MARCOM had hoped that the US Navy, some members of which doubted that the commercial shipyards could build a sturdy enough warship, would accept them because of the proven service record of the River-class ships which inspired their design.

[3][4] The resulting ships had a greater range than the superficially similar destroyer escorts, but the US Navy viewed them as decidedly inferior in all other respects.

The Tacoma class had a much larger turning circle than a destroyer escort, lacked sufficient ventilation for warm-weather operations – a reflection of their original British design and its emphasis on operations in the North Atlantic Ocean – and were criticized as far too hot below decks, and, because of the mercantile style of their hulls, had far less resistance to underwater explosions than ships built to naval standards like the destroyer escorts.

MARCOM tendered a contract to Kaiser Cargo, Inc., of Oakland, California, to prepare detailed specifications based on the Gibbs & Cox design and to manage the overall construction program.

Delays became so lengthy that shipyards began to deliver the ships in such an incomplete state that shakedown and post-shakedown periods of repair and alteration took months for some of them.

Bilge keels that cracked in rough seas or cold weather, failures in the welds holding the deckhouse to the deck, engine trouble, and ventilation problems plagued all of the ships.

The Consolidated Steel-built ships, thanks to their superior reliability and performance, all saw service in the Pacific war zone where one, Rockford, teamed with the minesweeper Ardent to sink the Japanese submarine I-12 in November 1944, but the US Navy generally relegated the patrol frigates to local training and escort responsibilities, and to duty as weather ships, for which the aft-mounted 3-inch gun was removed in order to allow the installation of a weather balloon hangar.

Eighteen of these were quickly scrapped, but two were sold to Egypt, for use as civilian passenger ships, and one to Argentina, for service as a warship in the Argentine Navy.

In the post-World War II era, Tacoma-class patrol frigates operated in the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, the Republic of Korea Navy, and the Argentine, Belgian, Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, Ecuadorian, French, Mexican, Royal Netherlands, Peruvian, and Royal Thai navies, and one ship operated as a civilian weather ship for the government of the Netherlands.