USS Castle Rock (AVP-35)
Encyclopedia

USS Castle Rock (AVP-35) was a United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

 Barnegat-class
Barnegat class seaplane tender
|The Barnegat class was a large class of United States Navy small seaplane tenders built during World War II. Thirty were completed as seaplane tenders, four as motor torpedo boat tenders, and one as a catapult training ship.-Design:...

 small seaplane tender
Seaplane tender
A seaplane tender is a ship that provides facilities for operating seaplanes. These ships were the first aircraft carriers and appeared just before the First World War.-History:...

 in commission from 1944 to 1946.

Construction and commissioning

Castle Rock was laid down on 12 July 1943 at Houghton
Houghton, Washington
Houghton is one of the lakeside neighborhoods of the city of Kirkland, Washington. Consisting mostly of upscale, single-family homes, Houghton overlooks Lake Washington and is one of the wealthier districts of the Eastside suburbs of Seattle. The village was named for Willard Houghton, a local...

, Washington, by the Lake Washington Shipyard
Lake Washington Shipyard
Lake Washington Shipyards was a shipyard in Houghton, Washington on the shore of Lake Washington. Today the shipyards are the site of the lakeside Carillon Point business park...

, and was launched on 11 March 1944, sponsored by Mrs. R. W. Cooper. She commissioned
Ship commissioning
Ship commissioning is the act or ceremony of placing a ship in active service, and may be regarded as a particular application of the general concepts and practices of project commissioning. The term is most commonly applied to the placing of a warship in active duty with its country's military...

 on 8 October 1944 with Commander
Commander
Commander is a naval rank which is also sometimes used as a military title depending on the individual customs of a given military service. Commander is also used as a rank or title in some organizations outside of the armed forces, particularly in police and law enforcement.-Commander as a naval...

 G. S. James, Jr., in command.

World War II

Castle Rock stood out of San Diego
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...

, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, on 18 December 1944 bound for Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor, known to Hawaiians as Puuloa, is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet...

, Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

, and Eniwetok, where she arrived on 28 January 1945. Assigned to escort convoy
Convoy
A convoy is a group of vehicles, typically motor vehicles or ships, traveling together for mutual support and protection. Often, a convoy is organized with armed defensive support, though it may also be used in a non-military sense, for example when driving through remote areas.-Age of Sail:Naval...

s between Saipan
Saipan
Saipan is the largest island of the United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands , a chain of 15 tropical islands belonging to the Marianas archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean with a total area of . The 2000 census population was 62,392...

, Guam
Guam
Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States located in the western Pacific Ocean. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. Guam is listed as one of 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories by the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United...

, and Ulithi Atoll until 20 March 1945, Castle Rock then took up duties of tending seaplane
Seaplane
A seaplane is a fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing on water. Seaplanes that can also take off and land on airfields are a subclass called amphibian aircraft...

s at Saipan. Her seaplanes carried out varied air operations, including reconnaissance
Reconnaissance
Reconnaissance is the military term for exploring beyond the area occupied by friendly forces to gain information about enemy forces or features of the environment....

, search, and hunter-killer activities, while Castle Rock herself also performed local escort duties.

Post-World War II

On 28 November 1945, Castle Rock sailed from Saipan for Guam, where she embarked a group assigned to study Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese defenses on Chichi Jima and Truk. This continued until 5 January 1946, when Castle Rock returned to seaplane tender operations at Saipan.

Castle Rock left Saipan on 9 March 1946, arriving at San Francisco
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

, California, on 27 March 1946. She was decommissioned
Ship decommissioning
To decommission a ship is to terminate her career in service in the armed forces of her nation. A somber occasion, it has little of the elaborate ceremony of ship commissioning, but carries significant tradition....

 there on 6 August 1946

United States Coast Guard service 1948-1971


On 16 September 1948, Castle Rock was loaned to the United States Coast Guard
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...

, which commissioned her on 18 December 1948 as the cutter
United States Coast Guard Cutter
Cutter is the term used by the United States Coast Guard for its commissioned vessels. A Cutter is or greater in length, has a permanently assigned crew, and has accommodations for the crew to live aboard...

 USCGC Castle Rock (WAVP-383)
USCGC Castle Rock (WAVP-383)
USCGC Castle Rock , later WHEC-383, was a Casco-class United States Coast Guard cutter in service from 1948 to 1971.-Construction and U.S. Navy service:...

, later being reclassified as a high endurance cutter
High endurance cutter
The designation of High endurance cutter was created in 1965 when the United States Coast Guard adopted its own designation system. High endurance cutters encompassed its largest cutters previously designated by the United States Navy as Coast Guard gunboats , Coast Guard destroyer escorts , and...

 and redesinated WHEC-383. While in Coast Guard service, her primary duty was to patrol ocean stations, reporting weather
Weather
Weather is the state of the atmosphere, to the degree that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. Most weather phenomena occur in the troposphere, just below the stratosphere. Weather refers, generally, to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate...

 data and engaging in search-and-rescue and law-enforcement
Law enforcement agency
In North American English, a law enforcement agency is a government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws.Outside North America, such organizations are called police services. In North America, some of these services are called police while others have other names In North American...

 operations. She also performed combat duty in the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

 for a few months in 1971. The Coast Guard decommissioned her on 21 December 1971.

South Vietnamese service

On 21 December 1971, Castle Rock was transferred to South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...

, which commissioned her as patrol vessel RVNS Tran Binh Trong (HQ-05)
RVNS Tran Binh Trong (HQ-05)
RVNS Trần Bình Trọng was a South Vietnamese frigate of the Republic of Vietnam Navy in commission from 1971 to 1975. She and her six sister ships were the largest South Vietnamese naval ships of their time....

. In January 1974, Tran Binh Trong was part of a South Vietnamese that fought in the Paracel Islands
Paracel Islands
The Paracel Islands, also called Xisha Islands in Chinese and Hoàng Sa Islands in Vietnamese, is a group of islands under the administration of Hainan Province, The People's Republic of China. Vietnam and the Republic of China also claim sovereignty of these islands...

 against ships of the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

 in the Battle of the Paracel Islands.

When the South Vietnamese government collapsed at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, Tran Binh Trong fled to the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

.

Philippine Navy service

In 5 April 1976, the ship was transferred to the Republic of the Philippines, and on 23 June 1979 which commissioned her into the Philippine Navy
Philippine Navy
The Philippine Navy is the naval arm of the Armed Forces of the Philippines . Its official name in Filipino is Hukbong Dagat ng Pilipinas, literally, "Sea Force of the Philippines"....

 as frigate RPS (later BRP) Francisco Dagohoy (PF-10)
BRP Francisco Dagohoy (PF-10)
The BRP Francisco Dagohoy was an Andres Bonifacio class frigate of the Philippine Navy that served from 1979 to 1985. She was one of six ex-United States Navy Barnegat-class small seaplane tenders and ex-United States Coast Guard Casco-class high endurance cutters received from the United States...

, seving as such until decommissioned in June 1985. She was discarded in March 1993, and probably scrapped.
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