Editing USCGC Taney (section)

==1936–1941==
Treasury-class ''Roger B. Taney'', Coast Guard Builders No. 68, was laid on 1 May 1935 at the [[Philadelphia Navy Yard]]. She was launched on 3 June 1936 and was sponsored by Miss Corinne F. Taney. She was commissioned at Philadelphia on 24 October 1936. The ''Roger B. Taney'' departed [[Philadelphia]] on 19 December, transited the [[Panama Canal]] from 27 to 29 December, and arrived at her home port, [[Honolulu]], [[Territory of Hawaii]], on 18 January 1937. She conducted local operations out of Honolulu through the summer of 1937. On 16 June 1937, she transferred a number of her crew for temporary duty to [[USCGC Itasca (1929)|USCGC ''Itasca'']]. The ''Itasca'' was preparing to lend navigational support to [[Amelia Earhart]]'s flight around the world. In May or June 1937 ''Roger B. Taney'''s name was shortened to simply ''Taney''.<ref name=USCGHO />

The ''Taney'' had arrived in the Pacific at a time when the United States, and [[Pan-American Airways]] in particular, was expanding its commercial air travel capabilities. The "Clipper" flights across the Pacific to the [[Far East]] made islands like [[Hawaii]], [[Midway Atoll|Midway]], [[Guam]], and [[Wake Island]] important way-stations. Other islands and islets assumed greater importance when a route across the South Pacific was mapped out to Australia and [[Samoa]]. The military benefits which accrued to the United States by its expansion onto some of the more strategic bits of land in the broad Pacific were not lost upon President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who undertook, in the late 1930s, to annex territory in the Pacific.<ref name=USCGHO />

Two such places were [[Kanton Island|Kanton]] and [[Enderbury Island]]s. The ''Taney'' played a role in their colonization by the United States. In early March 1938, the Coast Guard cutter loaded supplies and embarked colonists who would establish the claim of the United States upon the two islands that seemed—at least to the uninitiated—to be mere hunks of coral, rock, and scrub in the Central Pacific. She disembarked four Hawaiians at Enderbury Island on 6 March 1938 and landed a second contingent—of seven colonists—at Canton Island on the next day. The men, assisted by the Coast Guardsmen, erected buildings and laid the foundations for future signal towers.<ref name=USCGHO />

The Coast Guard's task over the ensuing years leading up to the outbreak of war in the Pacific was to supply these isolated way-stations along the transpacific air routes and to relieve the colonists at stated intervals. ''Taney'' performed these supply missions into 1940. Meanwhile, tension continued to rise in the Far East as Japan cast covetous glances at the American, [[British Empire|British]], [[Dutch colonial empire|Dutch]], and French colonial possessions and marched deeper into embattled China.<ref name=USCGHO />

As the Navy and Coast Guard began gradually increasing and augmenting the armament on its vessels to prepare them for the inexorably advancing war, ''Taney'' underwent her first major rearmament at the [[Pearl Harbor|Pearl Harbor Navy Yard]] in December 1940. She received her last major pre-war refit at the [[Mare Island Navy Yard]], [[Vallejo, California]], in the spring of the following year, 1941. On 25 July 1941, the Coast Guard cutter was transferred to the Navy and reported for duty with the local defense forces of the 14th Naval District, maintaining her base at [[Honolulu]].<ref name=Johnson194>{{cite book|last=Johnson|first=Robert Irwin|year=1987|title=Guardians of the Sea, History of the United States Coast Guard, 1915 to the Present|publisher=Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland|isbn=978-0-87021-720-3}}</ref>

Outside another "line island cruise" in the late summer, ''Taney'' operated locally out of Honolulu into the critical fall of 1941. She conducted regular harbor entrance and channel patrols, alternating often with one of the four old destroyers of Destroyer Division 80: {{USS|Allen|DD-66|6}}, {{USS|Schley|DD-103|2}}, {{USS|Chew|DD-106|2}}, and {{USS|Ward|DD-139|2}}.