Qualla: USCGC Winona

USCGC Winona: Introduction

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. She was built for World War II but missed it. Commissioned on April 19, 1946, nearly a year after Japan's surrender, the USCGC Winona arrived too late for the conflict that justified her construction. It was an inauspicious start for a warship -- an Owasco-class high endurance cutter, 255 feet of steel designed for combat, launched into peacetime. Western Pipe & Steel built her at their San Pedro shipyard in Los Angeles, and the Coast Guard named her after Winona Lake, Indiana. For the next 28 years, the Winona would make her career not in battle but in the unglamorous, essential work of ocean rescue: towing disabled vessels, evacuating injured sailors, and standing watch over some of the most dangerous waters in the North Pacific.

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USCGC Winona: The Rescue Ledger

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Winona's service log from Port Angeles, Washington -- her homeport from 1947 to 1974 -- reads like a catalog of maritime distress. In November 1948, she towed the disabled MV Herald of Morning. In February 1950, she hauled the MV Edgecombe all the way to Seattle. She escorted a f...

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USCGC Winona: Nine Months Off Vietnam

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The war Winona finally fought was not the one she was built for. In January 1968, she was assigned to Coast Guard Squadron Three in South Vietnam, joining the naval effort to intercept arms shipments along the coast. On March 1, she engaged and sank a North Vietnamese trawler des...

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USCGC Winona: Back to the Gray Routine

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Peacetime duty resumed immediately. On January 31, 1969, Winona stood by the MV Belmona after a fire broke out 15 miles southwest of Cape Flattery, holding position until commercial tugs could reach the scene. That July, she helped manage the aftermath when a diesel-laden barge s...

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USCGC Winona: The Final Watch

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Winona was decommissioned on May 31, 1974, at the end of a career that spanned the early Cold War, the Vietnam era, and nearly three decades of Pacific Northwest maritime service. She was laid up at the Coast Guard Base in Alameda, California, and scrapped in late 1976. No museum...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain