Richard H. Patterson Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

In 2010, Charles “Skip” W. Bowen, then the Coast Guard’s senior non-commissioned officer, proposed that all 58 Sentinel class cutters should be named after enlisted sailors in the Coast Guard, or its precursors, who were recognised for heroism. Patterson was to have been the namesake of the seventeenth cutter but it was named after Master Chief Donald H Horsely, who retired with eleven service stripes and the Donald Horsley was commissioned in May 2016.

U.S. Coast Guard cutter Point Welcome was on a three-day patrol, near Vietnam’s demilitarized zone when, in the early morning of August 11, 1966, she was attacked by a United States Air Force Martin B-57 Canberra, in a case of friendly fire. Standard procedure for small vessels, like Point Welcome, was to run without lights, in areas where enemy vessels might be encountered.

Richard H. Patterson (November 6, 1931 – April 12, 2010) was a chief petty officer in the United States Coast Guard, decorated for saving the crew of his vessel, USCGC Point Welcome after the skipper and executive officer became casualties during a 1966 friendly fire attack, in Vietnam.

Patterson was born in 1931 and grew up in Florida. He enlisted in the Coast Guard as a young man, and by the mid-1960s he was a chief boatswain’s mate.