USS Thrasher (AMS-203)

USS Thrasher (AMS/MSC-203) was a Bluebird-class minesweeper acquired by the US Navy for clearing coastal minefields.

Construction

Thrasher was laid down 1 April 1954, by Tampa Marine Company, Tampa, Florida; launched on 6 October 1954, as AMS-203; sponsored by Mrs. Fred T. Henke; reclassified as MSC-203, on 7 February 1955; and commissioned on 14 June 1955.

East Coast operations

Two weeks later, Thrasher steamed for Charleston, South Carolina, her home port, to join Mine Force, Atlantic Fleet. But for a visit to Havana, Cuba, the wooden-hulled nonmagnetic coastal minesweeper spent the remainder of 1955, operating in South Carolina and Florida waters. She assumed duties as an active element of Mine Force, Atlantic, on the last day of the year; and, on New Year's Day 1956, her home port was changed to Yorktown, Virginia. The minesweeper's duties there included search and rescue missions for aircraft downed off the Virginia coast.

West Coast operations

Assigned to the Experimental Mine Warfare School at Key West in 1957, the coastal minesweeper operated off the east coast and in the Caribbean until 7 February 1958, when she departed Key West and steamed via the Panama Canal and Manzanillo, Mexico, to the California coast, arriving at San Diego on 28 February. Assigned for a time to Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Thrasher surveyed ocean currents off Monterey in March. That summer, she cooperated with Warner Brothers during the shooting of the film "Up Periscope", and then returned to her primary duty plying California's coastal waters as a minesweeper with the San Diego Harbor Defense Command.