Operation Hula
The North Pacific Offensive

Potential Joint US/Russian Operation
in the North Pacific, 1945

Part 2: The Ships Lend-Leased to the Soviet Union

by Brooks A Rowlett, brooksar@indy.net

A wide variety of vessels were handed over to the Soviets at Cold Bay, and others were shipped as deck cargo from the US West Coast.

The biggest Soviet shortage in the Far East was landing craft. There were some fifty Soviet-built landing craft of various sizes, but the US provided many more: Fifteen Landing Craft, Tank, Mark 6 [LCT(6)], capacity three heavy tanks, Soviet names TDS -1 to TDS-15. Thirty Landing Craft Infantry, (LCI), Soviet names DS-1 to DS-10 and DS-31 through DS-50. LCIs could carry 205 men and 32 tons of material. (TDS is Tank Desantn'yy Sudno - "Tank Landing Vessel" and DS is Desantn'yy Sudno.)

In addition to these, fifty-four LCM(3) were handed over, reportedly in Seattle, not Hula (Cold Bay). These were too small to cross on their own and were presumably taken to the USSR as deck cargo. Capacity 60 men or one tank. Another type of vessel provided to the Soviet Union from Cold Bay was minesweepers. Twelve Admirable-class minesweepers went to the USSR in the Pacific before the Russian declaration of war on Japan, numbered T-271 through T-282. T-279 was mined off Kham Island 14 August 45. Another twelve were handed over after August 1945, despite the end of the hostilities.

Several YMS-type minesweepers also went to the USSR in the Pacific, receiving Soviet designations:

    T-151 through T-156
    T-581 through T-592
    T-599 through T-611
The T here means Tral'schik - Minesweeper. In terms of size and combat capability, the most significant transfers in the Pacific were Tacoma-class frigates. Never popular with the USN, (most were manned by the US Coast Guard), the Tacomas were hulls built to merchant, not Navy standards, based on the similar British and Canadian "River" class frigates. The American version had an armament similar to the USN's 3"-gunned Destroyer Escort classes, and heavy depth charge armament, but lacked the torpedo tubes of the DEs.

The Tacoma-class frigates transferred were given the Soviet designations EK-1 through EK-28, with no other name. EK means "Eskortnyy Korabl'" - "Escort Ship." The references indicate the Russians did not use these very much at first, which makes sense, as these were steam-powered and more complicated than all the other ships transferred which were diesel (gasoline/petrol in the case of the PTs).

Jürg Meister, in Soviet Warships of the Second World War, indicates 32 SC type 110- foot subchasers were transferred to the Soviet Union in the Pacific, believed to have been designated BO-301 to BO-332.

Meister also has over 200 PTs transferred to the USSR, but the data at the time of his publishing wasn't clear about what boats went where. It appears that about fifty boats wound up in the Soviet Pacific, and these were probably a more-or-less even mix of the 70-foot Vosper design (built in the US for Britain), as well as the US standard 78-foot Higgins boats and 80-foot Elcos. Some of these boats had served first in the European Theater but had eventually been transferred to the Far East.

Not turned over at Hula base, but also of note, were three of the US Coast Guard Eastwind-class icebreakers, transferred at San Diego and Seattle in spring 1945.

More Operation Hula

BT

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