USS Pueblo, PF-13
A city in Colorado.
Builder: Kaiser Cargo, Inc., Richmond, CA
Length: 303' 11"
Beam: 37' 6"
Draft: 12' 8" fl
Displacement: 2,230 tons
Propulsion: 2-shaft VTE, 3 boilers
Range: 9,500 nm at 12 knots
Top speed: 20 knots
Complement: 190
Armament: 2 x 3"/50; 4 x 40mm (2x2); 9 x 20mm; 1 x Hedgehog, 8 x depth charge projectors; 2 x depth charge racks.
Her aft 3"/50 (others in the class had a total of 3 x 3"/50s) was removed and replaced with a weather balloon hanger.
History:
The second US Navy vessel named Pueblo (PF-13) was laid down under Maritime Commission contract (MC hull 1431) by Kaiser Cargo Inc., Yard 4, Richmond, California on 14 November 1943. She was launched 20 January 1944 and was sponsored by Seaman Carol Barnhart, USN (W). The Pueblo was commissioned 27 May 1944 and placed under the command of CDR Donald T. Adams, USCG.
Following shakedown off the southern California coast, Pueblo fitted out with highly sensitive meteorological instruments, reported for duty as a weather tracking ship with the Western Sea Frontier, 26 October 1944. Assigned to the Northern California Sector, and based at San Francisco, she patrolled on ocean weather stations, reporting weather conditions and acting as lifeguard ship beneath the transpacific air routes, until March 1946. Then ordered to the east coast, she departed California on the 13th and headed for Charleston and inactivation.
She was decommissioned 6 April 1946 and sold to J. C. Berkwitz and Co., New York, 22 September 1947. She was then resold a year later, to the government of the Dominican Republic. Originally renamed Presidente Peynado, she serves that country into 1970 as Cap. General Pedro Santana (453).
Sources:
The Coast Guard At War, Transports and Escorts, Vol. V, No. 1, p. 142.
Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1922-1946. London: Conway Maritime Press, 1992, pp. 148-149.
Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol. V, p. 420.
Richard A. Russell. Project Hula: Secret Soviet-American Cooperation in the War Against Japan. [The U.S. Navy in the Modern World Series, No. 4.] Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center/U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997, pp. 39-40.