RVNS Tran Nhat Duat (HQ-03)

RVNS Tran Nhat Duat (HQ-03) 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.

Construction and United States Navy service 1944–1946
Tran Nhat Duat was built in the United States by Associated Shipbuilders, Inc. at Seattle, as the United States Navy Barnegat-class seaplane tender USS Yakutat (AVP-32). Commissioned in March 1944,  Yakutat served in the Central Pacific during World War II and on occupation duty in Japan postwar. She was decommissioned in July 1946 and placed in reserve.

United States Coast Guard service 1948–1971
The U.S. Navy loaned Yakutat to the United States Coast Guard in 1948,and she was commissioned as the Casco-class cutter USCGC Yakutat (WAVP-380) that year. Redesignated WHEC-380 and permanently transferred to the Coast Guard in 1966, Yakutat spent her long Coast Guard career on weather-reporting, law-enforcement, and search-and-rescue duties while on patrol in ocean stations in the North Atlantic. She also served two tours of duty (in 1967-1968 and in 1970) in the Vietnam War.

Acquisition and operations
After her antisubmarine warfare equipment had been removed, Yakutat was transferred to South Vietnam on 1 January 1971 and was commissioned into the Republic of Vietnam Navy as the frigate RVNS Tran Nhat Duat (HQ-03) By mid-1972, six other former Casco-class cutters had joined her in South Vietnamese service. They were the largest warships in the South Vietnamese inventory, and their 5-inch (127-millimeter) guns were South Vietnam's largest naval guns. Tran Nhat Duat and her sisters fought alongside U.S. Navy ships during the final years of the Vietnam War, patrolling the South Vietnamese coast and providing gunfire support to South Vietnamese forces ashore.

When South Vietnam collapsed at the end of the Vietnam War in late April 1975, Tran Nhat Duat became a ship without a country. She fled to Subic Bay in the Philippines, packed with South Vietnamese refugees. On 22 May 1975 and 23 May 1975, a U.S. Coast Guard team inspected Tran Nhat Duat and five of her sister ships, which also had fled to the Philippines in April 1975. One of the inspectors noted: "These vessels brought in several hundred refugees and are generally rat-infested. They are in a filthy, deplorable condition. Below decks generally would compare with a garbage scow."

Acquisition for spare parts by the Philippines
The United States formally transferred Tran Nhat Duat to the Republic of the Philippines on 5 April 1976. She did not enter Philippine Navy service; instead she and her sister ship RVNS Tran Quoc Toan (HQ-06) were cannibalized for spare parts to allow the Philippines to keep four other sister ships in commission in the Philippine Navy.

The former Tran Nhat Duat was discarded in 1982 and probably scrapped.