The USS Coucal (ASR-8) was a Chanticleer-class submarine rescue ship in the United States Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

.

Coucal was launched 29 May 1942 by Moore Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co.

Moore Dry Dock Company

Moore Dry Dock Company was a ship repair and shipbuilding company in Oakland, California. It was started in San Francisco in 1905 as the Moore & Scott Iron Works, but was destroyed by fire in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. It reopened soon and in 1909 purchased the Boole Shipyard in Oakland....

, Oakland, California

Oakland, California

Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...

; sponsored by Mrs. D. A. Scott; and commissioned 22 January 1943, Lieutenant Commander D. H. Byerly, USNR, in command.

Service history

Coucal arrived at Brisbane

Brisbane

Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, 23 June 1943 to serve the submarines of the 7th Fleet. After 4 October, she gave escort, fueling, and tender services from Milne Bay

Milne Bay

Milne Bay is a large bay in Milne Bay Province, southeastern Papua New Guinea. The bay is named after Sir Alexander Milne.The area was a site of the Battle of Milne Bay in 1942....

, New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

, and in March 1944, carried cargo to Manus Island

Manus Island

Manus Island is part of Manus Province in northern Papua New Guinea and is the largest island of the Admiralty Islands. It is the fifth largest island in Papua New Guinea with an area of 2,100 km², measuring around 100 km × 30 km. According to the 2000 census, Manus Island had a...

 and the bombarded Koruniat Island while sailing south to Brisbane for repairs. She returned to Manus 21 April for diving operations, and to set up a rest camp for submariners. On 25 June she sailed for overhaul at Brisbane, and on 12 August arrived at Darwin, Australia to serve submarines once more.

Between 29 October 1944 and 29 December, Coucal joined in convoy exercises with submarines out of Fremantle

Fremantle, Western Australia

Fremantle is a city in Western Australia, located at the mouth of the Swan River. Fremantle Harbour serves as the port of Perth, the state capital. Fremantle was the first area settled by the Swan River colonists in 1829...

, returning to duty at Darwin. Between 10 February 1945 and 3 June, she continued her tender service at Exmouth Gulf

Exmouth Gulf

Exmouth Gulf is a gulf in the north west of Western Australia. It lies between North West Cape and the main coastline of Western Australia. It is considered to be part of the region of the North West Shelf and in the Canning Basin area.-Environment:...

, then loaded cargo and passengers at Fremantle for the submarine base at Subic Bay

Subic Bay

Subic Bay is a bay forming part of Luzon Sea on the west coast of the island of Luzon in Zambales, Philippines, about 100 kilometers northwest of Manila Bay. Its shores were formerly the site of a major United States Navy facility named U.S...

, Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

 where she arrived 4 July. Aside from the period between 23 July and 18 August when she escorted British submarines to Borneo

Borneo

Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....

, Coucal served at Subic Bay until clearing for Okinawa on 14 September. She was ordered on to Sasebo, where she served on occupation duty until returning to San Francisco 24 November.

Assigned to Operation "Crossroads"

Operation Crossroads

Operation Crossroads was a series of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946. It was the first test of a nuclear weapon after the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945...

, the atomic weapons tests in the Marshalls

Marshall Islands

The Republic of the Marshall Islands , , is a Micronesian nation of atolls and islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just west of the International Date Line and just north of the Equator. As of July 2011 the population was 67,182...

, Coucal put out from San Francisco 25 February 1946 for Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor, known to Hawaiians as Puuloa, is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet...

. From 13 April to 30 September she planted moorings at Bikini

Bikini Atoll

Bikini Atoll is an atoll, listed as a World Heritage Site, in the Micronesian Islands of the Pacific Ocean, part of Republic of the Marshall Islands....

, and carried out a variety of diving assignments in the tests, then returned to San Francisco for overhaul. From her home port at Pearl Harbor, she sailed to conduct diving and salvage operations on sunken targets at Bikini in the summer of 1947, then operated in the Hawaiian Islands

Hawaiian Islands

The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll...

 until 12 April 1948, when she sailed westward for the Suez Canal

Suez Canal

The Suez Canal , also known by the nickname "The Highway to India", is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigation...

, and Izmir

Izmir

Izmir is a large metropolis in the western extremity of Anatolia. The metropolitan area in the entire Izmir Province had a population of 3.35 million as of 2010, making the city third most populous in Turkey...

, Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

. Here she trained men of the Turkish Navy

Turkish Navy

The Turkish Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the Turkish Armed Forces.- Ottoman fleet after Mudros :Following the demise of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I, on November 3, 1918, the fleet commander of the Ottoman Navy, Liva Amiral Arif Pasha, ordered all flags to be...

 in submarine rescue, salvage, and deep sea diving techniques, and continuing west to round the world, returned to Pearl Harbor 8 January 1949.

Serving Submarine Force, Pacific Fleet, Coucal operated in the Hawaiian Islands training deep sea divers

Scuba diving

Scuba diving is a form of underwater diving in which a diver uses a scuba set to breathe underwater....

, and carrying out rescue and salvage missions, and serving in the Far East in 1951, 1952-53, 1954-55, 1956-57, 1958, and 1960. Her base in the western Pacific was Yokosuka, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, from which she cruised to the Korea

Korea

Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...

n coast, Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

, the Philippines, and Okinawa on salvage and rescue duty.

From September 1976 to September 1977, Coucal operated from her home port at Pearl Harbor, mainly supporting submarine training. One break in that routing was towing a barge to Johnson Island. On 15 September 1977, Coucal was decommissioned at Pearl Harbor. In April 1990, ex-Coucal was sunk in the first PACFLT test of a Tomahawk anti-ship missile, fired from