After training and exercises off the California coast, Muskogee, manned by a United States Coast Guard crew, departed San Pedro, California, on 18 June 1944, for Nouméa, New Caledonia, where she arrived on 18 July 1944, for patrol and escort duty from Nouméa and, after its capture, Humboldt Bay, New Guinea. Anti-submarine patrol and screening for ships operating around New Guinea were her primary duties into October 1944.
On 18 October 1944 she got underway screening the second reinforcement group bound for newly invadedLeyte in the Philippine Islands, arriving in San Pedro Bay on 24 October to screen transports and supply ships under numerous Japanese air attacks while waiting for a group of empty tank landing ships to form up for the return passage. As her convoy retired on 26 October 1944, Japanese aircraft again attacked it, and Muskogee joined in downing several enemy aircraft. A second escort voyage to Leyte in early November 1944 was less eventful.
Concluding her New Guinea patrols, Muskogee arrived in Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, on 15 December 1944, then reported at Dutch Harbor, Territory of Alaska, on 12 January 1945 for similar duty in the Aleutian Islands. Selected for transfer to the Soviet Navy in Project Hula – a secret program for the transfer of U.S. Navy ships to the Soviet Navy at Cold Bay, Alaska, in anticipation of the Soviet Union joining the war against Japan – Muskogee departed Adak on 6 July 1945 bound for Seattle, Washington. After undergoing repairs and conversion at Seattle in preparation for her transfer, Muskogee steamed to Cold Bay, where she soon began training her new Soviet crew.[3]
In February 1946, the United States began negotiations for the return of ships loaned to the Soviet Union for use during World War II. On 8 May 1947, United States Secretary of the NavyJames V. Forrestal informed the United States Department of State that the United States Department of the Navy wanted 480 of the 585 combatant ships it had transferred to the Soviet Union for World War II use returned, EK-19 among them. Negotiations for the return of the ships were protracted, but on 1 November 1949 the Soviet Union finally returned EK-19 to the U.S. Navy at Yokosuka, Japan.[4]
^ abcThe Dictionary of American Naval Fighting ShipsMuskogee article states that Muskogee was transferred on 27 August 1945 and NavSource Online: Frigate Photo Archive Muskogee (PF 49) ex-PG-157 and hazegray.org Muskogee repeat this. However, Russell, Richard A., Project Hula: Secret Soviet-American Cooperation in the War Against Japan, Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1997, ISBN0-945274-35-1, p. 39, which includes access to Soviet-era records unavailable during the Cold War, reports that the transfer date was 26 August 1945. As sources, Russell cites Department of the Navy, Ships Data: U.S. Naval Vessels Volume II, 1 January 1949, (NAVSHIPS 250-012), Washington, DC: Bureau of Ships, 1949; and Berezhnoi, S. S., Flot SSSR: Korabli i suda lendliza: Spravochnik ("The Soviet Navy: Lend-Lease Ships and Vessels: A Reference"), St. Petersburg, Russia: Belen, 1994.
^ abAccording to Russell, Richard A., Project Hula: Secret Soviet-American Cooperation in the War Against Japan, Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1997, ISBN0-945274-35-1, which includes access to Soviet-era records unavailable during the Cold War, Project Hula ships were commissioned into the Soviet Navy simultaneously with their transfer from the U.S. Navy; see photo captions on p. 24 regarding the transfers of various large infantry landing craft (LCI(L)s) and information on p. 27 about the transfer of USS Coronado (PF-38), which Russell says typified the transfer process. As sources, Russell cites Department of the Navy, Ships Data: U.S. Naval Vessels Volume II, 1 January 1949, (NAVSHIPS 250-012), Washington, DC: Bureau of Ships, 1949; and Berezhnoi, S. S., Flot SSSR: Korabli i suda lendliza: Spravochnik ("The Soviet Navy: Lend-Lease Ships and Vessels: A Reference"), St. Petersburg, Russia: Belen, 1994.
^ abRussell, Richard A., Project Hula: Secret Soviet-American Cooperation in the War Against Japan, Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1997, ISBN0-945274-35-1, p. 39.
^Russell, Richard A., Project Hula: Secret Soviet-American Cooperation in the War Against Japan, Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1997, ISBN0-945274-35-1, pp. 37–38, 39.
External links
Photo gallery of USS Muskogee at NavSource Naval History