Construction and career
The second ship to be so named by the Navy, Yazoo (AN-92) was laid down on 6 July 1944, at Duluth, Minnesota, by the Zenith Dredge Co., and was launched on 18 October 1944; sponsored by Mrs. S. H. Griffin, the wife of Colonel S. H. Griffin, USA; and commissioned on 31 May 1945, Lt. Lionel Krisel, USNR, in command.
Duluth is a major port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Saint Louis County. Duluth has a population of 86,293 and is the 4th largest city in Minnesota. It is the 2nd largest city on Lake Superior. The largest is Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. It has the largest metropolitan area on the lake, with a population of 279,771 in 2010, the second-largest in the state.
The United States Navy Reserve (USNR), known as the United States Naval Reserve from 1915 to 2005, is the Reserve Component (RC) of the United States Navy. Members of the Navy Reserve, called reservists, are enrolled in the Selected Reserve (SELRES), the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR), the Full Time Support (FTS), or the Retired Reserve program.
Yazoo departed Duluth on 15 June, bound for the Atlantic Ocean; travelling via the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway; and arrived at the Boston Navy Yard to commence fitting out. After shakedown training out of Melville, Rhode Island, she underwent post-shakedown alterations at Boston, Massachusetts. She conducted net defense evolutions at Melville before beginning net-laying operations which she carried out in the vicinities of Newport, Rhode Island, New York City, and Boston during the next 18 months.
The Great Lakes, also called the Laurentian Great Lakes and the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of interconnected freshwater lakes primarily in the upper mid-east region of North America, on the Canada–United States border, which connect to the Atlantic Ocean through the Saint Lawrence River. They consist of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, although hydrologically, there are four lakes, Superior, Erie, Ontario, and Michigan-Huron. The connected lakes form the Great Lakes Waterway.
The Boston Navy Yard, originally called the Charlestown Navy Yard and later Boston Naval Shipyard, was one of the oldest shipbuilding facilities in the United States Navy. It was established in 1801 as part of the recent establishment of the new U.S. Department of the Navy in 1798. After 175 years of military service, it was decommissioned as a naval installation on 1 July 1974.
A sea trial is the testing phase of a watercraft. It is also referred to as a "shakedown cruise" by many naval personnel. It is usually the last phase of construction and takes place on open water, and it can last from a few hours to many days.
Post-war service
Yazoo departed Newport on 13 May 1947 and laid fleet moorings at Argentia, Newfoundland, before returning from that cruise on 18 August to resume local operations. She operated out of Newport into 1948. In January of that year, her duties included ice-breaking in the channels of Narragansett Bay after the severe winter weather had frozen the water there.
Narragansett Bay is a bay and estuary on the north side of Rhode Island Sound covering 147 mi2, 120.5 mi2 of which is in Rhode Island. The Bay forms New England's largest estuary, which functions as an expansive natural harbor and includes a small archipelago. Small parts of it extend into Massachusetts.
Operation Martex
That spring, Yazoo pulled a large Navy cargo vessel off the beach at Davisville, Rhode Island between 22 and 25 April 1948 and then made a cruise to Terceira, in the Azores, during September and October of that year, to lay a fleet mooring there. She spent much of the year following her return to the eastern seaboard serving as a target ship for submarines and towing targets for surface battle practices. She conducted similar operations in 1950., with time out in June of that year for laying a light indicator net during Operation Martex.
Davisville, Rhode Island is a village in the town of North Kingstown in the U.S. state of Rhode Island that was formerly the home of the Davisville Naval Construction Battalion Center, which housed the United States Navy's SeaBees.
The Azores, officially the Autonomous Region of the Azores, is one of the two autonomous regions of Portugal. It is an archipelago composed of nine volcanic islands in the North Atlantic Ocean about 1,360 km (850 mi) west of continental Portugal, about 1,643 km (1,021 mi) west of Lisbon, in continental Portugal, about 1,507 km (936 mi) northwest of Morocco, and about 1,925 km (1,196 mi) southeast of Newfoundland, Canada.
After an overhaul at the Charleston Naval Shipyard (South Carolina) from July to September 1950, Yazoo trained out of Norfolk, Virginia, before she resumed extensive work with nets off Newport. During March 1951, Yazoo took part in U.S. Atlantic Fleet mining exercises out of Key West, Florida, and then spent the remainder of the year performing mine tests and exercises out of Charleston. Between February and April 1952, Yazoo laid nets off Cape Henry during exercises in the Chesapeake Bay.
Charleston Naval Shipyard was a U.S. Navy ship building and repair facility located along the west bank of the Cooper River, in North Charleston, South Carolina and part of Naval Base Charleston.
South Carolina is a state in the Southeastern United States and the easternmost of the Deep South. It is bordered to the north by North Carolina, to the southeast by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the southwest by Georgia across the Savannah River.
Norfolk is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. At the 2010 census, the population was 242,803; in 2017, the population was estimated to be 244,703 making it the second-most populous city in Virginia after neighboring Virginia Beach.
In January 1953, semi-permanent mine tracks were installed on the net-layer, enabling the ship to lay 24 moored-type naval mines. On 9 January, the ship's home port was changed to, to enable her to commence a schedule of tests and exercises under the auspices of the Operational Development Force.
Operation Hardex
She participated in Operation Hardex off the Virginia Capes in June and July of that year before she resumed duty out of Key West later that summer. She performed services for the Mine Evaluation Detachment from April to August of the following year and—after salvage operations off Key Largo, Florida—joined in Atlantic Fleet exercises that extended along the eastern seaboard of the United States during October 1954.
Operation Canminus
Yazoo continued her routine of local operations out of Key West into 1955. During most of March of that year, the ship took part in one of the largest fleet mine exercises ever held. In one phase of the operation, she planted U.S. Coast Guard buoys marking a channel; and she was one of the final ships to clear the area after the resultant clean-up operation. In April 1955, the ship's home port was again changed—this time back to Charleston—and she took part in a joint United States-Canadian exercise, Operation Canminus in which Yazoo operated as principal minelaying and recovery ship.
During the summer of 1955, Yazoo conducted mine exercises out of Key West, Port Everglades, Florida, and Charleston, South Carolina, with the Atlantic Fleet Mine Force. She spent September and November in company with Orleans Parish and Peregrine, carrying out a special project off the coast of Fedhala, French Morocco, the site of the original American landings in North Africa in November 1942. On her return voyage, Yazoo called at Gibraltar, the Azores, and Bermuda, and reached Charleston on 9 December 1955. She entered the naval shipyard there on 6 January 1956 for an overhaul and, later that spring, carried out refresher training out of Norfolk, Virginia, and two weeks of net-tending training at the Harbor Defense Unit, Little Creek, Virginia.
Yazoo joined Exultant and Fidelity, on 18 June 1956, in carrying out a special mine project off the coast of Charleston and Cape Romain, South Carolina, that lasted until 23 July. After that task, Yazoo again operated out of Key West, providing services to the Mine Warfare Evaluation Detachment in a Mine Force special project.
Later, during Atlantic Fleet mining exercises between 29 October and 24 November, Yazoo laid two large United States Coast Guard buoys; assisted Gwin in establishing a 10-mile (16 km) exercise channel with Coast Guard lighted buoys and dan buoys; laid surface minefields; delivered triangulation data to the umpiring group during aerial minelaying; and participated in the mine recovery and clean-up phase. She then proceeded to Key West, where she conducted a Mine Force special project in company with Observer and Salute.
In the spring of 1957, Yazoo cruised in the Caribbean with the Mine Force and called at San Juan, Puerto Rico; Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; and Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic. Upon her return to Charleston, the ship carried out several special mine projects in local areas and spent a fortnight operating with the Mine Warfare Evaluation Detachment at Key West. After an overhaul in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard from July to August 1957, Yazoo conducted refresher training out of Charleston and participated in a service mine test.
Exercise Sweep Clear III
The ship spent the first three weeks of 1958 training with the Harbor Defense Unit at Norfolk before she shifted southward to Charleston to participate in Atlantic Fleet amphibious exercises. During July and August of that year, Yazoo participated in Exercise Sweep Clear III, a NATO minesweeping exercise near Sydney, Nova Scotia. During the cruise—on 26 July 1958—the net layer visited Louisburg, Nova Scotia, and recovered a cannon from a French man-of-war that sank on 26 July 1758—two hundred years earlier!
Following her return to Charleston on 15 August, Yazoo took part in fleet service mine tests and trained foreign mine warfare officers in the Charleston vicinity. She spent the remainder of 1958 in operations out of Charleston and off the Virginia Capes.
Exercise Clear Sweep IV
Overhauled at the Charleston Naval Shipyard between February and May 1959, Yazoo conducted refresher training and then took part in Exercise Clear Sweep IV off Charleston. Among the ship's duties performed in that vicinity were conducting net training and type training, planting buoys, and laying practice mines for mine warfare schools.
During September 1959, Yazoo carried out sweep gear evaluation for the U.S. Bureau of Ships in the Charleston area before she returned to active operations as a minelaying and recovery unit during Fleet exercises off the Virginia Capes and at Onslow Bay, North Carolina.
Yazoo again took part in amphibious exercises at Onslow Bay in January 1960, before she carried out service mine tests out of Charleston that lasted into the spring. In July 1960, Yazoo received the battle efficiency competition award for the fiscal year 1960.
Operation Clear Sweep V
That autumn, Yazoo distinguished herself while participating in Operation Clear Sweep V off Nova Scotia. On 12 October, Yazoo received special praise for towing Hummingbird 35 miles to port after that minecraft had suffered a materiel casualty.
Three days later, on 15 October, when the Canadian escort maintenance ship HMCS Cape Scott suffered a casualty, Yazoo came to the rescue and towed the ship out of dangerous waters, saving her from almost certain grounding in the shoals of Shelburne Harbor.
After returning southward, Yazoo underwent a lengthy overhaul at Charleston from November 1960 to February 1961. She operated again with the Mine Force in the Caribbean from February to March 1961, taking part in Fleet amphibious warfare exercises before completing a service mine test off Charleston.
Underwater detonation exercises
That spring, she again participated in exercises off Charleston with Canadian minesweeping and minelaying units and then underwent harbor net training at Norfolk. In July, Yazoo cruised off the coast of Maine, detonating underwater explosions under the auspices of the Office of Naval Research for the Carnegie Institute of Washington, D.C., and received commendations for a job well done from both agencies.
Yazoo underwent repairs at Charleston from late July 1961 into September, before she resumed her schedule of mining exercises and net training out of Charleston and Norfolk.
Post-service inactivation
After a year of such duty, she was decommissioned on 28 August 1962. Assigned to the Norfolk group of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet, Yazoo was struck from the Navy List on 1 July 1963 and transferred to the U.S. Maritime Administration (MarAd) for lay up in the James River. She remained in MarAd custody until sometime between 1973 and 1975.
