USS Carson City's sister warship

It was 62 years ago this month when two U.S. warships, berthed side-by-side in a Southern California shipyard, were undergoing final construction and sea trials prior to joining the war against Japan during World War II.

The larger of the two was the 303-foot USS Carson City, a patrol frigate named for Nevada's capital. Crewed by 12 officers and 160 enlisted men, the Carson City won three battle stars for heroic action during the Battle of Leyte gulf and service in New Guinea as well as supporting U.S. amphibious landings during the retaking of the Philippines.

Following the war's end, the Carson City was transferred to the Russian Navy under a lend-lease arrangement, and then was loaned to the Japanese Navy, and eventually was returned to the U.S. and scrapped in the mid-1970s.

The smaller ship, an 85-foot rescue-crash vessel crewed by only 16, and named the P-520, also made its way into the Pacific, supported U.S. troop landings and other operations during the New Guinea campaigns, and was retired following the war.

The P-520 was assigned to the Army's 15th Rescue Boat Squadron during the joint Army and Navy operations in New Guinea in 1944, and served with the USS Carson City during U.S. landings. The P-520's prime responsibility was to rescue U.S. pilots and seamen whose planes and ships had been shot down and sunk.

But this ship, which had no name and bore only the designation USAAF P-520, was neither scrapped or belonged to the U.S. Navy. The P-520 was a U.S. Army vessel. And it is still afloat and in prime working condition today, berthed at a Long Beach pier only one mile from where it and the USS Carson City were constructed in the Los Angeles shipyard in 1944.

The P-520 is owned by Delbert "Bud" Tretter, 75, who purchased it several years ago from a fellow who had converted it to a pleasure boat. Tretter, who served on rescue and crash boats identical to the P-520, says he has spent nearly $1 million re-converting the boat to its original status and now wants to find a military museum to house it.

Col. Lou Cabrera, a Nevada Army National Guard officer who is leading efforts to build a military museum in Northern Nevada, said it would be a "great idea" if the P-520 could somehow be transported here and installed in the museum.

Plans to hire a museum director and locate a site for the museum are proceeding, and Col. Cabrera hopes to secure funding for the acquisition of historic items soon. "We will speak to Bud Tretter to find out if the P-520 could be brought here. I'd love to have it in our museum," he said.

Tretter, who owns the Long Beach shipyard where the P-520 is now berthed, is an Air Force veteran of the 1950-53 Korean War. When that war commenced, the former Army rescue boats such as the P-520 joined the "navy" of the Air Force.

During the Korean War, the P-520 and other rescue craft were assigned "cloak and dagger roles," Tretter said, such as transporting U.S. and South Korean agents and spies behind enemy lines into Communist North Korea.

Tretter himself participated in several of these missions which included delivering counterfeit North Korean money, food ration coupons, travel passes and railroad tickets to confuse and demoralize the North Koreans and their Red Chinese allies.

The P-520, Tretter said, was initially built to serve in the tropics and he and his fellow crewmen "nearly froze to death" because the boat had no heaters and often operated far off shore in below-freezing weather.

"We put on all the clothes and blankets we could find and huddled around the boat's stove. But it really was brutal out there," he said.

A member of the Army Air Corps/U.S. Air Force Crash Rescue Boat Association, Tretter has been looking for a museum to house the 85-foot P-520, which he has restore to its original, pristine condition.

He wonders how the craft could be transported from Long Beach to Northern Nevada, but says "anything is possible. The boat needs a good home, and I'll be talking to the folks in Nevada."