USCGC Red Oak (WLM-689) was a Red-class coastal buoy tender designed, built, owned, and operated by the United States Coast Guard.

[1] Her primary mission was maintaining over 300 aids to navigation in the upper Cheasapeake Bay and its tributaries including the Delaware, North East, Chester, Bohemia, Sassafras, and Susquehanna Rivers, and the C&D Canal.

[3] Her secondary missions included search and rescue, light icebreaking, law enforcement, and marine environmental protection.

[5] Red Oak was built at the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Maryland.

Her shallow draft and flat bottom was required for her work along the edges of dredged channels, but this hull form made her harder to maneuver and more prone to rolling.

[7] Red Oak's tanks held 17,620 US gallons (66,700 L; 14,670 imp gal) of diesel fuel.

The bulk of her time was spent at sea tending her buoy fleet or moored, maintaining the ship and training the crew.

[15] A Piper Seneca cargo plane crashed on approach to Philadelphia International Airport on 3 April 1979.

Red Oak recovered the plane and returned it to Gloucester City for a National Transportation Safety Board investigation.

[17] On 20 March 1978, a barge loading JP-4 jet fuel in Delaware City exploded and caught fire.

Red Oak responded to the scene and pumped chemical foam on the flames hoping to suppress the fire and keep the barge from breaking up and spilling its cargo into the waterway.

[18] The ship acted as the on-scene commander, directing the firefighting and rescue efforts of ten vessels.

The Coast Guard offered tours of Red Oak on several occasions including: Red Oak earned a Coast Guard Unit Commendation in 1978 for her firefighting and rescue operations at a jet fuel fire in Delaware City.

[33][34] Red Oak was sunk on 13 September 1999 approximately nine miles (14 km) southeast of Cape May, New Jersey to form part of an artificial reef.