USS Thrasher (MSC-203)
| History | |
|---|---|
 United States
|
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| Name: | Thrasher |
| Namesake: | Thrasher |
| Builder: | Tampa Marine Company, Tampa, Florida |
| Laid down: | 1 April 1954 |
| Launched: | 6 October 1954 |
| Commissioned: | 16 August 1955 |
| Decommissioned: | 1 August 1961 |
| In service: | 1 August 1961 |
| Out of service: | 1 May 1975 |
| Reclassified: | Coastal Minesweeper, 7 February 1955 |
| Struck: | 1 July 1975 |
| Identification: |
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| Fate: | Transferred to the Singapore, 1 December 1975 |
 Singapore
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| Name: | Mercury |
| Acquired: | 1 December 1975 |
| Decommissioned: | 31 March 1993 |
| Identification: | Hull sumbol: M-102 |
| Status: | discarded 1995 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Bluebird-class minesweeper |
| Displacement: | 320 long tons (330 t) |
| Length: | 144 ft (44 m) |
| Beam: | 28 ft (8.5 m) |
| Draft: | 9 ft 4 in (2.84 m) |
| Installed power: |
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| Propulsion: |
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| Speed: | 13 kn (24 km/h; 15 mph) |
| Complement: | 39 |
| Armament: | 2 × 20 mm (0.8 in) Oerlikon cannons anti-aircraft (AA) mounts |
USS Thrasher (AMS/MSC-203) was a Bluebird-class minesweeper acquired by the US Navy for clearing coastal minefields.
Thrasher was laid down 1 April 1954, by Tampa Marine Company, Tampa, Florida; launched on 6 October 1954, as AMS-203; sponsored by Mrs. Fred T. Henke; reclassified as MSC-203, on 7 February 1955; and commissioned on 14 June 1955, Lieutenant (jg) Frank Mabbett McCraw, Jr. in command.
Two weeks later, Thrasher steamed for Charleston, South Carolina, her home port, to join Mine Force, Atlantic Fleet. But for a visit to Havana, Cuba, the wooden-hulled nonmagnetic coastal minesweeper spent the remainder of 1955, operating in South Carolina and Florida waters. She assumed duties as an active element of Mine Force, Atlantic, on the last day of the year; and, on New Year's Day 1956, her home port was changed to Yorktown, Virginia. The minesweeper's duties there included search and rescue missions for aircraft downed off the Virginia coast.
Assigned to the Experimental Mine Warfare School at Key West in 1957, the coastal minesweeper operated off the east coast and in the Caribbean until 7 February 1958, when she departed Key West and steamed via the Panama Canal and Manzanillo, Mexico, to the California coast, arriving at San Diego on 28 February. Assigned for a time to Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Thrasher surveyed ocean currents off Monterey in March. That summer, she cooperated with Warner Brothers during the shooting of the film "Up Periscope", and then returned to her primary duty plying California's coastal waters as a minesweeper with the San Diego Harbor Defense Command. In the fall, she trained sailors of the Turkish Navy and later, when the Turkish Navy received a minesweeper from the United States under the Mutual Aid for Defense Program, continued to lend assistance during shakedown.
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