Tacoma - class frigate The " Tacoma " class of patrol frigate s served in the United States Navy during World War II and the Korean War . Named for the lead ship of the class , – which in turn was named for the city of Tacoma , Washington – ships of the class also served in the British Royal Navy – in which they were known as Colony - class frigate s – and the Soviet Navy during World War II . " Tacoma " - class ships served in the United States Coast Guard and various navies post - World War II . Design . In 1942 , the success of German submarine s against Allied shipping and the shortage of escorts with which to protect Allied sea lines of communication convinced U . S . President Franklin D . Roosevelt of a need to engage mercantile shipbuilders in the construction of warships for escort duty . The United States Maritime Commission , which oversaw the wartime merchant shipbuilding program , proposed to meet this requirement by building a version of the British River - class frigate , a Royal Navy ship type built based on a mercantile design in British shipyards experienced in building commercial ships . Two River - class ships under construction in Montreal , Canada , as ( for the Royal Navy ) and ( for the Royal Canadian Navy , were transfered to the U . S . Navy in 1942 prior to completion as prototypes for the " Tacoma " class and became the " Asheville " - class and , respectively . The naval architecture firm of Gibbs & Cox designed the " Tacoma " - class by modifying the River class to American requirements . The " Tacoma " - class units were designed and armed to serve mostly as anti - submarine warfare ships . They were distinguished from the River class primarily by their pole ( instead of the British tripod ) foremast and lighter main guns , 3 - inch ( 76 . 2 - mm ) instead of the British 4 - inch ( 102 - mm ) , and they had an American rather than British powerplant and were desgned to take advantage of American construction techniques employing prefabrication . Unlike most other types of warship , the " Tacoma " s , like the Rivers , were built to mercantile standards . With the proven effectiveness of the River class on escort duty , the Maritime Commission hoped that the mercantile design of the " Tacoma " s would allow the commercial shipyards to build them more cheaply and efficiently and that the U . S . Navy , some members of which doubted that the commercial shipyard could build a sturdy enough warship , would accept them because of the proven service record of the River - class ships which inspired their design . The resulting ships had a greater range than the superficially similar destroyer escort s , but the U . S . Navy viewed them as decidedly inferior in all other respects . The " Tacoma " class had a much larger turning circle than a destroyer escort , lacked sufficient ventilation for warm - weather operations – a reflection of their original British design and its emphasis on operations in the North Atlantic Ocean – and were criticized as far too hot below decks , and , because of the mercantile style of their hulls , had far less resistance to underwater explosions than ships built to naval standards like the destroyer escorts . Like their predecessors " Asheville " and " Natchez " , the " Tacoma " - class ships built for the U . S . Navy all were named after small cities in the United States . Construction program . In November 1942 , the Maritime Commission gave its West Coast Regional Office the responsibility for coordinating the construction of the " Tacoma " - class ships , which was to be split between commercial shipyards on the United States West Coast and five shipyards on the Great Lakes , the latter in particular chosen because they had building ways available for use in the " Tacoma " program . The Maritime Commission tendered a contract to Kaiser Cargo , Inc . , of Oakland , California , to prepare detailed specifications based on the Gibbs & Cox design and to manage the overall construction program . On 8 December 1942 , the Maritime Commission contracted for 69 " Tacoma " - class ships , for which the U . S . Navy dropped the British " corvette " designation in favor of classifying the " Tacoma " s ( along with the two " Asheville " - class ships that preceded them ) as " patrol gunboats " ( PG ) ; on 15 April 1943 , the two " Asheville " s and all " Tacoma " s were reclassified as " patrol frigates " ( PF ) . Kaiser Cargo itself received an order for 12 ships ; the Consolidated Steel Corporation of Wilmington , California received an order for 18 ; the American Ship Building Company , received an order for 11 , with four to be built at Cleveland , Ohio , and eight at Lorain , Ohio ; the Walter Butler Shipbuilding Company of Superior , Wisconsin , received an order for 12 ; Froemming Brothers , Inc . , of Milwaukee received an order for four ; the Globe Shipbuilding Company of Superior , Wisconsin , received an order for eight ; and the Leatham D . Smith Shipbuilding Company of Sturgeon Bay , Wisconsin received an order for eight . American Shipbuilding later received an order for another six ( four at Cleveland and two at Lorain ) , bringing the total orders for the U . S . Navy to 79 ships , while the Walsh - Kaiser Company of Providence , Rhode Island , received an order for 21 additional ships , all of which were to be transferred to the Royal Navy , where they were known as the " Colony " - class , bringing the total planned construction to 100 units . Four ships scheduled for construction at Lorain by American Shipbuilding – , , , and ( ex - " Vallejo " ) – were cancelled in December 1943 and February 1944 , dropping the ultimate total of " Tacoma " - class ships built to 96 . From the beginning , the construction program was plagued by difficulties which caused it to fall far behind schedule . Unfamiliar with the capabilities of the Great Lakes yards , Kaiser Cargo used prefabrication techniques unsuited to the Great Lakes yards smaller cranes and had to rework them . Ice prevented patrol frigates built on the Great Lakes from transiting the Soo Locks on the St . Marys River between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan in the winter and spring , requiring them to be floated down the Mississippi River on pontoon s to New Orleans or Houston for fitting out , often doubling their construction time . Delays became so lengthy that shipyards began to deliver the ships in such an incomplete state that shakedown and post - shakedown periods of repair and alteration took months for some of them . Bilge keels that cracked in rough seas or cold weather , failures in the welds holding the deckhouse to the deck , engine trouble , and ventilation problems plagued all of the ships . As a result , no " Tacoma " - class ship was commissioned until late in 1943 , none were ready for service until 1944 , and the last one , , was not commissioned until March 1945 . The ships Consolidated Steel built proved the most reliable , while Kaiser Cargo - built units were the most trouble - prone ; among the latter , USS " Tacoma " ( PF - 3 ) took ten months of shakedown and repairs to be ready after her commissioning , and proved equally difficult to make ready for service . Service . By the time the first " Tacoma " - class ships were ready for front - line service in 1944 , the U . S . Navys requirement for them had passed thanks to a decline in the threat from Axis submarines and the availability of ample numbers of destroyer s and destroyer escorts , which the Navy regarded as much superior to the " Tacoma " class . The Navy crewed all of the " Tacoma " - class ships with United States Coast Guard personnel . The Consolidated Steel - built ships , thanks to their superior reliability and performance , all saw service in the Pacific war zone where one , , teamed with the minesweeper to sink the Japanese submarine " I - 12 " in November 1944 , but the U . S . Navy generally relegated the patrol frigates to local training and escort responsibilities and to duty as weather ships , for which some had their after armament removed in order to allow the installation of a weather balloon hangar . As a part of Project Hula – a secret 1945 program that transferred 149 U . S . Navy ships to the Soviet Navy at Cold Bay , Alaska , in anticipation of the Soviet Union joining the war against Japan – the U . S . Navy transferred 28 " Tacoma " - class ships to the Soviet Navy between July and September 1945 . They were the largest , most heavily armed , and most expensive ships transferred during the program . At least some of them saw action in the Soviet offensive against Japanese forces in Northeast Asia in August 1945 . The transfer of two more – and – was cancelled when transfers halted on 5 September 1945 . One of the transferred ships , " EK - 3 " ( ex - ) , ran aground and was damaged beyond economical repair in a November 1948 storm off Petropavlovsk - Kamchatsky , but the Soviet Union returned the other 27 frigates to the United States in October and November 1949 . The U . S Navy quickly decommissioned 23 " Tacoma " - class ships after the end of World War II after only very brief U . S . Navy careers and sold them for scrap in 1947 and 1948 , although one , the former , was saved from the scrapyard to become a Brazilian merchant ship . The 27 ships the Soviet Union returned in 1949 went into the U . S . Navys Pacific Reserve Fleet in Japan ; 13 of them were recommissioned for U . S . Navy service in the Korean War , but all 27 soon were transferred to the navies of other countries . The other 25 " Tacoma " - class ships never returned to service in the U . S . Navy and also were transferred to foreign countries . In the post - World War II era , " Tacoma " - class patrol frigates operated in the Japan Maritime Self - Defense Force , the Republic of Korea Navy , and the Argentine , Belgian , Colombian , Cuban , Dominican , Ecuadorian , French , Mexican , Royal Netherlands , Peruvian , and Royal Thai navies , and one ship operated as a civilian weather ship for the government of the Netherlands . In foreign navies , many " Tacoma " - class ships survived into the 1960s and 1970s , and the last operator of " Tacoma " - class patrol frigates , Thailand , did not retire its two ships until 2000 . The United States built an additional 21 " Tacoma " - class ships for the United Kingdom for service in the Royal Navy , where they were known as the Colony class frigates , and all but one of them initially received British names – rather than the names of small U . S . cities – while still U . S . Navy ships ; they were returned to the United States between 1946 and 1948 . Eighteen of these also were quickly scrapped , but two were sold to Egypt for use as civilian passenger ships and one to Argentina for service as a warship in the Argentine Navy . List of ships . The " Tacoma " - class ships , listed in order of U . S . Navy hull number , and their dates of active service and fates follow . ( For an alphabetical listing by ships name , sort the table by " Ship Name " , " First Loan " , or " Second Loan " . )