Banner-class environmental research ship
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Banner class was a class of three environmental research ships converted from Camano-class cargo ships by the United States Navy during the 1960s.[1] The class comprised three ships: Banner, Pueblo, and Palm Beach.[2] The ships were originally United States Army vessels, which had been built in 1944. Although officially classified as environmental research ships, they were actually used for signals intelligence gathering, as part of the AGER program.
USS Pueblo in October 1967 | |
Class overview | |
---|---|
Name | Banner class |
Builders |
|
Operators | United States Navy |
Subclasses | None |
Built | 1944 |
In service | 1945–Present |
Completed | 3 |
Active | 1 |
Lost | 1 |
Retired | 1 |
General characteristics | |
Type |
|
Displacement | 550 tons light, 895 tons full, 345 tons dead |
Length | 177 ft (54 m) |
Beam | 32 ft (9.8 m) |
Draft | 9 ft (2.7 m) |
Propulsion | 2 x 500 hp (370 kW) GM Cleveland Division 6-278A 6-cyl V6 diesel engines |
Speed | 12.7 knots (23.5 km/h; 14.6 mph) |
Complement | 83 as AGER |
Armament | 2 × M2 Browning .50-caliber machine guns, small arms |
In 1964 the Department of Defence became interested in having smaller, less expensive, more flexible, and responsive signals intelligence collection vessels than the existing AGTR and T-AG vessels. The mothballed light cargo ships were the most suitable existing DOD ships. The National Security Agency (NSA) wanted 25 AGER vessels, though after a detailed discussion with the Navy, this was reduced to 15 in budget requests for what the NSA called the Phase I and Phase II Trawler program. Eventually, only three were converted.[3]