sentences:  In 1941, she began work in intensive development exercises with submarine and mine groups in the Philippines, and as war came closer, spent December on patrol in the Taiwan Straits.According to an account given by Yeoman 3C A. Glenn Pratt, a crewmember aboard the "Finch", she was assigned, along with the , a sister vessel with a diving bell, to escort two US Navy river gunboats back to Manila Harbor from their station in China since the Japanese had sunk one such vessel, the "Panay", in 1937.During the return leg of this mission, the vessels were temporarily surrounded by Japanese naval vessels headed toward the Philippines.