USS Bisbee
USS Bisbee
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USS Bisbee

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USS Bisbee

USS Bisbee (PF-46) was a United States Navy Tacoma-class frigate in commission from 1944 to 1945 and from 1950 to 1951. She also served in the Soviet Navy as EK-17 and in the Colombian National Armada as ARC Capitán Tono.

Originally classified as a patrol gunboat, PG-154, Bisbee was reclassified as a patrol frigate, PF-46, on 15 April 1943. She was launched on 7 September 1943, at the Consolidated Steel Corporation shipyard in Los Angeles, California, sponsored by Mrs. Richard Murphy, and commissioned on 15 February 1944.

Assigned to the United States Pacific Fleet and crewed by the United States Coast Guard, Bisbee joined the United States Seventh Fleet at Nouméa, New Caledonia, on 27 June 1944. She took part in the landings on Biak Island of 12–31 August 1944, and then patrolled off the New Guinea coast until October 1944. During the invasion of Leyte in the Philippine Islands, she served as a patrol and harbor control vessel until detached for escort duty on 22 November 1944. Bisbee arrived at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, on 15 December 1944.

After undergoing repairs, Bisbee departed Pearl Harbor on 6 January 1945 for Dutch Harbor, Territory of Alaska, arriving there on 13 January 1945. From then until July 1945, she escorted merchant ships and United States Army transports between Dutch Harbor, Adak, Amchitka, and Attu, and acted as guard ship for Fleet Air Wing 4 in the North Pacific Ocean.

Stage and film actor Buddy Ebsen served as the Executive Officer aboard Bisbee during this deployment to the Pacific War Zone.

Selected for transfer to the Soviet Navy in Project Hula – a secret program for the transfer of U.S. Navy ships to the Soviet Navy at Cold Bay, Alaska, in anticipation of the Soviet Union joining the war against JapanBisbee, with Escort Division 43, departed Adak on 6 July 1945 bound for Seattle, Washington, arriving there on 12 July 1945. After undergoing repairs and conversion in preparation for her transfer, Bisbee steamed to Cold Bay, where she arrived on 13 August 1945. She soon began training her new Soviet crew.

Following the completion of training for her Soviet crew, Bisbee was decommissioned on 26 August 1945 at Cold Bay and transferred to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease immediately along with her sister ships USS Gallup (PF-47), USS Rockford (PF-48), USS Muskogee (PF-49), USS Carson City (PF-50), and USS Burlington (PF-51). Commissioned into the Soviet Navy immediately, Bisbee was designated as a storozhevoi korabl ("escort ship") and renamed EK-17 in Soviet service. She soon departed Cold Bay bound for Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Soviet Union, where she served as a patrol vessel in the Soviet Far East.

In February 1946, the United States began negotiations for the return of ships loaned to the Soviet Union for use during World War II. On 8 May 1947, United States Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal informed the United States Department of State that the United States Department of the Navy wanted 480 of the 585 combatant ships it had transferred to the Soviet Union for World War II use returned, EK-17 among them. Negotiations for the return of the ships were protracted, but on 1 November 1949 the Soviet Union finally returned EK-17 to the U.S. Navy at Yokosuka, Japan.

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