WPG/WAGC/WHEC-37, launched as USCGC Roger B. Taney and for most of her career called USCGC Taney (), is a United States Coast Guard high endurance cutter notable as the last warship floating which fought in the attack on Pearl Harbor. She was named for Roger B. Taney (1777–1864), who served as U.S. Attorney General, Secretary of the Treasury, and Chief Justice of the United States.
She is also one of two (out of seven total) Coast Guard cutters still afloat. Active for 50 years, Taney saw action in both theaters of combat in World War II, serving as a command ship at the Battle of Okinawa, and as a fleet escort in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. She also served in the Vietnam War, taking part in Operation Market Time. Taney was also used in drug interdiction and fisheries protection work.
She was decommissioned in 1986, and has since served as a museum ship in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore, Maryland. She was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1988. In 2020, Historic Ships in Baltimore and the Living Classrooms Foundation removed the name Taney from the ship, in recognition of her namesake's historical acts of racial injustice, instead identifying her as simply WHEC-37.
1936–1941 Treasury-class Roger B. Taney, Coast Guard Builders No. 68, was laid on 1 May 1935 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. She was launched on 3 June 1936 and was sponsored by Miss Corinne F. Taney. She was commissioned at Philadelphia on 24 October 1936. The Roger B. Taney departed Philadelphia on 19 December, transited the Panama Canal from 27 to 29 December, and arrived at her home port, Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, on 18 January 1937. She conducted local operations out of Honolulu through the summer of 1937. On 16 June 1937, she transferred a number of her crew for temporary duty to USCGC Itasca. The Itasca was preparing to lend navigational support to Amelia Earhart's flight around the world. In May or June 1937 Roger B. Taney name was shortened to simply Taney.
The Taney had arrived in the Pacific at a time when the United States, and Pan-American Airways in particular, was expanding its commercial air travel capabilities. The "Clipper" flights across the Pacific to the Far East made islands like Hawaii, Midway, Guam, and Wake Island important way-stations. Other islands and islets assumed greater importance when a route across the South Pacific was mapped out to Australia and Samoa. The military benefits which accrued to the United States by its expansion onto some of the more strategic bits of land in the broad Pacific were not lost upon President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who undertook, in the late 1930s, to annex territory in the Pacific.
Two such places were Kanton and Enderbury Islands. The Taney played a role in their colonization by the United States. In early March 1938, the Coast Guard cutter loaded supplies and embarked colonists who would establish the claim of the United States upon the two islands that seemed—at least to the uninitiated—to be mere hunks of coral, rock, and scrub in the Central Pacific. She disembarked four Hawaiians at Enderbury Island on 6 March 1938 and landed a second contingent—of seven colonists—at Canton Island on the next day. The men, assisted by the Coast Guardsmen, erected buildings and laid the foundations for future signal towers.
The Coast Guard's task over the ensuing years leading up to the outbreak of war in the Pacific was to supply these isolated way-stations along the transpacific air routes and to relieve the colonists at stated intervals. Taney performed these supply missions into 1940. Meanwhile, tension continued to rise in the Far East as Japan cast covetous glances at the American, British, Dutch, and French colonial possessions and marched deeper into embattled China.
As the Navy and Coast Guard began gradually increasing and augmenting the armament on its vessels to prepare them for the inexorably advancing war, Taney underwent her first major rearmament at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard in December 1940. She received her last major pre-war refit at the Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, California, in the spring of the following year, 1941. On 25 July 1941, the Coast Guard cutter was transferred to the Navy and reported for duty with the local defense forces of the 14th Naval District, maintaining her base at Honolulu.
Outside another "line island cruise" in the late summer, Taney operated locally out of Honolulu into the critical fall of 1941. She conducted regular harbor entrance and channel patrols, alternating often with one of the four old destroyers of Destroyer Division 80: , , , and .
World War II The message: "Air Raid, Pearl Harbor. This is no drill" came at 07:55 on 7 December 1941, as Japanese planes swept overhead in an attempt to cripple the Pacific Fleet. Taney, moored alongside Pier 6, Honolulu harbor, manned her anti-aircraft guns within four minutes. Officers not aboard were ordered to return and the ship readied to get underway. The ship began firing newly installed three inch guns at Japanese planes passing high overhead. The ship fired on a second and third group of attacking planes, the last of which flew over the Honolulu harbor entrance, perhaps intending to attack the power plant, and was low enough to be engaged by the 50 caliber machine guns. The Japanese planes changed course to avoid Taney's fire. Coast Guardsmen from the Taney were ordered to take up defensive positions around Aloha Tower and protect it from being occupied.
The ship got underway at 0546 on 8 December to patrol the harbor approaches making seven sound contacts and dropping depth charges during the patrol that ended on 14 December. Taney patrolled the waters off Honolulu for the remainder of 1941 and into 1942, conducting many depth charge attacks on suspected submarines in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. During this time, the ship received the classification WPG-37. On 22 January 1942, the cutter departed Honolulu in company with USAT Barbara Olson, and arrived at Kanton Island on 28 January 1942. After sending a working party ashore to unload supplies, Taney screened Barbara Olson offshore until 7 February 1942, when both ships got under way to evacuate the American colony on Enderbury Island. Embarking the four colonists at 10:15 that day, Taney shelled the island and destroyed its buildings to prevent them from being used by Japanese forces. Taney subsequently escorted her merchantman consort to Jarvis Island, where she evacuated the four Interior Department colonists and burned all structures to the ground before departing. Reaching Palmyra Atoll on 12 February 1942, the ships remained there until 15 February 1942, before Taney headed back for the Hawaiian Islands, arriving at Honolulu on 5 March 1942. She made another voyage to Palmyra Island later that spring and when heading back to Hawaii, she received orders to search for survivors in the waters around Midway Island after the Battle of Midway, including a stop at the island itself.
Taney operated locally out of Honolulu into 1943 before sailing for Boston late that winter. Before heading for the east coast the ship was re-gunned with four single-mount 5-inch guns at Mare Island, the only ship in her class with this modification. After making port at Boston on 14 March 1944, Taney shifted south, arriving at Hampton Roads on 31 March 1944. Early in April, she departed Norfolk as a unit of Task Force 66 (TF 66), convoy guide for convoy UGS-38. The convoy made landfall off the Azores without incident on 13 April 1944.
Some 35 minutes after sunset on 20 April 1944, the convoy was spotted and tracked by the Germans, who launched a three-pronged attack with Junkers Ju 88 and Heinkel He 111 medium bombers. Each flew very low, using the shoreline as a background, confusing the search radar of the Allied ships. The first wave struck from dead ahead, torpedoing SS Paul Hamilton and SS Samite. Hamilton, which had been carrying both a load of ammunition and hundreds of Army Air Force personnel, blew up in an explosion that killed all 504 men on board.
The second wave of German torpedo planes hit the SS Stephen F. Austin and SS Royal Star. Two torpedoes passed close by Taney. The third wave damaged , which later sank. All of the damaged vessels reached Bizerte, Tunisia, on 21 April 1944. Taney later departed Bizerte with homeward-bound convoy GUS-38 and arrived at New York City on 21 May 1944.
Taney participated in two more round-trip convoy escort missions, with convoys UGS/GUS-45 and UGS/GUS-52. Detached as a unit of TF 66 on 9 October 1944, she sailed for the Boston Navy Yard soon thereafter for extensive yard work to convert her to an amphibious command ship. During this metamorphosis, Taney — classified as WAGC-37 — was fitted with accommodations for an embarked flag officer and his staff, and with increased communications and radar facilities. Her main battery was changed to two open-mount 5-inch guns and 40- and 20-millimeter antiaircraft guns. Taney departed Boston on 19 January 1945, bound for Norfolk, Virginia.
She conducted shakedown and training in her new configuration before departing the east coast and sailing, via the Panama Canal and San Diego, to Hawaii. Arriving at Pearl Harbor on 22 February 1945, she soon embarked Rear Admiral Calvin H. Cobb and later underwent various minor repairs. New communications equipment was also installed before the ship departed the Hawaiian Islands for the Marshalls on 10 March 1945.
Taney proceeded independently via Eniwetok and arrived at Ulithi on 23 March 1945, remaining there until 7 April 1945. Joining Task Group 51.8 (TG 51.8), the amphibious command ship proceeded to Okinawa and arrived off the Hagushi beaches amidst air raid alerts on 11 April, experiencing five "red alerts". The ship briefly shifted to Kerama Retto on 13 April, returning to Hagushi on 15 April.
By the end of May 1945, Taney had gone to general quarters 119 times, with the crew remaining at battle stations for up to nine hours at a stretch. During this period off Okinawa in April and May, Taney shot down four suicide planes and assisted in numerous other "kills". The command ship also conducted combat information center duties, maintaining complete radar and air coverage, receiving and evaluating information on both friendly and enemy activities. On one occasion, Taney'''s duties took her close enough inshore to be fired on by a Japanese shore battery.
Suicide air attacks by the Japanese continued throughout June 1945, although most were intercepted by combat air patrol (CAP) fighters and shot down before they could reach their targets. Such raids took place on 18 out of 30 days that month. On 25 June 1945, at 01:20, a float seaplane passed near Taney and was shot down by the command ship and batteries ashore. During this month-long period, at least 288 enemy planes attacked the ships in Taneys vicinity, of which at least 96 were destroyed.
In mid-July 1945 a typhoon forced the ships at Hagushi to take evasive action. Taney led a convoy eastward on 19 July 1945 and returned the next day when the storm passed. She performed the same duties again on 1 August 1945 when she led a convoy to sea on typhoon-evasion operations. The ship returned to its anchorage on 3 August 1945.
The end of the war found Taney still off Okinawa. On 16 August 1945, she got under way to support as three Japanese planes were detected approaching from the northeast. One crashed to the north, and two crashed into the sea shortly thereafter. On 25 August 1945, TG 95.5 was dissolved, and Rear Admiral Cobb, who had been embarked during the Okinawa campaign, hauled down his flag and departed.