Built as wooden hulled coastal minesweeper by the Bellingham Shipyards, Bellingham, Wa. USA for the USA Navy.
14 September 1953 launched.
30 April 1954 launched as the USS VIREO (AMS-205) one of the Redwing class.
07 February 1955 re-designated MSC-205
Displacement 412 ton, dim. 145 x 28 x 12ft. (draught).
Powered by two General Motors diesels 1,760 hp, twin shafts, speed 12 knots. The engines and hull fittings where made of bronze, stainless steel and aluminium.
Range by 10 knots 2500 mile.
Armament 1 – 20mm, 2 – 0.50 cal. Machine guns.
Crew 40.
07 June 1955 commissioned at Tacoma Wa.
Then a unit of the Mine Squadron 7 based at Long Beach until 1 March 1956, when she sailed for the Western Pacific, arriving at Yokohama on 31 May.
She was attached to MinRon 3 at Sasebo. In July 1964 she joined Operation Market Time off the coast of South Vietnam, interdicting waterborne supplies to the Viet Cong.
In 1966 she took part in an action with a trawler attempting a landing, for which she received the Navy Unit Commendation. On 17 August 1970 she arrived back in Long Beach.
01 October 1970 decommissioned at Long Beach and placed in service as a Naval Reserve Training Ship at Seattle, Wa.
01 April 1975 out of service.
01 July 1975 struck from the Naval register, and transferred to the Government of Fiji on 1 October 1975. Renamed KULA (205).
Her minesweeping gear was removed and a deckhouse and helicopter platform built on her fantail, in use as a patrol boat by the Fiji Navy.
When she was decommissioned and her fate are vague a source give out of service in 1985, all usable parts removed and her hull towed to sea and burnt, another source give deleted 1990 or 1991.
Fiji 1982 70c sg635, scott465.
Source: Log Book. Watercraft Philately 1988 page 48. Inter-net.