USCGC Chincoteague (WAVP-375)

USCGC Chincoteague (WAVP-375), later WHEC-375, was a Casco-class United States Coast Guard Cutter in service from 1949 to 1972.

Construction and U.S. Navy service
Chincoteague began life as the United States Navy Barnegat-class seaplane tender USS Chincoteague (AVP-24). She was laid down on 23 July 1941 by Lake Washington Shipyard at Houghton, Washington,and was launched on 15 April 1942. She commissioned into the U.S. Navy on 12 April 1943. She operated in support of the New Guinea campaign and in the Central Pacific during World War II, including support of the Iwo Jima campaign, and operated at Okinawa and in China after the war. She was decommissioned on 21 December 1946.

Transferred to the United States Coast Guard
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.

The Navy loaned Chincoteague to the United States Coast Guard on March 1949. The Coast Guard commissioned her as USCGC Chincoteague (WAVP-375) the same day.

U.S. Coast Guard service
Chincoteague was homeported in Norfolk, Virginia, throughout her Coast Guard career. Her primary duty was to serve on weather stations in the Atlantic 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.

In December 1955, Chincoteague took the disabled merchant ship Canadian Observer under tow to keep her from going aground off the south coast of Newfoundland in Canada.

On 30 October 1956, Chincoteague rescued 33 crewmen from the West German merchant ship Helga Bolten in the North Atlantic by using two inflatable lifeboats during heavy seas. She then stood by distressed vessels for seven days until they could be towed to the Azores by commercial tug.

On 1 May 1966, Chincoteague was reclassified as a high endurance cutter and redesignated WHEC-375. On 26 September 1966 her long-term long from the Navy to the Coast Guard came to an end when the Navy transferred her outright to the Coast Guard.

Chincoteague took the disabled merchant ship Kenyon Victory under tow 30 nmi south of San Salvador Island in the Bahamas on 5 October 1969 until relieved of the tow by a commercial tug.

Decommissioning and transfer to South Vietnam
In April 1972, Chincoteague and two of her sister ships, Coast Guard cutters USCGC Absecon (WHEC-374) and USCGC McCulloch (WHEC-386), were deployed as Coast Guard Squadron Two, with crews composed mainly of members of the United States Coast Guard Reserve. They were originally scheduled to sail to Subic Bay in the Philippine Islands, but were diverted to the U.S. Navy base at Apra Harbor, Guam. Eventually the three cutters were decommissioned, transferred to the U.S. Navy, and then transferred to South Vietnam. For Chincoteague, all three of these events occurred on 21 June 1972.

Republic of Vietnam Navy service
South Vietnam commissioned the ship into the South Vietnamese Navy as patrol vessel RVNS Ly Thuong Kiet  (HQ-16). When the South Vietnamese government collapsed at the end of the Vietnam War in April 1975, Ly Thuong Kiet fled to the Philippines. On 22 May 1975 and 23 May 1975, a U.S. Coast Guard team inspected Ly Thuong Kiet and several other former Casco-class cutters which had been transferred to South Vietnam in 1971 and 1972 and, like Ly Thuong Kiet, 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."

Philippine Navy service
After Ly Thuong Kiet was cleaned, repaired, and made ready to return to service, the U.S. Navy transferred her on 6 April 1976 to the Republic of the Philippines, which commissioned her into the Philippine Navy as patrol vessel BRP Andres Bonifacio (PF-7). The Philippine Navy decommissioned her in June 1985.