USCGC Spencer (WPG-36) in 1942 or 1943. Spencer sank U-175 with assistance of USCGC Duane, on April 17, 1943.

Several months ago the Coast Guard moved their on line presence to new servers. When they did this, a great deal of the Coast Guard history that had been available on line disappeared. Apparently there was no plan to migrate the once extensive files to the new system.

I had planned to talk about this when it happened, but other priorities kept pushing it into the future until it seemed to late, but recently I reopened a post I had included in the heritage page, “The Battle for Convoy 166, 25 February 1943” and I was struck by how much had been lost.

“For more information on the Coast Guard’s battles against the U-boats, there are a series of extensively captioned photos of 327s here, an accounting of “U.S. Coast Guard Combat Victories of World War II” which also lists significant losses is here, and a twenty page pdf on the Battle of the North Atlantic is here.”

None of the referenced resources appear to be available on line anymore. It is just one example. Go to the Coast Historian’s page and try to look something up.

If you go to the Coast Guard Historian’s link for cutters, their are four pages of listings. The first page is a listing of ten: Aaron V. Brown, 1861, AB Class, 1913-1938, Absecon, 1949 (WHEC-374), Acacia, 1927 (WAGL-200), Active, 1816, Massachusetts, 1791, Point Class Cutter (82′), USCGC 95003 (ex-Aberdeen), USCGC Bayberry (WLI-65400), USCGC Point Harris (WPB-82376). The remaining three pages are devoted to LCIs of WWII. That is it. Why only these particular ships and not some of the more famous cutters? It has been this way for months.

It should be an embarrassment that the Navy’s Naval History and Heritage web site has more Coast Guard history than the Coast Guard Historians web page.

I have not purged my Heritage page of links that have been broken because, presumably these documents still exist somewhere in the Coast Guards files. Hopefully some day they will reemerge.