USCGC Northwind (WAG/WAGB-282) was a Wind-class icebreaker, the second United States Coast Guard Cutter of her class to bear the name.

[3] [4] Wind-class icebreakers had hulls of unprecedented strength and structural integrity, with a relatively short length in proportion to the great power developed, a cut away forefoot, rounded bottom, and fore, aft and side heeling tanks.

[5] The objective of Operation Nanook was to assist in a Danish-American project to establish a radio and weather station in Thule, Greenland.

[7] On 27 July 1946, Northwind was grounded on an uncharted pinnacle while entering Dundas Harbour, Devon Island, Nunavut but was refloated ten hours later without serious damage.

She functioned as a "floating court" for a United States federal judge and staff, while U.S. Coast Guard medical personnel and United States Public Health Service officers on board provided medical and dental aid to hundreds of isolated Aleutian villagers.

Northwind was a research platform for geophysical studies performed by scientists and students from universities in the Pacific Northwest, and California.

From November 1956 through April 1957 Northwind participated in Operation Deep Freeze II, in expeditions to Antarctica, providing clear passage for the cargo ships including USNS Private John Towle.

On 20 January 1957 a small gathering of ship personnel, including Sir Edmund Hillary and Capt John Wiis, master of USNS Towle commemorated the opening of Scott's Base, Pram Point Antarctica.

From 5 through 25 July 1962 and 6 through 19 September 1962, Northwind conducted oceanographic experiments in the Chukchi Sea in cooperation with universities of the Pacific Northwest.

The cutter's crew installed an unmanned oceanographic station in Fairway Rock, Alaska to measure currents in the Bering Strait.

[22] In mid-October 1965 Northwind escorted the disabled Swedish MV Orion in the North Atlantic, while in 40-foot (12 m) seas, to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Canada.

In 1966 Northwind returned to Fairway Rock and the crew helped install a strontium-90 radioisotope thermoelectric generator and additional oceanographic sensors.

[23] From July through August 1967, Northwind conducted a current and hydrographic survey in the Bering Strait and resupplied Fairway Rock.

Richardson was beset in ice 5 miles (8.0 km) northwest of Point Barrow, Alaska; heavily damaged and in imminent danger of loss.

[1] During this cruise Northwind made the northernmost penetration into Arctic pack ice by any surface vessel in history at the time.

[25] Between March and September 1968, she provided ice escort for the National Science Foundation research vessel RV Alpha Helix, then operated by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at La Jolla, California.

From 8 through 22 September 1969, Northwind, Captain Donald J. McCann, USCG, Commanding, and the Canadian icebreaker John A. Macdonald escorted the supertanker SS Manhattan, of the Humble Oil and Refining Company, from Resolute Bay, Canada to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska where she was relieved by Staten Island on transit of the Northwest Passage.

She also broke out an icebound convoy of twenty tugboats and forty barges en route to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in 1971.

From mid-February 1976 until mid-April 1976 Northwind conducted an Arctic Winter East (AWE) cruise in Baffin Bay between Greenland and Canada.

[3] From 13 to 18 September 1977 Northwind assisted USCGC Dallas in patrolling the America's Cup race at Newport, Rhode Island.

Northwind was participating in Operation Wagonwheel Forces[31][32] an inter-agency narcotics interdiction effort in the Caribbean from 31 October to 31 November 1984.

She became the first icebreaker to make a narcotics seizure and broke the previous tonnage record set by USCGC Sherman.

[34] Northwind broke ice in the Norwegian and Greenland Seas, northward to the Svalbard archipelago of Norway from September 1988 through October 1988.

Northwind was decommissioned in Wilmington, North Carolina on 20 January 1989 and transferred to the James River Reserve Fleet[3][4] in Virginia.

[3][36] Northwind earned two Coast Guard Unit Commendations, both with Operational Distinguishing Devices, during oceanographic experiments in 1963 and 1965.