USCGC Sea Devil (WPB-87368) on:
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USCGC ''Sea Devil'' is the 68th coastal patrol boat to be built, and the first of four to be paid for by the US Navy. It is operated by the
''Sea Devil'' is slightly modified from the standard design of a Marine Protector cutter, the smallest
U.S. Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, multi ...
.
Her home port is Kings Bay, Georgia, where she and her sister ship
A sister ship is a ship of the same class or of virtually identical design to another ship. Such vessels share a nearly identical hull and superstructure layout, similar size, and roughly comparable features and equipment. They often share a ...
are assigned to one of two Maritime Force Protection Unit
A Maritime Force Protection Unit (MFPU) is a U.S. Coast Guard unit type tasked with the protection of U.S. Navy ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) while surfaced and transiting U.S. territorial waters to and from their patrol stations.
Maritime F ...
s. Their sole mission is to escort the Navy's largest submarine
A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...
s, the nuclear-armed , while in and near their moorings. When first commissioned, ''Sea Devil'' and ''Sea Fox'' were assigned to the same duty at the other Maritime Force Protection Unit at Naval Base Kitsap in Washington. They left Washington for Georgia to replace the decommissioned and .
The submarines require an escort because, while they carry some of the most powerful weapons ever built, they do not mount weapons suitable to protect them from surface threats, like the speedboat that carried a bomb that damaged .
Design
''Sea Devil'' is slightly modified from the standard design of a Marine Protector cutter, the smallest cutter
Cutter may refer to:
Tools
* Bolt cutter
* Box cutter, aka Stanley knife, a form of utility knife
* Cigar cutter
* Cookie cutter
* Glass cutter
* Meat cutter
* Milling cutter
* Paper cutter
* Side cutter
* Cutter, a type of hydraulic rescue to ...
the Coast Guard currently has in service. Like her sister ships, she is long, displaces approximately 90 tonnes, and has a maximum speed of . They are all equipped with a (water)jet-propelled pursuit boat, that is deployed and retrieved via a stern launching ramp, enabling it to be used without bringing the cutter to a halt.
''Sea Devil'', and the three other vessels, have been modified from the design of the Coast Guard's other Marine Protector cutters. These four vessels mount an additional gyro-stabilized remotely controlled machine gun. The main armament of the standard Marine Protector cutter are a pair of .50-caliber (12.7mm) Browning machine guns, mounted on the rail to either side of the vessel's foredeck. The long range accuracy of these weapons is low, when fired by a gunner on a pitching deck, aiming using "iron sights
Iron sights are a system of physical alignment markers (usually made of metallic material) used as a sighting device to assist the accurate aiming of ranged weapons (such as a firearm, airgun, crossbow or even compound bow), or less commonly ...
". ''Sea Devil'', and the three other cutters, have a pedestal, in the middle of the foredeck, that gives their main armament a better field of fire. The gun mounted on the pedestal is the same Browning as the other guns, but gyro stabilization compensates for the pitching deck. The mount is equipped with multiple cameras, enabling the gun aimer on the bridge to focus the gun's sights on a distant target, even at night, or when visibility is impaired by smoke, or fog.
To complete their missions these four ships carry a larger crew. Where a standard Marine Protector cutter deploys with a crew of ten, these vessels deploy with a crew of fifteen.
References
External links
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sea Devil (WPB-87368) Ships of the United States Coast Guard Patrol vessels of the United States Marine Protector-class coastal patrol boats Ships built in Lockport, Louisiana 2008 ships