USNS REDBUD - How Even the Brightest Among us Goofs
From The Old Salt's Journal, Summer 1998: "Which 180 foot tender never sailed under a Coast Guard Flag? Answer - Redbud"
-----Original Message-----
From: HDBrass@aol.com <HDBrass@aol.com
To: kenlong@sos.net <kenlong@sos.net
Date: Monday, June 29, 1998 8:57 PM
Subject: Old Salt's Journal
Dear Ken:
Thanks for the prompt arrival .of the Membership Package.
The summer issue of subject Journal was very interesting. Is it
possible to order back issues?
The item in the Summer 1998 issue on page 7 re the USS REDBUD
caught my eye since she was one of my nine CG Cutter commands. .
However I must inform you that she DID sail under the CG Ensign,
and for some time.
I was hastily recalled fom the WALNUT in French Frigate Shols to
take the REDBUD south on a Loran Station supply mission in the
South Pacific under the command of CGDistrict 14. Following that
interesting , and on one occasion hectic) voyage we were assigned
to duty with the Navy Hydrographic units at Bikini to prepare for
the atom bomb test in the spring of '46.
We were under USN OPCON but retained our CG identity and CGD14
support and ADMIN. .
This was much the same arrangement that TUPELO (where I spent
several happy years) operated in the Guam area setting heavy ship
moorings for a Navy Service Squadron .
REDBUD did not get to see the bomb go off however, and after
planting all the buoys required for positioning the test vessels
we were ordered back to Hawaii and I went home for the 120 days
of leave that had accumulated. Presumably then she was disposed
of to become a USN vessel
Bill Bailey
Dear Bill Bailey,
I stand corrected. Redbud operated under the USNS flag many
years out of Argentia. In later years she operated out of New
Bedford. The standard brass name plate called it a USCG Cutter
but I was told by one of the ship's officers that it never was in
the Coast Guard, the Navy had taken it directly from the builder.
Well you never know. I was surprised when I saw a gray 180. That
was in 1951 when I was a crewman on the Evergreen and later in
New Bedford when I was a Junior Officer on the Escanaba.
My apologies,
Jack