History
United States
Name	Bath
Namesake	City ofBath, Maine
Reclassified	PF-55, 15 April 1943
Builder	Froemming Brothers, Inc.,Milwaukee, andPendleton Shipyards,New Orleans
Laid down	23 August 1943
Launched	14 November 1943
Sponsored by	Mrs. Fred R. E. Dean
Commissioned	9 September 1944
Decommissioned	4 September 1945[1]
Fate	Transferred toSoviet Navy 4 September 1945[1]
Acquired	Returned by Soviet Navy, 15 November 1949
Fate	Transferred to theJapan Maritime Self-Defense Force, 13 December[2] or 23 December 1953[3]
Stricken	1 December 1961
Soviet Union
Name	EK-29[4]
Acquired	4 September 1945[1]
Commissioned	4 September 1945[5]
Fate	Returned toUnited States, 15 November 1949
Japan
Name	Maki[3][6][7][8] or JDSMatsu (PF-6)[2][9]
Acquired	By loan, 13[2] or 23 December 1953[3] By permanent transfer, 28 August 1962
Decommissioned	31 March 1966
Renamed	YTE-9, 31 March 1966
In service	31 March 1966, as non-self-propelled pier-sidetraining ship
Fate	Sold for scrapping, 13 December 1971
General characteristics
Class & type	Tacoma-class frigate
Displacement	1,430 long tons (1,453 t) light 2,415 long tons (2,454 t) full
Length	303 ft 11 in (92.63 m)
Beam	37 ft 6 in (11.43 m)
Draft	13 ft 8 in (4.17 m)
Propulsion	2 × 5,500 shp (4,101 kW) turbines 3 boilers 2 shafts
Speed	20knots (37 km/h; 23 mph)
Complement	190
Armament	3 ×3"/50 dual purpose guns (3x1) 4 x40 mm guns (2×2) 9 ×20 mm guns (9×1) 1 ×Hedgehoganti-submarine mortar 8 ×Y-gun depth charge projectors 2 × Depth charge tracks

The secondUSSBath (PF-55) was aUnited States NavyTacoma-classfrigate in commission from 1944 to 1945 which later served in theSoviet Navy asEK-29 and theJapanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, with her Japanese name reported by various sources (see below) asJDSMaki (PF-18) andJDSMaki (PF-298), and later asYTE-9.

Bath originally was authorized as a patrolgunboat with thehull number PG-163, but she was redesignated as apatrol frigate with the hull number PF-55 on 15 April 1943. She was laid down under aMaritime Commissioncontract as Maritime Commission Type T.S2-S2-AQ1Hull 1480 on 23 August 1943 byFroemming Brothers, Inc., atMilwaukee. She waslaunched on 14 November 1943, sponsored by Mrs. Fred R. E. Dean, then moved in an incomplete state toNew Orleans, where she was completed byPendleton Shipyards. She wascommissioned on 9 September 1944 with aUnited States Coast Guard crew.

Bath departed New Orleans on 25 September 1944 and conducted hershakedown training out ofBermuda before proceeding to thePhiladelphia Navy Yard inPhiladelphia,Pennsylvania, where she arrived on 1 November 1944 for post-shakedown repairs and alterations.Sea trials offRockland,Maine, and further repairs at Philadelphia followed before she departed theDelaware Capes on 30 December 1944 and proceeded toNew York City to report for duty withTask Group 20.9 under the Commander,Eastern Sea Frontier.

Based at the Eastern Sea Frontier base atTompkinsville,Staten Island, New York, and attached to Escort Division 38,Bath departed on 6 January 1945 in the escort of aconvoy bound forGuantánamo Bay,Cuba, and returned to New York on 25 January 1945. She then operated out of Tompkinsville onantisubmarine barrier patrol through mid-May 1945, often in company with otherpatrol craft. She also kept approaching vessels from interfering with the convoy lanes into and out of New York.

Detached from this duty on 17 May 1945,Bath arrived atOcean Weather Station 10 in theNorth Atlantic Ocean (at36°00′00″N070°00′00″W / 36.00000°N 70.00000°W /36.00000; -70.00000) on 18 May 1945 to relieve thedestroyer escortUSS Jack W. Wilke (DE-800) there, but was herself relieved the same day.

Returning to New York City,Bath underwent repairs and alterations at theMariners' Harborshipyard of theBethlehem Steel Corporation on Staten Island, and received orders to thePacific Ocean on 11 June 1945. On 13 July 1945, theSoviet Union and theUnited States agreed that she would be transferred to theSoviet Navy inProject Hula, a secret program for the transfer of U.S. Navy ships to the Soviet Navy underLend-Lease atCold Bay in theTerritory of Alaska in anticipation of theSoviet Union joining thewar against Japan. Accordingly,Bath set out for Cold Bay on 14 July 1945. She transited thePanama Canal on 22 July 1945 and reachedSan Pedro,California, on 30 July 1945. Proceeding on toSeattle,Washington,Bath departed for Cold Bay on 28 August 1945. Training of her new Soviet crew soon began.^[10]

Following the completion of training for her Soviet crew,Bath wasdecommissioned on 4 September 1945^[1] at Cold Bay and transferred to the Soviet Union immediately^[1] along with hersister shipsUSS Gloucester (PF-22),USS Newport (PF-27), andUSS Evansville (PF-70), the last of 28 patrol frigates transferred to the Soviet Navy in Project Hula. Commissioned into the Soviet Navy immediately,^[5]Bath was designated as astorozhevoi korabl ("escort ship") and renamedEK-29^[4] in Soviet service.^[11]

On 5 September 1945, all ship transfers to the Soviet Union were ordered stopped, although training for ships already transferred was allowed to continue. Accordingly,EK-29 remained at Cold Bay along withEK-26 (ex-Gloucester),EK-28 (ex-Newport), andEK-30 (ex-Evanvsille) for additional shakedown and training until 17 September 1945. All four of these ships departed in company bound forPetropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Soviet Union, the last four of the 149 Project Hula ships to do so. Too late forWorld War II service with the Soviet Navy,EK-29 served as a patrol vessel in theSoviet Far East.^[12]

In February 1946, the United States began negotiations for the return of ships loaned to the Soviet Union for use during World War II. On 8 May 1947,United States Secretary of the NavyJames V. Forrestal informed theUnited States Department of State that theUnited States Department of the Navy wanted 480 of the 585 combatant ships it had transferred to the Soviet Union for World War II use returned,EK-29 among them. Negotiations for the return of the ships were protracted, but on 15 November 1949 the Soviet Union finally returnedEK-29 to the U.S. Navy atYokosuka, Japan.^[13]

Reverting to her former name and placed out of commission inreserve at Yokosuka,Bath remained inactive there until loaned to theJapan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) on either 13^[2] or 23 December 1953.^[3] Sources disagree the JMSDF's name for the ship, variously reporting it asJDSMaki (PF-18) (まき (PF-18); "podocarpaceae")^[8] orJDSMatsu (PF-6) (まつ (PF-6); "pine tree").^[2] She was redesignatedJDSMaki (PF-298) on 1 September 1957.^{[3][6][7][8][9]}

On 1 December 1961, the U.S. Navy struckBath's name from the U.S.Naval Vessel Register, and the United States transferred the ship to Japan permanently on 28 August 1962. On 31 March 1966, the JMSDF decommissioned the ship, simultaneously renamed herYTE-9,^[8] and placed in service as a non-commissioned pier-sidetraining ship. She was sold to theChin Ho Fa Steel and Iron Company, Ltd., ofTaiwan on 13 December 1971 for scrapping.^[2]

•  This article incorporates text from thepublic domainDictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. The entry can be foundhere.
• "The Naval Database: JMSDF Kusu class patrol frigate (PF298) Maki" (in Japanese). Retrieved22 September 2014.

• Tacoma-class frigates
• Ships built in Milwaukee
• Ships built in New Orleans
• 1943 ships
• World War II frigates and destroyer escorts of the United States
• Tacoma-class frigates of the Soviet Navy
• World War II frigates of the Soviet Union
• Cold War frigates of the Soviet Union
• Tacoma-class frigates of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force
• Ships transferred under Project Hula

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from July 2021
• Ship infoboxes without an image
• Pages using gadget WikiMiniAtlas
• Articles containing Japanese-language text
• Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships
• CS1 Japanese-language sources (ja)