USS Callao (IX-205)

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Career (US)
Decommissioned:	10 May 1950
Fate:	sold
General characteristics
Displacement:	1015 tons
Length:	183 ft (56 m)
Beam:	30 ft 10 in (9.4 m)
Draught:	13 ft 11 in (4.2 m)
Speed:	10 knots
Complement:	78 officers and men

USS Callao (IX-205), an unclassified miscellaneous vessel, was the third ship of the United States Navy to be named for Callao, a seaport in Peru. She was built in 1943 and 1944 by P. Smit, Jr. Shipyard, in Rotterdam, Holland, as Externsteine for the Kriegsmarine, but captured on the night of 15 October–16 October 1944 by USCGC Eastwind off Greenland.

The United States Coast Guard prize crew brought her into Boston, Massachusetts, by way of Reykjavík and NS Argentia, Newfoundland. There she was commissioned into the United States Navy on 24 January 1945 with Lieutenant D. O. Newton, USNR, in command.

Between 30 January 1945 and 4 February she was outfitted at Philadelphia Navy Yard for special experimental work for the Bureau of Ships, and for the next five years carried out tests in the area of Cape May, New Jersey, and Cape Henlopen, Delaware. She was decommissioned on 10 May 1950, and sold 30 September 1950.

[edit] References

• This article includes text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
• Arctic Combat: The Capture of the German Naval Auxiliary Externsteine by the Coast Guard Icebreakers Eastwind & Southwind in Greenland, 1944