allowed the Coast Guard to begin operating station U ("Uncle") west of northern Baja California on December 12, 1950. As a result of these changes, ship N ("Nan") was moved to the southeast on December 10, 1950. Responsibility for weather ship V ("Victor") transferred from the United States Navy to the United States Coast Guard and Weather Bureau on September 30, 1951. On March 20, 1952, Vessels N ("November") and U ("Uncle") were moved to the south to lie under airplane paths between the western United States coast and Honolulu, Hawaii. In 1956 , while stationed at N ("November"), rescued the crew and passengers of Pan Am Flight 6 after the crippled aircraft diverted to the clipper's position and ditched in the ocean. Weather vessel Q ("Quebec") began operation in the north-central Pacific on April 6, 1952, while in the western Atlantic, the British corvettes used as weather ships were replaced by newer Castle-class frigates between 1958 and 1961. 1960s In 1963, the entire fleet won the Flight Safety Foundation award for their distinguished service to aviation. In 1965, there were a total of 21 vessels in the weather ship network. Nine were from the United States, four from the United Kingdom, three from France, two from the Netherlands, two from Norway, and one from Canada. In addition to the routine hourly weather observations and upper air flights four times a day, two Soviet ships in the northern and central Pacific Ocean sent meteorological rockets up to a height of . For a time, there was a Dutch weather ship stationed in the Indian Ocean. The network left the Southern Hemisphere mainly uncovered. South Africa maintained a weather ship near latitude 40° South, longitude 10° East between September 1969 and March 1974. Fading use When compared to the cost of unmanned weather buoys, weather ships became expensive, and weather buoys began to replace United States weather ships in the 1970s. Across the northern Atlantic, the number of weather ships dwindled over the years. The original nine ships in the region had fallen to eight after ocean vessel C ("Charlie") was discontinued by the United States in December 1973. In 1974, the Coast Guard announced plans to terminate all United States stations, and the last United States weather ship was replaced by a newly developed weather buoy in 1977. A new international agreement for ocean weather vessels was reached through the