessels (OSV) provided by the member nations. On 17 September 1946 representatives from Belgium, Canada, France, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States agreed to establish a network of weather stations in the North Atlantic.
Congress assigned the responsibility to operate a number of ocean stations to the US Coast Guard. The vessels to be employed were the six 327-ft secretary-class cutters designated WPG, a group of 18 311-ft converted US Navy small seaplane tenders designated WAVP, and 13 255-ft turbo-electric cutters named for lakes in the United States and designated WPG.
All of these vessels were equipped with the latest electronic aids to enable them to make special weather observations and to render navigational aid to trans-ocean aircraft.
The AVP class were especially well-suited for this roll. During WWII while serving as sea plane tenders, nearly half of their tanks were devoted to carrying gasoline. As part of their conversion to weather ships, the gasoline tanks were redesigned to carry diesel oil bringing the fuel capacity to over 180,000-gal and giving these ships a range of over 25,000-mi.
Many of the 327-ft WPGs, the 311-ft WAVPs, and the 255-ft WPGs carried out their missions well into the 1970s when technology finally forced them into retirement. A number of them were also assigned to combat duties during the Vietnam war where they served valiantly and received numerous battle stars. In 1974, the Coast Guard announced plans to terminate the weather stations and in 1977 the last Coast Guard weather ship was replaced by a newly developed ocean buoy. Records show that the international program ended in 1981 when the last ship departed for OS Mike.
A listing of the small seaplane tenders on loan from the US Navy converted to US Coast Guard Cutters and designated WAVP is as follows:
Casco(WAVP-370)
MacAinac(WAVP-371)
HumboltWAVP-372)
Matagorda (WAVP-373)
Absecon (WAVP-374)
Chincoteague (WAVP-375)
Coos Bay (WAVP-376)
Rock away (WAVP-377)
Half Moon (WAVP-378)
Unimack (WAVP-379)
Yakutat (WAVP-380)
Barataria (WAVP-381)
Bering Strait (WAVP-382)
Castle Rock (WAVP-383)
Cook Inlet (WAVP-384)
Dexter (WAVP-385)
McCulloch (WAVP-386)
Gresham (WAVP-387)
A listing of the US Coast Guard 255-ft cutters, designated WPG, also used as weather ships is as follows:
Owasco (WPG-39)
Winnebago (WPG-40)
Chautaqua (WPG-41)
Sebago (WPG-42)
Iriquois (WPG-43)
Wachusett (WPG-44)
Escanaba (WPG-64)
Winona (WPG-65)
Klamath (WPG-66)
Minnettonka (WPG-67)
Androscoggin (WPG-68)
Mendota (WPG-69)
Pontchartrain (WPG-70) ;
These 255s were built during 1945-1946 to replace the ten 250-ft cutters that were transferred to the United Kingdom during the war. Although very seaworthy, the shorter length of these vessels and their somewhat-rounded bottoms made them an especially rough-riding ship. They took many a heavy pounding while on patrol. Another side note was that, for the most part, they were poorly regarded by their crews and during their early lives suffered from unreliable machinery. Over the years, improvements and modifications made going to sea in them more tolerable. They were replaced in the 1960s by the newer class of 378-ft high-endurance cutters.
Typically while on station, a minimum of eight weather observations were taken each day and transmitted back to the various international weather bureaus. These gave the important elements of the surface weather. The temperature and humidity as well as wind speed at various altitudes were also included in the transmissions. These were obtained by automatically recording and transmitting instruments (radiosondes) carried aloft by balloons. These observations are called RAOBS. Four times a day, upper-winds observations were taken by tracking balloons on the ship's air search radar. Observations taken with a radio instruments and a radar target are called RAWINSONDES; those with just a radar target are called RAWINS. By tracking the balloons with radar and plotting their position at different altitudes, the strength and the direction at various altitudes is calculated. Each cutter assigned to weather patrol had a large compartment mounted aft on the 01 deck called the balloon shack. Its purpose was to safely inflate the balloons prior to launch. After inflation, the measurement equipment was attached and the weather personnel walked out onto a catwalk and launched the rig with the wind blowing over the stern quarter. During rough weather, this became a very precarious duty. After launch, the balloons expanded to a diameter of over 30-ft as they reached the stratosphere before bursting. As jet aircraft came within range of the ship's airsearch radar, they were tracked and their true direction and actual speed over ground were calculated and radioed back to the plane.
While on patrol, the weather ships also took temperatures of the sea water at various depths using an instrument called a bathythermograph (BT). Some ships were later equipped with a full-blown oceanographic lab and took deep-sea water samples using a rig called a NANSEN cast. In addition, plankton samples were taken and preserved for future study back on the mainland.
By the 1970s, new technology marked the end of the OSVs. By 1974, operations had been reduced to three stations in the Atlantic and one in the Pacific. Records show that the USCGC Taney is credited with sailing the last weather patrol manned by the Coast Guard at the end of 1975.
Weather patrols were not glamorous and the day-to-day routines were often times quiet and uneventful. However, for the thousands of Coast Guard personnel who served on them, then- exploits will long be remembered. While carrying out the primary task of weather reporting, the ships served as true guardians of the sea and were responsible for saving hundreds of lives and protecting billions of dollars of property during their 30-plus-yrs of service as "Weathermen at Sea in both Peace and War."
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