USCGC Buttonwood (WAGL-306/WLB-306) was a Mesquite-class sea-going buoy tender operated by the United States Coast Guard.

While her overall dimensions remained the same over her career, the addition of new equipment raised her displacement to 1,025 tons by the end of her Coast Guard service.

[5] Her namesake was the American sycamore, Platanus occidentalis, often referred to as buttonwood because its fine-grained wood was used to make buttons that resisted cracking.

After her launch and commissioning in Duluth, Buttonwood sailed down the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River to reach the Atlantic.

[7] She arrived at the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Maryland, on November 1, 1943, where she had her armament and sensors installed.

Buttonwood reached San Pedro Bay in Leyte Gulf in the Philippines during an air raid on November 4, 1944.

When not engaged by air raids, Buttonwood charted the surrounding waters and placed buoys to guide Allied ships.

She maintained aids to navigation in Hawaiian waters[10] but also ranged widely in the central and western Pacific on similar duties.

In 1953, for instance, Buttonwood took a two-month cruise to maintain buoys in Samoa, and Kanton, Jarvis, Enderbury, Baker, and Howland Islands.

She towed a number of disabled vessels back to port including Sea Dragon in June 1951 and Yellow Fin in 1952.

[13][14] Most of her tows were broken down fishing boats, but in 1971 she brought the yacht Graybeard safely to port after she lost her rudder during that year's Transpac Race.

[15] In September 1956 Buttonwood rescued 16 crewmen of a Navy Lockheed Super Constellation that had ditched about 100 miles short of Guam.

She was transferred to Galveston, Texas, where she replaced the USCGC Blackthorn, which was sunk in a collision with an oil tanker the previous year.

[25] On April 15, 1991 Buttonwood sailed from Galveston for the Coast Guard Yard for a major overhaul as part of the Service Life Extension Program (SLEP).

[27] In January 1993 USCGC Blackhaw sailed from her homeport of San Francisco to the Coast Guard Yard in Maryland where she was decommissioned.

[29] Buttonwood's most newsworthy deployment during this posting was recovery or debris associated with the crash of a US Air Force HC-130 off the California coast in November 1996.

[2] She received a number of awards during her government service including the Coast Guard Unit Commendation,[26] Meritorious Unit Commendation,[9] World War II Victory Medal, Navy Occupation Service Medal,[31] and at least four battle efficiency awards.

[4] She has been rearmed for her new role as a patrol vessel with two M-2 0.50 caliber machine guns and two single Oerlikon 20 mm cannon.

The ship's namesake is Rear Admiral Ramón Julio Didiez Burgos who was head of the Dominican Republic Navy at various times between 1947 and 1955.

In 2010 Almirante Didiez Burgos took part in a joint United States Coast Guard-Dominican Republic training exercise in Dominican territorial waters.