USS Serene (AM-300)
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Type | Admirable minesweeper |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | August 8, 1943 |
| Launch | October 31, 1943 |
| 1. Period of service |
|
| Commissioning | June 24, 1944 |
| Decommissioning | July 19, 1946 |
| Removed from ship register | August 1, 1964 |
| Whereabouts | handed over to South Vietnam |
| 2. Period of service |
|
| Commissioning | 1964 |
| Whereabouts | Sunk on January 19, 1974 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
625 ts ; 945 ts full |
| length |
56.24 meters (184 '6 ") |
| width |
10.06 meters (33 ') |
| Draft |
2.97 meters (9 '9 ") |
| crew |
104 |
| drive |
2 Cooper-Bessemer - diesel engines with a total of 3,420. SHP , two waves |
| speed |
14.8 knots (27.4 km / h) |
| Armament |
3 "/ 50 gun |
| Callsign |
N - Q - R - J |
The USS Serene (AM-300) (later MSF-300 ) was a minesweeper and escort ship of Admirable class of the United States Navy . During World War II she was involved in the battles for Iwojima and Okinawa . In 1964 the ship was handed over to the South Vietnamese Navy , renamed Nhật Tảo (or Nhựt Tảo ) (HQ-10) and used in the Vietnam War. In 1974 she was sunk by Chinese units near the Paracel Islands .
Mission history
The USS Serene (the name can be "left" with "cheerful" or "calm" translating) was born on 8 August 1943 at the Winslow Marine Railway and Shipbuilding Company on Bainbridge Iceland in the state of Washington placed on Kiel . The construction was financially supported by Miss Maxine Noblett . The launch took place about three months later , in June 1944 the ship was then under the command of Lt. James E. Galloway put into service.
After she had done some test before the Southern California coast that took USS Serene August 29, heading for Pearl Harbor ( Hawaii ), where she arrived on 6 September. Escort duties for convoys between Hawaii, Eniwetok ( Marshall Islands ) and San Francisco followed by December . Over the turn of the year until mid-January 1945, the ship took part in naval exercises before escorting a convoy to the Mariana Islands , where the US units assembled for the planned invasion of Iwojima .
As an escort ship of the USS Terror and thus part of Tractor Group 52.3 , the Serene reached the volcanic islands , the archipelago around Iwojima, on February 16 . It now followed minesweeper operations as part of Minesweeper Division 36 about 15 miles south of Iwojima; the next day the ships continued to approach the island, so that mines within the planned landing zone could be cleared the day after that. On February 19, the start of the battle , the Serene supported the smaller YMS boats . From the 20th to the 28th she was finally involved in anti-submarine operations. It was then withdrawn from the volcanic islands and returned to the Mariana Islands on March 5.
Two days later the ship set off again in the direction of Ulithi ( Karolinen ), the gathering area for the next invasion, Operation Iceberg , i. H. the attack on Okinawa and the rest of the Ryūkyū Islands . On March 19, the Serene left as part of the Ulithi fleet and set course for the Kerama Islands off Okinawa , where it was involved in mine clearance on the 25th and 26th; after this landing site was secured, it conducted minesweeping operations in advance of the main attack on Okinawa. After the invasion began on April 1, the Serene remained in the area between the Kerama Islands and Okinawa, where further anti-submarine patrols and minesweeping operations followed. Furthermore, she was responsible for supporting damaged ships. On the 6th she took on survivors of the sunk freighter Hobbs Victory . In the middle of the month it cleared mines before the attack on Ie Shima Island . The temporary return to Ulithi followed on May 4th to escort UOK 16 convoy to Okinawa. In mid-June, the Serene was deployed in the Miyako-jima area.
At the beginning of July, the ship finally left the Ryūkyū Islands to accompany an LST convoy to Leyte ( Philippines ). The Serene remained there for maintenance and did not take part in fighting until the end of the war .
After the armistice, she looked for mines in the Yellow Sea west of Korea in late August and early September , before clearing the port entrance of Nagasaki and the west coast of Kyūshū as part of the Sasebo Sweep Group . In October and November, it was deployed on Tsushima Street and along the Korean east coast in the Sea of Japan .
On December 12th, the Serene finally began the journey home. She had been awarded three Battle Stars for her wartime operations and three others for post-war mine clearance. The ship reached Galveston (Texas) at the end of January 1946 , and in May the ship was moved to Orange , where it was finally decommissioned on July 19 and assigned to the Texas group of the Atlantic reserve fleet.
The Serene remained inactive in reserve for the next 17 years . During this time she was reclassified in 1955 as a "Fleet Minesweeper with Steel Hull" ( MSF ).
South Vietnam
In July 1963, the Serene was selected as one of the ships to be handed over to the Navy of the Republic of Vietnam as part of the Military Assistance Program . She was converted into a patrol and escort ship and then brought to South Vietnam together with her sister ship Shelter at the end of January 1964 . On August 1, she was finally removed from the Naval Vessel Register . In addition to the Serene and the Shelter , three other ships of the Admirable class were handed over to the Vietnamese: the Gayety and the Sentry had been in Vietnam since 1962, the Prowess followed in 1970.
The Serene was given the new Vietnamese name Nhật Tảo (possibly also Nhựt Tảo , even the Vietnamese sources contradict each other here) and the ship identification HQ-10 . In the next few years, deployments in the Vietnam War followed , mainly patrols along the coast to prevent North Vietnamese infiltration and support for coastal military operations.
On August 7, 1967, the Nhật Tảo was embroiled in a major battle when FNL units attacked the base of Coastal Group 16 at the mouth of the Sông Trà Khúc in central Vietnam. The Nhật Tảo , some PCFs as well as the later arrived USS Camp and USS Gallup provided support fire . However, the South Vietnamese and Americans could not prevent the military camp from being completely overrun and both the Vietnamese and American commanders being killed. It was only after three infantry companies arrived that the base was recaptured.
After Red Chinese units were discovered in January 1974, after the Americans had left, on the Paracel Islands , which were disputed between Vietnam and China , a South Vietnamese intervention fleet was formed in Đà N .ng . In addition to the Trần Bình Trọng , the Lý Thường Kiệt and the Trần Khánh Dư, this also included the smaller Nhật Tảo under Captain Ngụy Văn Thà , although the now outdated ship suffered from a defective engine. The fleet set course for the Paracel Islands; On January 19, there was ultimately a battle with the Chinese ships , although the exact sequence remains unclear. The Nhật Tảo was probably hit directly in the bridge by an anti-ship missile during the fight , rendering the ship rudderless; the crew nevertheless held their position at the guns. Since the rest of the Vietnamese ships were too far away or were themselves under heavy fire, no help arrived, so that the Nhật Tảo was finally sunk by enemy fire. The remaining Vietnamese units then withdrew. Only 37 men of the 82-strong crew could be rescued a few days later, making the sinking of the Nhật Tảo the worst ship loss of the Vietnam War.
Web links
- USS Serene in the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships
- USS Serene at Navsource Online
- VNN Coastal Group 16 & “Tweaking the Tiger's Tail” - The Battle for the Paracel Islands ( Memento from May 11, 2019 in the Internet Archive )