USS Lucid (MSO-458)

  • Aggressive Class Minesweeper
  • Original cost: $9,000,000
  • Laid down, 16 March 1953 as AM-458 at Higgins Shipyard, Inc., New Orleans, LA
  • Launched, 14 November 1953
  • Redesignated MSO-458, 7 February 1955
  • Commissioned USS Lucid (MSO-458), 4 May 1955
  • Decommissioned, (date unknown)
  • Struck from the Naval Register, 15 May 1976
  • Final Disposition: sold for scrapping, 30 December 1976 by the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service to W. Dean Kirkpatrick, San Francisco, CA, for $40,250.

Specifications

  • Displacement 775 t
  • Length 172', Beam 35', Draft 12'
  • Speed 14 kts
  • Complement eight officers, 70 enlisted
  • Armament, as built, one single 40mm gun mount, two .50 cal. machine guns, final configuration, bow gun replaced by one twin 20mm gun mount, two .50 cal. machine guns remain
  • Propulsion, four Packard ID1700 diesel engines, replaced by four Waukasha Motors Co. diesels, two shafts, two controllable pitch propellers.
  • "...the U.S. Navy's Ocean-Going Minesweepers (MSO) were built of mahogany and teak to reduce magnetic fields, and most of the metal work was non-ferrous, e.g. aluminum, bronze, brass, etc. Compared to today's Navy of nuclear powered steam and gas turbine, and while larger vessels were then mostly powered by oil-fired steam, the 173-foot length MSOs were powered by diesel engines, ...four cranky Packards, driving a single, variable pitch screw (propeller). [There was] only one radar to worry about, with one AN/SPS-5C indicator in CIC, and one AN/SPA-4 repeater on the bridge."


Anneli aboard


Lotta aboard (the little black dog Anneli brought from Hong Kong -- see her?)


Dan on his way to a gig (1985)

Lucid today... (sad).