A Vermont-powered cutter instrumental to helping the allies win World War II is being honored by the Coast Guard.
The cutter Eastwind attacked and captured the German weather ship Externsteine, which had become trapped in ice off Greenland’s coast.
Externsteine was captured Oct. 15, 1944, the only enemy surface vessel taken by U.S. naval forces during WWII.
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The ship, powered by engines built in St Johnsbury, Vermont, was commissioned into the U.S. Navy as USS Callao in 1945.
Eighty-one years ago, the 269-foot cutter ice breaker closed in on Ernestine and captured the enemy ship.
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The Eastwind's propulsion came from six ten-cylinder diesel/electric engines built by Fairbanks, Morse & Co.
The massive engines each developed 2,000 shaft horsepower that powered Westinghouse generators.
Fairbanks,Morse was a St. Johnsbury-based manufacturing company that existed from 1823 until 1958.
Founded in 1823 as a manufacturer of weighing scales, it later diversified into pumps, engines, windmills, coffee grinders, radios, farm tractors, feed mills, locomotives, and industrial supplies.
Inventor Thaddeus Fairbanks first opened an ironworks in St. Johnsbury to manufacture two of his patented inventions: a cast iron plow and a heating stove.
In 1829 he started a hemp dressing business for which he built the machinery.
Though unsuccessful in fabricating for fiber factories, another of Morse's inventions, the platform scale which formed the basis for the later company. was patented in June 1832.
A generation later, with his brother Erastus Fairbanks, the E. & T. Fairbanks & Company was selling thousands of scales, first in the United States, later in Europe, South America, and Imperial China.
Fairbanks scales won 63 medals over the years in international competition.
The company was purchased by the Penn-Texas conglomerate in 1958 to form Fairbanks Whitney Corporation.
Former subsidiary Fairbanks-Morse Engine was purchased 5 years ago by Arcline Investment Management from Enpro Industries Inc.