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WOODEN SHIPS & IRON MEN
Agile Class Minesweeper: Laid down 22 February 1954 as AM-421 at Luders Marine Construction Co.,
Stamford, Conn.; Reclassified as an Ocean Minesweeper, MSO-421, 5 February 1955; Launched 19 November 1955; Commissioned USS
Agile (MSO-421), 21 June 1956 at New York Naval Shipyard, Brooklyn, NY; Decommissioned 28 July 1972 at Charleston, SC; Laid
up in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, Norfolk Group; Struck from the Navy Register in September 1977; Sold for scrap in February
1980 to Union Minerals and Alloys Corp. of New York for $35,000.
Specifications: Displacement 755 t; Length 172'; Beam 35'; Draft 10'; Speed 14 kts; Complement
eight officers, 70 enlisted; Armament one single 40mm gun mount, two .50 cal. machine guns; Propulsion We always had Packard V-16 for main engines, Gen. V-8,240 kw (Packard) ship service / 1 -
100 kw GM 671-6 inline / 1 - 60 kw GM 671-4 inline > both ship service / aux. & a 240 mine sweep gen.
Gibby, EN1 Gibson retired ,later replaced with 4 Waukeshaw diesels, two controllable pitch propellers.
(Also a little correction - when commissioned in June 56 the Agile had 4 Packard V-16's not GM diesels. With
the V-16's we could do almost 20 knots The Packards were strickly experimental)Loren Dudley.
These new minesweepers were smaller and built primarily of wood , with bronze and stainless (non-magnetic)
steel fittings to minimize their magnetic signature. All of the 1950 era MSOs had UQS-1 mine-locating sonar. MSOs were
capable of sweeping for moored, bottom contact, magnetic and acoustic mines.
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| November Alpha Uniform X-Ray |
WOODEN SHIPS AND IRON MEN a book by CDR David D.Bruhn USN RET.The history of our MSO's from 1953
to 1994. To learn more about this excellent minesweeper book please visit Cdr Bruhn's website at the link below.
David Bruhn
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