1. Well I’ve transitioned from marine painting back to model building and here’s my recent completion. This is the USCGC Eastwind (WAGB-279), she was the second of the Wind-class icebreakers built for the United States Coast Guard. Her keel was laid on 23 June 1942 at Western Pipe and Steel Company shipyards in San Pedro, CA. She was launched on 6 February 1943 and commissioned on 3 June 1944.
2. The Wind-class were a line of diesel electric-powered icebreakers in service with the United States Navy, United States Coast Guard, Canadian Coast Guard and Soviet Navy from 1944 through the late 1970s. They were considered the most technologically advanced icebreakers in the world when first built. Three of the vessels of the class, Westwind, Southwind, and the first Northwind all went on to serve temporarily for the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease program, while two others were built for the United States Navy and another was built for the Royal Canadian Navy; all eight vessels were eventually transferred to the United States Coast Guard and the Canadian Coast Guard. (Seven ships of the class were built in the United States, and one modified version, HMCS Labrador, was built in Canada.)
3. The Wind-class were the first class of true icebreakers built by the United States. Gibbs & Cox of New York (in 1950, Gibbs & Cox designed the SS United States, the largest liner ever built in the United States and the fastest liner built anywhere.) provided the designs with input from the Coast Guard's Naval Engineering Division. The final design was heavily influenced by studies conducted by then LCDR Edward Thiele, USCG (later RADM, and Engineer in Chief of the U.S. Coast Guard) of foreign icebreakers, namely the Swedish Ymer, built in 1931 and the Soviet Krasin.
4. Eastwind’s hull was of unprecedented strength and structural integrity, with a relatively short length in proportion to the great power developed, a cut away forefoot, rounded bottom, and fore, aft and side heeling tanks. Diesel electric machinery was chosen for its controllability and resistance to damage.
5. During WWII she seized the German trawler Externsteine, off Greenland, which was resupplying a German weather station in the area. This was the only German naval surface ship captured during the war.
6. On 19 January 1949 in a heavy fog off the New Jersey coast Eastwind, enroute from her home port of Boston to the Chesapeake Bay collided with the Gulf Oil tanker Gulfstream. Eastwind sustained significant structural and fire damage and the loss of thirteen enlisted personnel, nine of whom were Chief Petty Officers. She returned to service eighteen months later.
7. In October 1960, as part of Operation Deep Freeze, she departed Boston, passed through the Panama Canal and crossed the Pacific, visiting New Zealand and McMurdo Sound. Leaving Antarctica, she then transited the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal, crossed the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to return home in May 1961. This deployment made the Eastwind the first cutter ever to circumnavigate the globe.
8. Ships Technical Data:
Length Overall (LOA): 269’ (82 m).
Beam: 63.5’ (19.4 m).
Draft: 25.7’ (7.8 m).
Displacement: approx. 6,515 tons full load.
Installed power: (Diesel-electric) 6 × Fairbanks-Morse model 10-cylinder opposed piston engines at 2,000 shp (1,500 kW), each driving a Westinghouse DC electric generator.
Propulsion: 2 × Westinghouse Electric DC electric motors driving the 2 aft propellers, 1 × 3,000 shp (2,200 kW) Westinghouse DC electric motor driving the detachable and seldom used bow propeller (the bow screw was eventually removed).
Disposition: Decommissioned 1968 and sold for scrap in 1972.
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