USS Disdain (AM-222) under construction
History
United States
Name	USS Disdain (AM-222)
Builder	American Ship Building Company, Lorain, Ohio
Laid down	23 October 1943
Launched	25 March 1944
Commissioned	26 December 1944
Decommissioned	22 May 1945[1]
Fate	Transferred to Soviet Union, 22 May 1945[1]
Reclassified	MSF-222, 7 February 1955
Stricken	1 January 1983[citation needed]
History
Soviet Union
Name	T-271[2]
Acquired	22 May 1945[1]
Commissioned	22 May 1945[1]
Refit	Converted to naval trawler, 1948[citation needed]
Fate	See note[3]
General characteristics
Class and type	Admirable-class minesweeper
Displacement	650 tons
Length	184 ft 6 in (56.24 m)
Beam	33 ft (10 m)
Draft	9 ft 9 in (2.97 m)
Propulsion	2 × ALCO 539 diesel engines, 1,710 shp (1.3 MW) Farrel-Birmingham single reduction gear 2 shafts
Speed	14.8 knots (27.4 km/h)
Complement	104
Armament	1 × 3"/50 caliber gun DP 2 × twin Bofors 40 mm guns 1 × Hedgehog anti-submarine mortar 2 × depth charge tracks
Service record
Part of:	U.S. Pacific Fleet (1944-1945) Soviet Pacific Ocean Fleet (1945-1960 or 1964)[3]

USS Disdain (AM-222) was an Admirable-class minesweeper built for the United States Navy during World War II and in commission from 1944 to 1945. She was transferred to the Soviet Union in 1945 and after that served in the Soviet Navy as T-271.

Disdain was launched on 25 March 1944 at Lorain, Ohio, by the American Shipbuilding Company, sponsored by Mrs. J. P. Sturges, and commissioned on 26 December 1944.

Departing Chicago, Illinois, on 4 January 1945, Disdain made her way down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, Louisiana, arriving there on 31 January 1945 for shakedown training.

She was decommissioned on 21 May and transferred to the Soviet Navy under lend lease as T-277. In 1948, the Soviets converted the ship into a naval trawler and renamed her Shtorm. She was stricken in 1964 and converted to a whaler around this same time.

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, Territory of Alaska, in anticipation of the Soviet Union joining the war against Japan – Disdain departed Burrwood, Louisiana, on 27 February 1945, transited the Panama Canal, called at San Diego, California, and arrived at Seattle, Washington, on 22 March 1945 for pre-transfer overhaul and alterations. Departing Seattle on 7 April 1945, she arrived at Cold Bay on 15 April 1945 to begin familiarization training of her new Soviet crew.^[4]

Following the completion of training for her Soviet crew, Disdain was decommissioned on 22 May 1945^[1] at Cold Bay and transferred to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease immediately.^[1] Also commissioned into the Soviet Navy immediately,^[1] she was designated as a tralshik ("minesweeper") and renamed T-271^[2] in Soviet service. She soon departed Cold Bay bound for Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Soviet Union, where she served in the Soviet Far East^[4] and was converted into a naval trawler in 1948.^{[citation needed]}

In February 1946, the United States began negotiations for the return of ships loaned to the Soviet Union for use during World War II, and on 8 May 1947, United States Secretary of the Navy James 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. Deteriorating relations between the two countries as the Cold War broke out led to protracted negotiations over the ships, and by the mid-1950s the U.S. Navy found it too expensive to bring home ships that had become worthless to it anyway. Many ex-American ships were merely administratively "returned" to the United States and instead sold for scrap in the Soviet Union, while the U.S. Navy did not seriously pursue the return of others because it viewed them as no longer worth the cost of recovery.^[5] The Soviet Union never returned Disdain to the United States, although the U.S. Navy reclassified her as a "fleet minesweeper" (MSF) and redesignated her MSF-222 on 7 February 1955.

Confusion exists as to the final disposition of T-271. Sources claim both that she was scrapped in 1960^[3] and that she remained in Soviet Navy service until 1964, when she was stricken from the Soviet Navy list and converted for civilian use as a whaling ship named Shtorm.^[3] Unaware of her fate, the U.S. Navy kept Disdain on its Naval Vessel Register until finally striking her name from it on 1 January 1983.^{[citation needed]}

•  This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be found here.

• Photo gallery of Disdain at NavSource Naval History