P a ge 29 t o pside V olume 120 , I s s u e 2
Centenarian Coasties Continued
Thomas Taylor
Auxiliarist and Coast Guard and WW II veteran Thomas Taylor turned 100 . Thomas served on the USS Falgout .
USS Falgout ( DER- / DER-324 was an Edsall-class destroyer escort built for the United Sates Navy during World War II . She served in the Atlantic Ocean and provided destroyer escort protection against submarine and air attack for Navy vessels and convoys . Postwar , she was borrowed by the United States Coast Guard and also served as a radar picket ship on the Distant Early Warning Line . She was reclassified DER-324 on 28 October 1954 .
The Falgout was on loan to the United States Coast Guard between 24 August 1951 and 21 May 1954 , in commission , as WDE 424 , and commanded by CDR G . L . Rollins , USCG for duty as an ocean station vessel out of Tacoma , Washington .
On 20 April 1944 , in the Mediterranean , her convoy UGS 38 came under heavy attack by German aircraft . Before the concentrated antiaircraft fire of Falgout and the other escorts could drive them off , they blew up the transport SS Paul Hamilton , sank the destroyer USS Lansdale destroyer , and damaged several of the merchantmen . With the other escorts picking up survivors or escorting the damaged ships into the nearest port , Algiers , Falgout screened the convoy on to its original destination , Bizerte
The homeward bound passage of this same voyage was also a difficult one ; on 3 May , one of the escorts was torpedoed and had to put into Algiers for repairs . Two of the other escorts sank the submarine which had crippled their sister , but on 5 May , another of the escort ( USS Fechteler ) was torpedoed , and sank . Falgout and the remaining escorts brought the convoy safely home , not a merchantman lost . On her third convoy voyage , while Gibraltar-bound in the Mediterranean , Falgout took prisoner from the sea four downed German aviators .
U . S . Coast Guard awarded Thomas Taylor :
• American Area Campaign Medal
• Navy Combat Action Ribbon
• Honorable Service Lapel Pin ( Ruptured Duck )
• Honorable Discharge Pin Information obtained by interviews with Thomas Taylor and Wikipedia .
Thomas Taylor ( right ( with Flotilla Commander Mel Collins ( left )