When I first laid eyes on the old cutter berthed at Pier Five in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, I didn’t think much of her. Part of a maritime collection that boasts a sloop that fought in the U.S. Civil War and a World War II Tench-class fleet submarine, the white ship with a red racing stripe didn’t seem that impressive and I didn’t give her a second glance on that first visit to Baltimore. Later I’d look her up and realized she was every bit as important as the other warships, if not more so.

Of the 101 warships present during the Battle of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Taney (WHEC 37) is the only one still afloat.

Roger B. Taney, Coast Guard Builders No. 68, was laid down May 1, 1935 at Philadelphia Navy Yard and commissioned on October 24, 1936. (The name was shortened to just “Taney” a year later.) She was one of seven Treasury-class Coast Guard cutters, which were based on the design of a U.S. Navy gunboat, who’s adaptability and versatility saw the ones that survived the war lead careers lasting 40 to 50 years. They were comparable in size to the U.S. Navy’s Farragut-class destroyers, all of which also fought at Pearl Harbor.

Despite their law enforcement roots, the cutters were capable of taking on similar-sized warships and performing anti-submarine duties, allowing them to supplement the U.S. Navy’s fleet of destroyers. They were turned over to the Navy in 1941 for that purpose and Taney became USS Taney, CG, on July 1, 1941.

Taney was moored at Honolulu Harbor’s Pier Six on Dec. 7, 1941 when USS Ward (DD-139), another ship in her destroyer division, reported firing upon and sinking a submarine at 6:53 a.m. According to the after action report of Cmdr. Louis B. Olson, Taney’s commanding officer, the general alarm was sounded about an hour later when they began hearing anti-aircraft fire coming from Pearl Harbor, six miles away.

Taney’s crew went to general quarters and had all guns manned and ready within four minutes, within ten minutes all but one officer were back aboard the ship. Though given no orders or directions from higher headquarters, Olson ordered steam and Taney made ready to get underway. For the next hour they stood ready for an attack, not knowing if the next wave would hit them.

Japanese aircraft came high overhead just after 9 a.m. and for fifteen minutes the drone of their engines was met by the boom of Taney’s 3″ anti-aircraft guns. Taney scored no hits. More aircraft came within range after 11 a.m. and Taney was able to open up with its machine guns and anti-aircraft guns, but still no hits were scored.

Having never practiced anti-aircraft drills some loading issues with the 3″ guns at high angles were discovered and later remedied. Overall, Olson felt Taney had put out a good rate of fire and his men acquitted themselves well, considering most crewmembers had never seen anything larger than a machine gun fired.

Taney began patrolling near the Honolulu Harbor entrance the next morning at 5:46 a.m. and over the next week dropped depth charges on anything that could possibly have been a submarine, possibly scoring hits on one, Dec. 10. While other ships were sent to take the fight to the Japanese, Taney would continue performing picket and convoy escort duties until 1943.

During the early part of the war she was also involved with the evacuation of American Department of the Interior personnel from Canton Island, Enderbury Island and Jarvis Island. After the Battle of Midway she was ordered to perform search and rescue operations for survivors.

After eight years of Honolulu-based Pacific service, Taney was re-armed for convoy escort duty in the North Atlantic and sent to the United States east coast in 1943. Taney was given an armament unique amongst cutters for this assignment. Mounting four single 5″ gun mounts, more anti-submarine measures and better electronics, she looked more like a Navy destroyer than ever before. Over the next year she would conduct three round-trip convoy escort missions and tangle with the German Luftwaffe, this time scoring hits.

In October 1944 Taney was again refit, this time as an amphibious command ship.

The former cutter was now the flagship for U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Calvin H. Cobb and fought at the Battle of Okinawa. As a command ship Taney was responsible for being a combat information center, maintaining radar and air coverage and evaluating both friendly and hostile activities.

If Japanese aircraft seemed to pay Taney no mind on Dec. 7, 1941, they were certainly paying attention now. During the first 45 days off Okinawa she moored amongst the transport ships off Hagushi and endured daily air and kamikaze attacks, going to general quarters 119 times and fighting off aircraft at close range.

Once Cobb was made Senior Officer Present Afloat, responsible for directing all naval activity around northern Okinawa,  Taney was moved to a far more exposed position off Ie Shima on May 11. After the move, 288 aircraft attacked in Taney’s vicinity with 96 shot down. She was at times close enough to take shore battery fire and her crew feared suicide attacks from the air as well as from swimmers and boats.

Taney survived virtually unscathed but the kamikaze attacks around Okinawa had taken their toll. Roughly a quarter of all allied ships were hit with 3 sunk and 368 damaged. 5,000 American Sailors died and another 5,000 were injured in the suicide attacks. A commander called Taney “indestructible” because of her performance off Okinawa.

When Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s capitulation on Aug. 15, Taney was still at Okinawa. On Sept. 11 she entered Wakayama, Japan to receive American prisoners of war.

Taney was now nine years old, had survived a war and had three battle stars to show for it. Already a very full career, but this was just the start. She would revert to Coast Guard control after the war and many of her wartime modifications would be undone as Taney shifted from being an amphibious command ship to a patrol cutter. Her time as a peacetime cutter would be short, as Taney was sent to war again to patrol the Korean coast and Sea of Japan from 1950-53.

The majority of her career from this point on would be serving as an ocean station weather ship, her primary task was reporting meteorological conditions to support air and sea traffic. She also provided search and rescue assistance and supported law enforcement operations.

Taney went to war the final time in 1969, operating as part of Coast Guard Squadron Three, supporting Navy operations in Vietnam. By the numbers, she steamed 52,000 miles, inspected 1,000 vessels, fired 3,400 5″ shells and provided medical care to 6,000 Vietnamese villagers. For her year of service, she earned the Republic of South Vietnam’s Presidential Unit Citation.

The cutter’s final years of service were spent performing anti-narcotics operations and rescue operations on the United States east coast. Taney was decommissioned on Dec. 7, 1986 and given to the city of Baltimore to become a museum ship. She is preserved as she was upon retirement.

As a museum ship, she is not exactly a World War II time capsule, like USS Missouri and other veteran ships she was modernized throughout her life and her spaces are more typical of a Naval vessel of the 1980s than the 1940s.

Much of the ship is open to walk through both below decks and up to the bridge. Her spaces have been equipped with the minutiae of shipboard life circa 1986, personal items and clothing in living quarters, offices with cabinets and typewriters, an ammunition room still loaded with training rounds, and stocked damage control lockers are a few examples. A few spaces have also been repurposed for museum exhibits focusing on events the ship played a role in, such as Pearl Harbor and Okinawa.

For children there’s also the trail of Soogie, the ship’s mascot dog, to follow which explains the ship and her actions in a manner children can understand. Soogie was the real ship’s mascot dog and served aboard Taney from 1938-1947.

Pushing 80 and still in good shape, visiting Taney today gives credence to a comment former Commanding Officer Cmdr. Louis Olson made about his ship, “She may outlive us all, surely her spirit will.”

References:

Cmdr. Olson’s After Action Report
http://www.uscg.mil/history/docs/PH_Taney_Action_Report.asp

USS Taney, CG: A Ship’s Biography by Warren G. Hartman

Click to access Taney-WPG37_Hartman-Diary.pdf

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Taney history
http://www.uscg.mil/history/webcutters/Taney_1936.asp