INFORMATION ON WWII PCs

173-FOOT STEEL-HULL PATROL CRAFT
(PC, 461 - CLASS)

WORLD WAR II PATROL CRAFT PROGRAM

Cost each - $1,600,000

LEND-LEASE PROGRAM (45)

US NAVY CONVERSIONS (60)

Patrol Gunboat, Motor (PGM) 24
Patrol Control Craft (PCC) 36

PC's CONVERTED TO PCC's

Thirty-five PCs were converted to Patrol Craft - Control (PCC) for use in amphibious landing operations.

Extra personnel accommodations and communications equipment were added, the weight compensated for by removal of depth charges.

Four twin-mount, 20mm guns replaced the single 20s. In addition, the PCCs were fitted with SU radar replacing the earlier SF or SL radar. The ship hull numbers were not changed. On some, large PCC lettering was painted on the bow.

PC WORLD WAR II SERVICE

The 173-foot PC was designed primarily for Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), convoy escort duty and coastal patrol, thus releasing the fleet Destroyers for trans-Atlantic convoy duty.

PCs were highly effective in protecting convoys along the Atlantic seaboard, in the Caribbean and South Atlantic during the critical 1942-1943 "Battle of the Atlantic" years, filling the gap until the Destroyer Escort (DE) could be built and deployed. Though only a few German U-Boats were actually sunk by PCs, their presence, and the threat of depth charge attacks, was a deterrent to the U-Boat commanders. With the threat of submarine attacks on the wane, the PCs took on more hazardous duties, serving in virtually every combat theater around the world.

The PC proved exceptionally adapt as Patrol Control Craft (PCC), controlling and guiding waves of landing craft in every European amphibious landing from Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, to Operation Overlord, the combined Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

In the Pacific, the PCCs were assigned to the Seventh Fleet, "MacArthur's Navy," participating in all island-hopping amphibious landings through Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

During the October 1944 Leyte, central Philippines, landing operations, PCs 623 and 1119, along with five LCI(R)s, distinguished themselves when they rescued approximately 1,200 survivors of USS Gambier Bay (CVE 73), USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE 413), USS Hoel (DD 533) and USS Johnston (DD 557) sunk by Japanese naval forces during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

Operation Olympic, the invasion of the Japanese home island of Kyushu, was the next big invasion planned for execution in March, 1946. The PCCs had received their beach control assignments and were preparing for the invasion when the war ended in August, 1945.

As testimony to their vital role as control ships, the Japanese had assigned entire squadrons of suicide boats to destroy, or disrupt, the PCCs during future landing operations.

PC WAR RECORD

VICTORIES

PCs LOST OR DAMAGED

* First Navy ship sunk on D-Day, 58 minutes before H-Hour

For a history of WWII PCs and their crews try PC Patrol Craft of World War Two.

Patrol Craft Sailors are "Too Good to be Forgotten."
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