USCGC Comanche (WPG-76) was a United States Coast Guard cutter built by Pusey & Jones Corporation, Wilmington, Delaware, and launched 6 September 1934.

Built by Pusey & Jones Corporation of Wilmington, Delaware, Comanche was commissioned on 1 December 1934 and was originally stationed at Stapleton, New York, which remained her homeport until 1940.

She carried out the standard missions of the Coast Guard at that time, including law enforcement, search and rescue, and light ice-breaking on the Hudson River.

Sorenson and Julius Carlson came on board to cruise through the inside passage of southern Greenland, taking soundings and making observations of uncharted areas.

On 21 September 1942 Comanche completed all operations and left Army personnel and civilians at the station, returning to Bluie East Two.

She arrived Bluie West One on 11 November 1942, and on the 13th left Kungnat Bay, escorting eight freighters, two Army transports and Bear to St. John's.

The escort vessels' first indication of trouble came from the convoy at 0102 on that morning, when a white flash was observed to come from Dorchester, just abaft her smokestack.

At 0104 the officer of the deck of Comanche, which was approximately 2500 yards on the port beam of Dorchester, sounded the general alarm and all stations were manned.

At 0226 instructions were received from the escort commander, aboard Tampa, for Comanche to proceed to the scene of the sinking and cooperate with Escanaba in the rescue of survivors.

[1] With the survivors suffering from hypothermia and therefore unable to climb aboard a rescuing vessel, the retriever method proved to be the only way to save lives.

A contemporary report noted: Three officers and nine enlisted men from the Coast Guard cutter COMANCHE went over the side of their ship in the icy North Atlantic last February in a desperate attempt to rescue the survivors of a torpedoed U.S. transport.

The COMANCHE was part of a convoy escort when the transport DORCHESTER was torpedoed at mid-night, 3 February 1943, and went down in less than twenty minutes with a crew of 150 and 850 Army passengers aboard.

The Coast Guard craft was about a mile away at the time of the explosion and immediately rushed to the scene, attempting to get the enemy submarine responsible.

The cutter hung a cargo net overside, in order that the men afloat on the life boats and rafts could climb aboard.

Despite a rapidly mounting wind and an increasingly heavy sea, the COMANCHE was so maneuvered as to get alongside every life boat or raft afloat.

Every man who had made his way to a life boat or raft observed by the COMANCHE was taken aboard the cutter, which stayed on the scene throughout all the night and into the morning.

The sinking gained international attention due to the loss of four U.S. Army chaplains who perished after voluntarily giving up their life jackets to other Dorchester survivors.

After twenty days of training exercises at Casco Bay Comanche arrived at Argentia with Tampa and Mojave escorting two tugs towing sections of YD-25.

Leaving Boston on 1 August 1943, Comanche arrived at St. John's on the 7th and was underway on the 12th screening convoy SG-29 to Kungnat Bay which was reached on the 22nd.

En route she depth-charged a sound contact on the 11th, anchoring in Kungnat Bay the same day before proceeding to Gronne Dal.

[1] Unfortunately three of these men were lost when they attempted to jump to Comanche's deck and although the crew made a heroic efforts to save them, none of the three were recovered.

Departing Gronne Del on 25 December 1943, Comanche with three other escorts began screening convoy GS-39 which moored at St. John's on 1 January 1944.

She anchored in Kungnat Bay on the 22nd after dropping a nine-charge pattern on a sound contact, bringing up an oil slick and air bubbles, although a search of enemy records after the war did not show any U-boat losses in this area at this time.

Returning to Gronne Dal she remained moored there and at Narsarssauk until 22 April 1944, when she departed with Mohawk, escorting the SS Laramie to Boston.

During the post-war demobilization mania and the consequent reduction in the number of personnel kept on active duty, there were not enough Coast Guardsmen to man every cutter in the fleet.

[citation needed] Comanche was decommissioned on 29 July 1947 and placed in storage at the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Maryland.

[citation needed] In 1984 the cutter was donated by the Virginia Pilot's Association to the Patriot's Point Development Authority/Museum, where she was used mostly as a barracks boat.

[5] In 1989 the museum was discussing the disposal of the cutter, but in 1991, when Patriot's Point was taken over by the State of South Carolina, the ship was still listed among its assets.

[6] She was later donated to the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and sunk as to form Comanche Reef 12 miles out of Charleston in 1992.

[7] Charles Walter David Jr. one of the heroic Comanche crewmen who dived into the freezing North Atlantic to rescue crew and passengers of the Dorchester, is the namesake of the seventh Sentinel class cutter.