By 1930, the gunboat, despite a long history in the U.S. Navy as a ship type, was not well represented in the service. Only a dozen U.S. Navy ships fell loosely within the gunboat category, and all had been built at the turn of the century. But one provision of the 1930 London Naval Treaty allowed for the construction of an unlimited number of “sloops” with a displacement not to exceed 2,000 tons, a maximum cruising speed of 20 knots, and no more than four guns of more than 3.1-inch caliber with none exceeding 6.1 inches. The USS Erie (PG-50) and her sister, the Charleston (PG-51), would be two of the ships built within the new specifications.
Admiral William V. Pratt, who was head of the London conference’s U.S. delegation, specifically argued for such ships, especially including the 20-knot parameter over the originally proposed 18 knots. Pratt apparently viewed such vessels as a means for the United States and Great Britain to offset limitations in the cruiser and destroyer classes. At the time, fleet-screening cruisers used a 20-knot limit, and thus the new gunboats could replace them. They would be the largest and most heavily armed U.S. gunboats to date, with four 6-inch rifles placed on shielded mounts, two each fore and aft in super firing positions.
The keel of the Erie was laid down at the New York Navy Yard on 17 December 1934. Work proceeded rapidly, and on 29 January 1936, Dry Dock No. 1’s flood valves were opened and, after four swings of the champagne bottle, the Erie was christened and launched. Despite not having her main weapons mounted, she was commissioned on 1 July. On 15 August, work was completed; she went to sea for the first time two days later.
Fitting out and testing continued through mid-October as she prepared for her shakedown cruise to Europe at the end of the month, which proved to be a rough crossing to Plymouth, England. From there she sailed to Antwerp, Belgium; Le Havre and La Rochelle, France; and to Spain to aid in the repatriation of American nationals amid the Spanish Civil War. At Gijon, she found herself in the middle of a shelling by the rebel Spanish Nationalist battleship España. While she was not the target, one 12-inch shell landed within 300 yards of her. She returned to France and arrived at the New York Navy Yard on 30 December 1936.
Her primary duty from January 1938 on was to alternate with the Charleston as flagship for the Special Service Squadron (SPERON) at the Panama Canal Zone. On 31 January, the Erie departed Norfolk, Virginia, for the Canal Zone. She transited the canal on 3 February and reported for duty at Balboa at the canal’s Pacific terminus. This would become her home port until she transferred to the Offshore Patrol–Atlantic of the Panama Sea Frontier and subsequently the Caribbean Sea Frontier task force in 1942.
Through the rest of 1938, she made a three-month goodwill tour to ten Central and South American ports and undertook a reconnaissance mission to the Galapagos Islands to determine their suitability for use in defending the canal. On her return to Norfolk at the end of her first rotation in January 1939, the Erie participated in a rescue of survivors from the crashed British Imperial Airways flying boat Cavalier. Bound for Bermuda from Port Washington, New York, the plane had gone down on 21 January. Six passengers and four crew members were rescued, but the search for the remaining two passengers and one crew member was fruitless. The Erie returned to Balboa on 18 May and the next month began a five-week goodwill tour of six ports in five countries.
With the German invasion of Poland on 1 September, President Franklin D. Roosevelt directed the Navy on 5 September to institute a Neutrality Patrol to track the belligerents’ movements off the East Coast and in the Caribbean. Barely a month into the patrol, the Erie tracked a suspicious German freighter, the Havelland, into Mexico’s Manzanillo Harbor. The gunboat remained there for nearly six weeks, monitoring the German ship’s loading and offloading operations.
Throughout the next year, the Erie continued to make Neutrality Patrol cruises under the aegis of SPERON on both sides of the canal. That September, the squadron was disbanded and the gunboat was sent to New York for a major overhaul before reassignment. Her home port remained Balboa, where she returned in January 1941. From there she resumed patrols for the 15th Naval District in the Panama Canal Zone.
When war came on 7 December, the Erie got under way in just six hours as the flagship of Offshore Patrol Force–Pacific, despite the majority of her crew being on shore leave. She initially aided in setting up a patrol aircraft refueling depot in the Galapagos, followed by convoy escort screening and general patrol in the Pacific, until assigned to a posting with a newly created command on the Atlantic side of the canal—the Offshore Patrol–Atlantic of the Panama Sea Frontier.
Shortly thereafter, on the night of 11 June 1942, the Erie responded to emergency flares and rushed to rescue 46 survivors of the sinking freighter Fort Good Hope. She searched for signs of a U-boat, made a hard contact, and dropped six depth charges, with no result. Three days later, while on patrol, she was directed by a patrol plane to a lifeboat from the collier Lebore. The Erie rescued 23 of the collier’s crew, and the next day, along with the destroyer Tattnall (DD-125), she rescued eight Armed Guards from the Lebore, as well as 49 survivors of the Dutch freighter Crijnssen, whom the Lebore had rescued before being attacked.
After an overhaul in mid-September at Balboa, the Erie resumed patrol and convoy duties in the Caribbean. By November, she was in Trinidad as escort commander of Convoy TAG-20 heading to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On 10 November, she left the Gulf of Paria and rendezvoused with 13 merchant ships and five other escorts. The convoy diverted from the standard route, sailing to the west and finally northwest to add two smaller convoys just off Willemstad, Curaçao, to their number. This avoided a known U-boat working the waters to the east of Aruba.
Barely an hour after the rendezvous with the subsidiary convoy off Curaçao, at 1732 on 12 November, the Erie’s commander, Captain Andrew R. Mack, and her navigator sighted two torpedoes speeding toward the gunboat’s starboard beam. “They seemed to come from the middle of the convoy. It seems that the submarine got inside of our sound track somehow,” Yeoman Second Class Julius H. Nissen later stated. U-163, a Type IXC German submarine on her second patrol, indeed had slipped in among the newly added ships.
“The Captain maneuvered the ship very well, missed the first torpedo and it went by our bow,” Nissen reported. “It was very shiny and had a brass colored warhead on it. . . . [Y]ou could see it very plainly as it went by the bow.” But the captain’s hard turn to port could not save the ship. “The second torpedo, well there was no hope of getting out of the way of that.” The weapon struck hard aft at about the position of the No. 4 6-inch gun. A second explosion followed ten seconds later when the gasoline storage tanks for the ship’s aircraft blew up. Six men, all officers, died immediately, as officer country was aft in the vessel. A seventh, a seaman, died later.
Despite a huge hole, a missing section of hull, and the main deck cracked across to the port side, the ship’s power plant fully functioned. The starboard screw was put out of commission, but the ship never lost power or speed to maneuver on the port screw.
With most of the stern afire, damage control teams and rescue personnel jumped into action, but the firefighters in particular were hampered by inadequate equipment. They had only fire extinguishers and two fire hoses with just 30 pounds of pressure. They resorted to attaching a garden hose to a galley sink spigot and forming a bucket brigade. The powder and shells for the No. 4 mount were cooking off, adding to the destruction and danger. Crewmen quickly moved the ammunition for the No. 3 mount forward and in some cases dumped powder overboard.
Captain Mack stopped the ship and ordered sailors who were in three whaleboats to remove casualties and search for men who had been forced to jump from the stern. At 1800, he ordered up 8 knots and a heading to beach the ship north of Willemstad, about 11 miles away. The Erie beached on a shelf 100 yards from the shore. With the ship’s forward momentum stopped, burning oil surged forward, engulfing the whole starboard side of the gunboat. At 1826, the captain ordered the ship abandoned. As the crew was mustered ashore, two 100-pound aircraft bombs and two 325-pound depth charges exploded, toppling the stack.
The Erie burned for three days before the fires were finally extinguished, but the machinery remained in good condition and she was deemed salvageable. Weight was removed from the topside, and she was refloated and on 28 November towed into Willemstad, where she was moored awaiting the availability of the port’s lone dry dock. As crews worked to prepare her for docking by emptying and flooding various voids, the gunboat heeled over to port and sank on 5 December. The ship was then deemed irreparable and stricken from the Navy Register on 28 July 1943. The Erie remained in the harbor until December 1952, when she was refloated, towed to sea, and scuttled.
Despite her demise, the gunboat’s heart “sailored” on. The Erie’s performance had so impressed the Coast Guard that it copied her power plant and underwater hull lines for the seven very successful Treasury-class cutters, all but one of which served into the 1980s.