USS Lorain, PF-93
A city in Ohio.
Builder: American Shipbuilding Co., Lorain, Ohio
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: 3 x 3"/50; 4 x 40mm (2x2); 9 x 20mm; 1 x Hedgehog, 8 x depth charge projectors; 2 x depth charge racks. For those frigates fitted out for weather patrol duty, the after 3-inch gun was removed and a weather balloon hanger was added aft.
History:
Lorain (PF-93) was authorized as Roanoke (PG-201) but was reclassified PF-93 on 15 April 1943. She was laid down as Roanoke (PF-93) under a Maritime Commission contract by American Shipbuilding Co., Lorain, Ohio on 25 October 1943. She was renamed Lorain 7 February 1944, launched 18 March 1944, and sponsored by Mrs. Fred Henderson. She was commissioned at Baltimore, Maryland on 15 January 1945 under the command of LCDR James 0. Ramsey, Jr., USCGR.
Lorain departed Baltimore 28 January 1945 for Norfolk and Bermuda, where the Coast Guard-manned frigate underwent shakedown and training. After further training in Casco Bay, Maine, she sailed 11 April for Argentia, Newfoundland, her base for weather patrols through the following summer. Operating out of Argentia and later Reykjavik, Iceland, she ranged the North Atlantic from the coastal waters of Greenland to waters north of the Azores, reporting vital meteorological data.
Lorain returned to Boston 14 September, conducted a weather patrol off New England in late October, then sailed 2 December for duty in the Caribbean. An escort run took her to Recife, Brazil, early in 1946, and after two weather patrols east of Bermuda, she returned to Boston 7 March.
She was decommissioned in Boston on 14 March 1946. She was sold 26 March 1947 to the French Navy and commissioned on the same day as La Place (F13). Disarmed a year later she served as weather observation ship in the North Atlantic until sunk by a World War II-era German mine on 16 September 1950. 52 sailors and civilians were killed while 40 survived.
Sources:
The Coast Guard At War, Transports and Escorts, Vol. V, No. 1.
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. IV, p. 141.