SS Boone, WPC-335
Builder: New York Yacht, Launch & Engine Company, Morris Heights, NY
Length: 110'
Beam: 14' 9" max
Draft: 5' 8" max (as of 1917)
Displacement: 167 fl (in 1943)
Cost:
Commissioned: 23 January 1918 (USN); 14 August 1942 (USCG)
Decommissioned: 6 June 1945
Disposition: Transferred to the WSA on 8 March 1946
Machinery: 3 x Standard Motor Construction Company 6-cylinder gasoline engines; 600 shp; three propellers;
Hall-Scott Defender engines installed at some point.
Complement: 2 officers, 25 men (1917)
Armament: 1 x 3"/23 (single-mount); 2 x .30 caliber mg; 2 x Mousetraps; 2 x depth charge tracks (1943)
CUTTER HISTORY:
Boone (ex SC-229) was a Navy SC-1 Class patrol craft taken into Coast Guard service in August of 1942 to meet the pressing need for coastal escort vessels. Originally designed and built during World War I to meet that shortage of escorts, these patrol craft were known as the "splinter fleet" due to their wooden construction. The other three acquired by the Coast Guard in 1942/1943 were the CGC Blaze (ex SC-231); Belleville (ex SC-258); and Bowstring (ex SC-238).
The Navy transferred the SC-229 to the Coast Guard on 14 August 1942. She was rearmed at the Oxford Boat Yard in Oxford, Maryland at a cost of $90,000. The rearmament was completed by 4 December 1942 and on 7 December she was assigned to the Gulf Sea Frontier and was to be stationed at Miami. She was placed under the command of LTJG John H. Ruminski. Boone then set sail on 25 January 1945 for Miami. She arrived there on 17 February 1943 but while she was en route, orders were issued that transferred her to duty with the Commander, Anti-Submarine Development Detachment, Atlantic Fleet, based out of New York.
In May, 1944, a special sonar apparatus was installed and tested. Her old wooden hull, however, continued to deteriorate. The Navy ultimately decided that repairing her to a seaworthy condition would entail an unacceptable expense. By March of 1945 the Navy recommended that Boone be decommissioned and disposed of.
She was decommissioned 6 June 1945 and transferred for disposal to the War Shipping Administration on 8 March 1946.
Sources:
Cutter History File. USCG Historian's Office, USCG HQ, Washington, D.C.
Donald Canney. U.S. Coast Guard and Revenue Cutters, 1790-1935. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995.
Robert Scheina. U.S. Coast Guard Cutters & Craft of World War II. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1982.
U.S. Coast Guard. Record of Movements: Vessels of the United States Coast Guard: 1790 - December 31, 1933. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1934; 1989 (reprint).