The cutter honors the Coast Guard’s only Medal of Honor recipient, Douglas Munro, of South Cle Elum, who was fatally wounded in Guadalcanal in 1942.
The 418-foot Coast Guard cutter Munro arrived Wednesday in Seattle, where it is scheduled to be commissioned at a Saturday ceremony.
The cutter honors the Coast Guard’s only Medal of Honor recipient, Signalman First Class Douglas Munro, of South Cle Elum, who was killed in Guadalcanal in 1942 while rescuing a detachment of 500 U.S. Marines who were under attack, according to the Coast Guard.
The Munro, which will be home-ported at Base Alameda in California, is the sixth vessel in a new generation of nine National Security Legend-class cutters that have entered Coast Guard service as part of a broader push to modernize an aging fleet. So far, they have been built at an average cost of $695 million per ship, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The Legend-class vessels are the largest and most technologically sophisticated cutters in the Coast Guard fleet. With a crew of 150, each ship can tackle assignments ranging from fisheries patrols in the North Pacific to drug-interdiction duty off South America to patrols in the Western Pacific. They also can serve in support to U.S. combatant commanders.
Currently, a high-endurance cutter home-ported in Alaska also is named the Munro. That vessel eventually will be decommissioned and retired from service, according to a Coast Guard public-affairs officer.
Seattle is not home port to any of the new generation of National Security Cutters, and there are no plans to base one in the city.