USCGC Sea Devil (WPB-87368)
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USCGC Sea Devil
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| History | |
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 United States
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| Name: | USCGC Sea Devil |
| Builder: | Bollinger Shipyards, Lockport, Louisiana |
| Homeport: | Seattle, Washington |
| Status: | in active service |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Marine Protector-class coastal patrol boat |
| Displacement: | 91 long tons (92 t) |
| Length: | 87 ft 0 in (26.5 m) |
| Beam: | 19 ft 5 in (5.9 m) |
| Draft: | 5 ft 7 in (1.7 m) |
| Propulsion: | 2 x MTU diesels |
| Speed: | 25 knots (46 km/h) |
| Range: | 900 nmi (1,700 km) |
| Endurance: | 5 days |
| Complement: | 10 |
| Armament: | 3 × .50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns |
USCGC Sea Devil is the 67th Marine Protector-class coastal patrol boat to be built, and the first of four the be paid for by the US Navy. Her home port is Seattle, Washington, where she and her sister ship Sea Fox are assigned to one of two Maritime Force Protection Unit. Their sole mission is to escort the Navy's largest submarines, the nuclear-armed Ohio class, while in and near their moorings in Puget Sound.USCGC Sea Dragon and USCGC Sea Dog guard the submarine base in Kings Bay, Georgia, on the Atlantic Ocean.
These submarines require an escort because, while they carry some of the most powerful weapons ever built, they do not mount weapons suitable to protect them from surface threats, like the speedboat that carried a bomb that damaged USS Cole.
Sea Devil is slightly modified from the standard design of a Marine Protector cutter, the smallest cutter the Coast Guard currently has in service. Like her sister ships, she is 87 feet (27 m) long, displaces approximately 90 tonnes, and has a maximum speed of 25 knots (46 km/h). They are all equipped with a jet-propelled pursuit boat, that is deployed and retrieved via a stern launching ramp, enabling it to be used without bringing the cutter to a halt.
Sea Devil, and the three other vessels, have been modified from the design of the Coast Guard's other Marine Protector cutters. These four vessels mount an additional gyro-stabilized remotely controlled machine gun. The main armament of the standard Marine Protector cutter are a pair of fifty caliber Browning machine guns, mounted on the rail to other side of the vessel's foredeck. The long range accuracy of these weapons is low, when fired by a gunner on a pitching deck, aiming using "iron sights". Sea Devil, and the three other cutters, have a pedestal, in the middle of the foredeck, that gives their main armament a better field of fire. The gun mounted on the pedestal is the same Browning as the other guns, but gyro stabilization compensates for the pitching deck. The mount is equipped with multiple cameras, enabling the gun aimer on the bridge to focus the gun's sights on a distant target, even at night, or when visibility is impaired by smoke, or fog.
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Wikipedia