YMP-1

YMP-1 c1960 @ PHayes Collection

by: HAYES; Donald S., OiC 1957 - 1960
as told by son Perry.

Last Update: 3232 Comments and questions are Welcomed and encouraged ! Marty Dwyer Martyk9 @ webtv.net NOTE: To send me an e-mail, please delete the two spaces in the above address. Thanks ! Any messages received will be forwarded to Lt. Hayes via his son Perry.

My dad was skipper of the YMP-1 from the summer of 1957 to May 1960 ( The Navy sold the ship in 1960 ). My dad came aboard as an Ensign. He remembers there was a plaque or something aboard that said the ship was named after a person when it was in the Army. ( Like Sgt. So-and-so or Maj. So-and-so.) The plaque was in the wheel-house. He said as you climbed the latter, it was on the left side of the bulkhead near the inclinometer. He thinks there was material aboard which said that the ship was once an inter-island freighter and may have served in the Aleutian Islands. He always wondered how it ever made the trip from the Aleutians to Virginia.

NOTE: Gore Vidal wrote a fiction novel "Dangerous Voyage" in which he draws upon his war time service on board an Army FP Boat in Alasken waters during WW 2. WW 2 service saw the ship ( JMP-70 ) based in Boston, Mass. with the New England Coast Artillery District. It would provide mine planting service to Harbor Defense Commands along the Maine and Massachusetts coast and also provided support to the US Navy Mine Testing Facility at Provincetown, Mass. - Marty

My dad doubts that the ship was built as a Mine Planter and points to the fact that the YMP-2 (which was "designed" as a mine planter") had a different deck design. The YMP-1 had really beautiful wood, etc. below and that she was "too pretty" to have started out as a Mine Planter. The cargo hold forward had been converted into sleeping quarters for the men and that his room was off the starboard from the bridge.

Crews quarters along side of the front hold

188 ft Mine Planter c1943 @ WClark collection

The YMP-2, alias "Sgt Trumen OLSON" was an experimental vessel which may have been constructed by the German Navy during WW2. The Army, as part of the German War Repatriation, re-built / constructed the ship as a Mine Planter using German experimental propulsion drive. During the construction phase, the function of Harbor Defense was transferred from the Coast Artillery, US Army to the new Harbor Defense Units of the US Navy along with vessels, equipment and personnel who wished to do so. Too bad, Lt Hayes never saw the Army Mine Planter "Lt. Col. NILES". I am told it had teak and mahogany trim through-out the cabins and wardroom. TOO bad I never saw her either! - Marty