For twelve years during the 1950’s and 1960’s, the Courier served as a portion of the Voice of America radio network during the Cold War.
The Courier was a Maritime Administration C1-M-AV1 type cargo vessel originally launched as the M/V Coastal Messenger in 1945. Apparently she was to be originally named Doddridge but that was changed prior to her acceptance by the Maritime Administration. She was originally designed as an inter-island shuttle for military and naval cargoes. She was designed to receive cargo from much larger Victory and Liberty ships and then deliver it to U.S. forces on small outlying islands but was actually never used for that purpose due to the end of World War II. In the late-1940’s she was operated by both the Standard Fruit Steamship Company and Grace Line, Inc., primarily along the coasts to northern South America. On a trip to South America she ran aground at La Salina on Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela but was freed after 11 days with extensive, though minor, damage. She was then apparently mothballed with the reserve fleet.
The Coastal Messenger was transferred to the control of the Department of State in 1952. She was acquired to become a mobile transmitting facility for the U.S. Information Agency’s “Voice of America” program in response to an initiative, code-named “Operation Vagabond,” that was approved by President Harry Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and announced by the Department of State in April, 1951. The operation was designed to provide a ship-borne radio relay station to transmit Voice of America programs behind the “Iron Curtain.”
She was originally designed to carry 20 employees of the U.S. International Information Administration in large staterooms but her first Coast Guard commanding officer, CAPT O. C. V. Wev, cut the number down to three in a cost-cutting move that reportedly saved $1,200,000. The USIA employees were responsible for all of the receiving and transmitting equipment “except the normal ship’s radio facilities.” The Coast Guard agreed to supply personnel to assist them in operating the added radio equipment as Courier’s primary mission was to get “the message through.”
While in Washington, D.C., President Truman inspected and dedicated the newly commissioned cutter and made a world-wide broadcast from her deck. The Courier arrived on station on 22 August 1952 and began broadcasting on 7 September 1952.
The head of the U.S. International Information Administration, Dr. Wilson Compton, noted at her commissioning that Courier was “designed to provide another electronic weapon for combatting [sic] Soviet jamming and to enable the Voice of America to cover areas beyond the reach of present broadcasts.” She was stationed in the waters of the eastern Mediterranean off the island of Rhodes, Greece, operating while anchored at undisclosed locations in those waters. While acting as a relay station, she also had a small studio and control center if program announcements or originations were needed. The Courier was “on the air” for 11 1/4 hours per day, seven days a week, and her broadcasts were made in 13 different languages.
She was the only “mobile” transmitter in the Voice of America’s world-wide network that consisted of 78 transmitters located at 10 overseas relay bases. She carried the most powerful transmitting instruments of its kind ever installed on board a ship. Stateside broadcasts were picked up by banks of Collins Radio Company 51J-type receivers. Filling most of one cargo hold, the cutter’s transmitting equipment consisted of a single RCA 150 kilowatt medium-wave transmitter and two Collins Radio Company 207B-1-type 35 kilowatt short-wave transmitters. A Collins 231D-20 three kilowatt transmitter was used for ship to shore communications. Another cargo hold contained diesel engines capable of generating 1,500,000 watts of electrical power for the radio equipment. To hold up her main antenna, the cutter used a 150,000 cubic foot (69 x 35 feet) helium balloon that was secured to the flight deck by a winch. The balloon floated at an altitude of 900 feet above Courier. She carried a total of five such balloons, each of which cost $18,000. After a few of the balloons’ cables snapped in heavy winds, releasing them to fly over Turkey and land ashore where they damaged some private property, engineers strung an antenna between the forward and main masts. The experiment proved to be successful and the balloons were retired from use.
The Courier was ordered home in July of 1964 and she returned to the U.S. on 13 August 1964 after a record 12 years on station overseas.
source: United States Coast Guard
