Monomoy, 1943 (WAG-275)

Feb. 28, 2021
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Monomoy, 1943

WAG-275 / AG-40
ex-J. Floyd Massey, Jr. / ex-Lake Arline 


A point and island off the west coast of Cape Cod in Nantucket Shoals.


(AG-40: dp. 2,580; l. 261'; b. 43'6"; dr. 18'; s. 10 k.; cpl. 70; a. 1 4", 4 .50-cal. mg., 2 dcp.)

Builder: Globe Shipbuilding Company, Duluth, Minnesota

Length: 261'

Beam: 43' 6"

Draft: 18'

Displacement: 2,580 tons

Cost: $600,000 (conversion cost)

Commissioned: 1918 (commercial); 24 December 1941 (USN); 22 October 1943 (USCG)

Decommissioned: 12 October 1945

Disposition: Sold

Machinery: 

Performance & Endurance:

        Max: 10.0 knots
        Cruising: 

Complement: 70

Armament: 1 x 4"; 4 x .50 caliber MG; 2 depth charge projectors 

Electronics: SF-1 radar (?)


History:

Monomoy (AG-40) was built in 1918 by Globe Shipbuilding Company in Duluth, Minnesota.  She was acquired by the Navy as J. Floyd Massey, Jr. on 15 September 1941 from Steel Products Transportation Co., of Buffalo, New York.  She was renamed Monomoy on 15 October 1941 and was commissioned on 24 December 1941.

She was converted at the Maryland Drydock Company in Baltimore, Maryland.  Monomoy, manned and operated by the Coast Guard, joined the Weather Patrol, Atlantic Fleet, in 1942.  From her base at Boston, she periodically sailed to weather stations 1 and 2, where she provided weather reports vital for the safety of convoys and air commerce, operating in dangerous waters, she made frequent contact with marauding submarines.  Attacked by a Nazi U-boat on 24 July, she returned fire, damaging the submarine, forcing it to break off action.  She continued patrolling the North Atlantic for the next 15 months, and despite enemy harassment and rough seas, was able to render valuable service to those crossing the Atlantic.  

She was formally transferred to the Coast Guard on 22 October 1943, and stricken from the Naval Register 30 October 1943.  Redesignated WAG-275, Monomoy served the Coast Guard through the remainder of the war and was then transferred to the Maritime Commission.  She was scrapped in 1951.


Sources:

Cutter History File.  USCG Historian's Office, USCG HQ, Washington, D.C.

Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.  Washington, DC: USGPO.

Robert Scheina.  U.S. Coast Guard Cutters & Craft of World War II.  Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1982.