Brunswick II (PF-68)
A seaport city located on the southeast coast of Georgia.
II
The second Brunswick (PF-68) was laid down on 16 July 1943 at Sturgeon Bay, Wis., by the Leathem D. Smith Shipbuilding Co. under a Maritime Commission contract (MC hull 1492); launched on 6 November 1943; sponsored by Mrs. K. G. Berrie; placed in reduced commission on 20 May 1944 for the trip to Galveston, Tex.; decommissioned at Galveston on 27 May 1944; outfitted at the Todd Galveston Drydocks, Inc.; and commissioned on 3 October 1944, Lt. Comdr. Benjamin B. Sherry, USCG, in command.
Brunswick departed Galveston on 15 October on her way to shakedown training in the West Indies. She arrived in the vicinity of Bermuda and underwent her shakedown evolutions between 24 October and 22 November 1944. The patrol frigate embarked upon the first of her three round-trip convoy escort missions to North Africa on 11 December 1944. Steaming from Hampton Roads, Va., she arrived in Oran, Algeria, with convoy UGS-63 on 28 December 1944. On 2 January 1945, the warship stood out of Oran in the screen of convoy GUS-63. Soon after the convoy passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, one of its ships, SS Henry Miller, suffered a hit from a submarine torpedo. Brunswick conducted a depth-charge attack, but the submarine, now known to have been the German U-870, escaped. The patrol frigate escorted the damaged merchantman into Gibraltar and then rejoined the convoy screen. She and the rest of her charges arrived safely in Hampton Roads on 20 January 1945.
Between early February and early June, Brunswick escorted merchant ships on two more round-trip voyages from Hampton Roads to Oran and back. She returned to the Norfolk area from the last of those voyages on 6 June. From there, the patrol frigate moved north to the Philadelphia Navy Yard where she was converted for duty as a weather ship. The warship embarked upon her first weather patrol early in July and concluded her final one on 12 November. Thereafter, she served the Coast Guard temporarily, performing some unspecified duty. Returned to the Navy at Norfolk early in April 1946, Brunswick was decommissioned there on 3 May 1946. Her name was struck from the Navy list on 19 June 1946, and she was sold on 9 April 1947 to the Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co., Chester, Pa., for scrapping.
Raymond A. Mann
25 November 2005
