USCGC Mellon
USCGC Mellon (WHEC-717) was the third United States Coast Guard Hamilton-class high endurance cutter constructed. The 2,748-ton cutter’s ocean crossing range was 10,000 miles at 20 knots.
Mellon was laid down on 25 July 1966 at Avondale Shipyards near New Orleans, Louisiana. She was named for Andrew W. Mellon, the 49th U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1921-1932, and launched on 11 February 1967 by Mrs. John W. Warner, Jr., sponsor and granddaughter of the late Secretary Andrew Mellon. Mellon was commissioned 9 January 1968.
Mellon was built with a welded steel hull and aluminum superstructure. She was one of the first naval vessels built with a combined diesel and gas turbine propulsion plant. Her twin screws can use 7,000 diesel shaft horsepower to make 17 knots, and a total of 36,000 gas turbine shaft horsepower to make 28 knots. The two diesel engines are Fairbanks-Morse and are larger versions of their 1968 diesel locomotive design. Her two Pratt-Whitney marine gas turbine engines are similar to those installed in Boeing 707 passenger jet aircraft. The Hamilton-class cutters were among the first American vessels to use jet aircraft-type turbines for propulsion.[1]
Trivia[edit]
In the 1980 Disney film The Last Flight of Noah's Ark, the Mellon found and rescued the crew of an airplane that had been converted into a makeshift life raft.
Media related to USCGC Mellon (WHEC-717) at Wikimedia Commons