USS Gloucester (PF-22), a in commission from 1943 to 1945, was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for Gloucester, Massachusetts. She later served in the Soviet Navy as EK-26 and in the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force as JDS Tsuge (PF-12) and JDS Tsuge (PF-292). Construction and commissioning Gloucester, originally classified PG-130, was launched on 12 July 1943, at the Walter Butler Shipbuilding Company in Superior, Wisconsin, under a Maritime Commission contract, sponsored by Mrs. Emily K. Ross. The US Navy acquired and simultaneously commissioned the ship on 10 December 1943. Service history U.S. Navy, World War II, 1943-1945 Following shakedown, Gloucester was employed in training frigate crews at Galveston, Texas. On 16 June 1944 she was attached to Escort Division 38. Earmarked in 1945 for transfer to the Soviet Navy in Project Hula, a secret program for the transfer of U.S. Navy ships to the Soviet Navy in anticipation of the Soviet Union joining the war against Japan, Gloucester proceeded to Cold Bay in the Territory of Alaska in the late summer of 1945. Soviet Navy, 1945–1949 Following the completion of training for her new Soviet crew, Gloucester was decommissioned on 4 September 1945 at Cold Bay and transferred to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease immediately along with her sister ships , , and , the last of 28 patrol frigates transferred to the Soviet Navy in Project Hula. Commissioned into the Soviet Navy immediately, Gloucester was designated as a storozhevoi korabl ("escort ship") and renamed EK-26 in Soviet service. 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-26 remained at Cold Bay along with EK-28 (ex-Newport), EK-29 (ex-Bath), and EK-30 (ex-Evanvsille) for additional shakedown and training until 17 September 1945, when all four ships departed in company bound for Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Soviet Union, the last four of the 149 Project Hula ships to do so. Arriving too late to see World War II combat with the Soviet Navy, EK-26 served as a patrol vessel in the Soviet Far East. 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 Navy James V. Forrestal informed the United States Department of State that the United