USCGC Yamacraw (WARC-333)

U.S. Army Mine Planter (USAMP) Maj. Gen. Arthur Murray (MP-9), keel laid in 1941 as hull 482, was launched in 1942 by the Marietta Manufacturing Company at Point Pleasant, West Virginia.[1][2] The ship was assigned to the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps planting and tending controlled mine fields connected by cable to the coastal forts.[1][3] The ship was named for Major General Arthur Murray, USA, (1 July 1908 – 14 March 1911) who was the first Chief of the Coast Artillery Corps.

The M 1 Mine Planter was designed by the Marine Design and Construction Division of the Office of the U.S. Army Quartermaster General. Its specifications were 188 ft 2 in (57.4 m) length overall, 37 ft (11.3 m) beam, with a mean draft of 11 ft 6 in (3.5 m). The pilot house was sized to allow large decks fore and aft for mine storage. Propulsion was two 600 h.p. Skinner Uniflow Marine Engines fed by two water tube boilers and driving twin screws. A removable, vertical, steam operated reel capable of carrying fifty tons of mine control cable was located on the forecastle. Two full mine groups could be carried on deck with room in the main hold for another full group if necessary.[4]

By 1944 the threat of attack on the U.S. coast had faded and the Coast Artillery began releasing mine planters for other uses.[1]

On 2 January 1945 the mine planter was acquired by the Navy and converted into a Chimo class auxiliary minelayer by the Charleston Navy Yard, Charleston, South Carolina. The ship was commissioned USS Trapper, designated ACM-9, on 5 March 1945, with Lt. Richard E. Lewis, USNR, in command.[3]

Trapper began shakedown training in the Chesapeake Bay during April and got underway the Pacific Ocean war zone for on 11 June 1945. The ship proceeded to Manzanillo, Cuba then through the Panama Canal to San Diego. In mid-August Japan capitulated while the ship was en route to Hawaii. Trapper arrived at Pearl Harbor on 21 August and was routed westward, via Eniwetok, Saipan, and Okinawa, to Japan.[3]

Trapper arrived at Kobe on 25 November 1945 and operated out of that port repairing minesweeping gear until 1 February 1946 when she shifted her base of operations to Wakayama for a month. On 11 March, the ship got underway for the United States. En route, she called at Saipan, Eniwetok, Kwajalein, Johnston Island, and Hawaii before arriving at San Francisco, on 2 May 1946.[3]

USS Trapper was decommissioned and transferred to the United States Coast Guard in San Francisco on 20 June 1946 and struck from the Navy List on 19 July 1946. The former auxiliary minelayer served with the Coast Guard as a cable layer until early 1959 as Yamacraw (WARC-333).[5] Up until 1946 the Coast Guard was responsible for Navy cable laying operations as well as its own. In 1922 the Coast Guard had obtained the 1909 Army Mine Planter Gen. Samuel M. Mills which it renamed Pequot, second USCG cable ship with the name,[note 1] for service until replaced by Yamacraw in 1946.[6]

The ship was reacquired by the U.S. Navy on 17 April 1959 and commissioned in New York on 30 April 1959 as the Cable Repair Ship USS Yamacraw (ARC-5), 30 April 1959. Yamacraw was assigned to the 3rd Naval District for the next six years. She operated from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Bermuda and spent much of her at-sea time conducting research projects for the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and for the Bell Telephone Laboratories.[3] The ship, operated by Bell Telephone Laboratories, was identified as one of nine military research and development oceanographic ships in a 1959 National Academy of Sciences report.[14]

One of the operations for ONR involved a test of a cable towed oceanographic instrumentation system. The test tow, conducted 13 to 17 April 1962, proved the feasibility of towing the system to a depth of 5,000 ft (1,524.0 m) at speeds up to 7 kn (8.1 mph; 13 km/h).[15]

Yamacraw was decommissioned 2 July 1965 and transferred to the Maritime Administration for disposal the same day.[3] The ship was purchased for $20,850 by North American Smelting for scrap on 18 October 1967 and withdrawn from the Hudson River Reserve Fleet on 2 November 1967 for scrapping.[16] Yamacraw was scrapped in 1969.[7]

• Coast Artillery Corps—Army Mine Planter Service
• Ships of the U.S. Navy, 1940–1945 ACM-9 USS Trapper
• Photo gallery of USCGC Yamacraw (WARC-333) at NavSource Naval History
• Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution – Yamacraw
• Onionhead capture: At 42 minutes into the movie the YAMACRAW WAGL-333 is clearly identifiable.
• ARC-1, Yamacraw (ARC-5) & Nashawena (AG-142)
• Photo: USS Yamacraw (ARC-5)
• Photo: Yamacraw Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (DANFS)