It was established on July 22, 1918 by War Department Bulletin 43 and placed the Mine Planter Service under the U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps.

Its purview was to install and maintain the underwater minefields[2] that were part of the principal armament of U.S. coastal fortifications, including those at the approaches to the Panama Canal and the defenses of Manila Bay in the Philippines.

Another block began with one ship, Gen. William M. Graham of 1917, and a group of nine constructed in 1919 to bring the fleet up to twenty planters in 1920.

A massive Army reduction reduced that fleet to seven planters and one cable ship, named Joseph Henry.

The Army Mine Planter Service was formally established by act of Congress on 7 July 1918 as a part of the Coast Artillery Corps.

[10] Those mines were planted in planned groups at predetermined locations, connected to shore by electrical cables for firing when a target was observed within their effective range.

At the entry of the United States into World War II sixteen new Army Mine Planter vessels were either under construction or planned.

[12][13] On 16 May 1921 SGT Benjamin Lee Woodhouse (1893-1921) died of wounds received in an explosion on Junior Mine Planter 46 in the New York Harbor area.

[14] World War II quickly demonstrated the obsolete nature of the static coastal defenses of which the mine fields were considered part of the principal armament.

The mine planters turned over to the U.S. Navy were the core of the Auxiliary Minelayer (ACM / MMA) group of the Chimo and Camanche classes.