On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[shrike6]

Originally Posted by chico20854

No, they're additional Coast Guard Bear/Famous-class medium endurance cutters, delivered with the defense features the USCG cutters were designed to be augmented with in wartime - a towed array sonar, two quad Harpoon launchers, some additional electronics and a LAMPS-1 SH-2 helicopter instead of the Dauphin. While they were disliked IRL as poor sea boats and there were questions about the ships' stability if all that armament was fitted, I posit that they were put back into production anyway, as they were cheaper and offered some decent capability while small enough to be produced at second-tier shipyards, such as the many smaller yards along the Gulf Coast that primarily build offshore oilfield support boats in peacetime.

I'll admit I scanned through a couple of months of entries after surgery to catch back up and probably missed where you put that. Interesting though, not a bad way to add more ships during wartime.