Construction and commissioning
''Penetrate'' was Keel laying, laid down at Chickasaw, Alabama, Chickasaw, Alabama, by the Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation on 5 January 1943. She was Ship naming and launching, launched on 11 September 1943, sponsored by Miss Frances M. Moyer, and Ship commissioning, commissioned on 31 March 1944.Service history
U.S. Navy, World War II, 1944-1945
On 14 April 1944, ''Penetrate'' stood downriver from Chickasaw to the Gulf of Mexico and from there proceeded to the United States East Coast and shakedown cruise, shakedown in the Chesapeake Bay. By late May 1944, she was undergoing training in Casco Bay, Maine, and, on 1 June 1944, she steamed north to Naval Station Argentia in the Dominion of Newfoundland, where she was converted to a weather ship. For the next six months she patrolled on weather reporting duties in the North Atlantic Ocean between Greenland and Canada to track and record changes in the polar maritime air masses affecting the European battlefronts and the Transatlantic flight, transatlantic air routes. In early January 1945, ''Penetrate''s Meteorology, meteorological instruments were removed and Minesweeper (ship), minesweeping gear was reinstalled. On 31 January 1945 she headed south to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, arriving there on 7 February 1945 for an abbreviated wikt:overhaul, overhaul. 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, Cold Bay, Territory of Alaska, in anticipation of the Soviet Union joining the Pacific War, war against Japan – ''Penetrate'' departed Philadelphia on 27 February 1945, transited the Panama Canal, and proceeded to Cold Bay, where she arrived on 15 April 1945 and began familiarization training for her new Soviet crew.Russell, Richard A., ''Project Hula: Secret Soviet-American Cooperation in the War Against Japan'', Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1997, , p. 39.Soviet Navy, 1945-1960
Following the completion of training for her Soviet crew, ''Penetrate'' was Ship decommissioning, decommissioned on 22 May 1945 at Cold Bay and transferred to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease immediately. Also commissioned into the Soviet Navy immediately, she was designated as a ' ("minesweeper") and renamed ''T-280'' in Soviet service. She soon departed Cold Bay bound for Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Soviet Union, where she entered service with the Soviet Pacific Fleet (Russia), Pacific Ocean Fleet. In February 1946, the United States began negotiations for the return of ships loaned to the Soviet Union for use during World War II, and 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. Deteriorating relations between the two countries as the Cold War broke out led to protracted negotiations over the ships, and by the mid-1950s the U.S. Navy found it too expensive to bring home ships that had become worthless to it anyway. Many ex-American ships were merely administratively "returned" to the United States and instead sold for scrap in the Soviet Union, while the U.S. Navy did not seriously pursue the return of others because it viewed them as no longer worth the cost of recovery.Russell, Richard A., ''Project Hula: Secret Soviet-American Cooperation in the War Against Japan'', Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1997, , pp. 37-38, 39. The Soviet Union never returned ''Penetrate'' to the United States, instead converting her into a naval trawler in 1948 and renaming her ''Taifun''. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy reclassified her as a "fleet minesweeper" (MSF) and redesignated her MSF-271 on 7 February 1955.Disposal
The ship was scrapped in 1960. Unaware of her fate, the U.S. Navy kept ''Penetrate'' on its Naval Vessel Register until finally striking her on 1 January 1983.References
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Penetrate (AM-271) Admirable-class minesweepers Ships built in Chickasaw, Alabama 1943 ships World War II minesweepers of the United States Admirable-class minesweepers of the Soviet Navy World War II minesweepers of the Soviet Union Cold War minesweepers of the Soviet Union Trawlers of the Soviet Navy Cold War patrol vessels of the Soviet Union Weather ships Ships transferred under Project Hula