USS Brunswick, PF-68
A city in Georgia.
Builder: Leathem D. Smith Shipbuilding Co., Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.
Length: 303' 11"
Beam: 37' 6"
Draft: 12' 8" fl
Displacement: 2,230 tons
Propulsion: 2-shaft VTE, 3 boilers
Range: 9,500 nm at 12 knots
Top speed: 20 knots
Complement: 190
Armament: 3 x 3"/50; 4 x 40mm (2x2); 9 x 20mm; 1 x Hedgehog, 8 x depth charge projectors; 2 x depth charge racks. For those frigates fitted out for weather patrol duty, the after 3-inch gun was removed and a weather balloon hanger was added aft.
History:
Brunswick (PF-68) was launched 6 November 1943 by Leathem D. Smith Shipbuilding Co., Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. She was sponsored by Mrs. K. G. Berrie, wife of the Mayor of Brunswick, Georgia. She was then towed down the Mississippi River to New Orleans and thence to Galveston, Texas, where she arrived 23 May 1944. Here she was outfitted at the Todd Galveston Drydocks, Inc., and was commissioned 3 October 1944 under the command of LCDR B. B. Sherry, USCG. She left Galveston on 15 October 1944 for Bermuda, where shakedown exercises engaged her until 22 November 1944. She then returned to Norfolk on post-shakedown availability until 11 December 1944.
Between 11 December 1944 and 7 June 1945 the Coast Guard manned Brunswick served as a convoy escort vessel on three voyages between the east coast and Oran, Algeria. During these voyages she escorted the following convoys: UGS-63; GUS-63; UGS-73; GUS-75; UGS-89; and GUS-91. While operating as part of the escort screen of convoy GUS-63, and when a short distance outside the Straits of Gibraltar, the merchant vessel SS Henry Miller was torpedoed. The Brunswick proceeded to pick up survivors and then made several runs on the submarine which was thought to have made the attack. She then escorted the crippled merchant vessel back to Gibraltar, landed the survivors there, and rejoined convoy GUS-63 en route to Hampton Roads, Virginia.
On 7 June 1945 she entered Philadelphia Navy Yard for conversion to a weather ship and then served on weather patrol in the North Atlantic from 9 July 1945 until 24 March 1946. She then commenced her pre-inactivation overhaul at Boston and was decommissioned 3 May 1946. Brunswick was sold 9 April 1947.
Sources:
The Coast Guard At War, Transports and Escorts, Vol. V, No. 1.
Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1922-1946. London: Conway Maritime Press, 1992, pp. 148-149.
Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol. 1, p. 166.