SWAN USS (AMS-37) mine sweeper

[aukepalmhof]

Most probably the Samoa post would depict the USS SWAN (AM-34) one of the Bird class, who was in Pago Pago from 18 January until 25 July 1942, and in other areas of the Pacific for the remainder of WW II, but she is not depict on the stamp.
The USS SWAN depict on this stamp never made a call in Samoa, and at that time she was not USS SWAN but only YMS 470, she was after the war renamed in USS SWAN.

Built as a wooden hulled patrol and minesweeper by Gibbs Gas Engine Co., Jacksonville, Florida for the USA Navy.
12 August 1943 keel laid down as PCS-1438.
27 September 1943 redesignated Auxiliary Motor Minesweeper YMS-470.
05 April 1944 launched as YMS-470.
Displacement 320 tons, dim. 41.5 x 7.47 x 1.85m. (draught)
Two General Motors 8-268A diesel engines each 880 bhp, twin shafts, speed 12 knots.
Armament 1 – 3 inch and 2 – 20mm guns.
Crew 33.
14 October 1944 commissioned.
YMS-470 operated along the east coast of the United States until March 1945. She then sailed to the South Pacific and operated in the vicinity of New Caledonia and the New Hebrides until August. From there the minesweeper moved north for duty at Okinawa and in Japan, in connection with post-war minesweeping and the occupation of Japan. YMS-470 returned to the United States in mid-April 1946 and, on 1 June, was decommissioned and placed in reserve at Stockton Calif. While there, she was named SWAN and redesignated AMS-37.
In 1950, with the outbreak of hostilities in Korea SWAN was called back to active service. She was towed to the Bethlehem Pacific Coast Corp. yard at San Francisco, where she was recommissioned on 8 November 1950. For just over three years, the ship trained crews for minesweepers serving in the Far East. She operated with Mine Squadron 5 on the west coast, first as flagship of Mine Division (MinDiv) 55 and later of MinDiv 51. In January 1954, SWAN was reassigned to MinDiv 45 of the Atlantic Fleet and home ported at the Minecraft Base in Charleston, S.C. A year later she joined MinDiv 44 as a school ship at the Mine Warfare School at Yorktown, Va. She was redesignated MSC(O)-37 on 1 August 1955, and reported to the Florida Group, Atlantic Reserve Fleet for inactivation and decommissioning.
SWAN was decommissioned on 6 October 1965 and berthed at Green Cove Springs, Fla. Her name was struck from the Navy list on 1 November 1959, and she was sold to the General Motors Defense Research Laboratories at Santa Barbara, for conversion to a research vessel.
She received the American official number 286860. From a American shiplover I got that she later was owned by Sause Bros. Ocean Towing Co., Inc., Hawaii but a request for info on her I did not get a reply. She was sold or transferred to Windjammer Cruises in Honolulu and renamed ROYAL TAIPAN, converted in a yacht.
The last I found was in the New York Times of 27 August 1990 that she was found by the American Coast Guard when she was started to leak when it ran into the fringes of Tropical Storm Abe, and called for help in a position 120 miles east-northeast of Yap in the Micronesian islands. She was underway from the Philippines to Saipan for a refurbishment. The crew of 16 was reported all safe. At that time her tonnage is given as 269 gross and 128 net, with a length of 38.58 m. Thereafter she disappears, most probably scrapped or scuttled can not find anything more on her.

SAMOA 1986 60s sg733, scott?

http://www.navsource.org/archives/11/19470.htm Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. Watercraft Philately.