page_title: USS Willoughby (AGP-9)
section_title: United States Coast Guard service
hierarchical_section_title: USS Willoughby (AGP-9) / United States Coast Guard service
caption_attribution_description: English: United States Coast Guard cutter USCGC Gresham (WAVP-387), later WHEC-387, later WAGW-387.
context_page_description: The second USS Willoughby (AGP-9) was a motor torpedo boat tender that served in the United States Navy from 1944 to 1946, seeing service in the later stages of World War II. Transferred to the United States Coast Guard in 1946, she was in commission as the cutter USCGC Gresham, later WHEC-387 and WAGW-387, from 1947 to 1969 and from 1970 to 1973, seeing service in the Vietnam War during her Coast Guard career.
context_section_description: Barnegat-class ships were very reliable and seaworthy and had good habitability, and the Coast Guard viewed them as ideal for ocean station duty, in which they would perform weather reporting and search and rescue tasks, once they were modified by having a balloon shelter added aft and having oceanographic equipment, an oceanographic winch, and a hydrographic winch installed. After World War II, the Navy transferred 18 of the ships to the Coast Guard, in which they were known as the Casco-class cutters.
  After undergoing conversion for use as a weather-reporting ship, the former Willoughby was commissioned into Coast Guard service as USCGC Gresham (WAVP-387) – the third ship of the U.S. Coast Guard or its predecessor, the United States Revenue Cutter Service, to bear the name – on 1 December 1947. During her Coast Guard career, Gresham's primary duty was to serve on weather stations in the Pacific Ocean to gather meteorological data. While on duty in one of these stations, she was required to patrol a 210-square-mile (544-square-kilometer) area for three weeks at a time, leaving the area only when physically relieved by another Coast Guard cutter or in the case of a dire emergency. While on station, she acted as an aircraft check point at the point of no return, a relay point for messages from ships and aircraft, as a source of the latest weather information for passing aircraft, as a floating oceanographic laboratory, and as a search-and-rescue ship for downed aircraft and vessels in distress, and engaged in law enforcement operations. She also served on the Bering Sea Patrol, took part in United States Coast Guard Reserve training cruises, and participated in the U.S. Navy's underway refresher training program to ensure her readiness to support military operations.
caption: Coast Guard cutter USCGC Gresham (WAVP-387), sometime after the Coast Guard's 1967 adoption of the "racing stripe" markings on its ships.
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