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U.S. Coast Guard Aviation History
"The Class of 1916"
The first Coast Guard aviation personnel, 22 March 1917.
General Coast Guard Aviation History:
- A History of
SARWET: the precursor to the Rescue Swimmer program, written by CDR
Bill Thrall, USCG (Ret.). CDR Thrall noted that "SARWET
pre-dated the Rescue Swimmer Program by 13-plus years. It ran
successfully out of San Francisco for almost 6 years. . .Rescues were
made, lives saved and medals awarded. It was real."
Biographies of Coast Guard Aviators:
- Captain Donald B.
MacDiarmid: an article by Lieutenant Commander Barrett
T. Beard, USCG (Ret.) entitled "Cap'm Mac and Flying Coffins: Captain Donald B.
MacDiarmid, Seaplanes and Coast Guard Aviation."
Coast Guard Aviators' Oral Histories & Other First-Person
Accounts:
- Captain William
Wishar, USCG (Ret.), the first commanding officer of the Coast
Guard's first air station, describes the early years of Coast Guard
aviation and personalities involved in his article entitled: "Some
Recollections of Early Coast Guard Aviation."
- Captain David
Oliver, USCG (Ret.): "My Life in the Coast Guard" a
narrative of his career as a Coast Guard aviation pioneer, including
helicopter development and operations in Alaska
- Bernard Bailey, USCG (Ret.): An oral history covering his service as a
Coast Guard aviator in World War II, including flight training, flying PBYs off the West
Coast, and operating on photographic survey flights with the Coast &
Geodetic Survey.
Accounts & Documentation of Individual
Rescues / Flights / Operations:
- "A Summary of Action"
for a SAR case in
1978 when HC-130H CGNR-1500 assisted in the rescue off Alaska of the
crew of a ditched Navy P-3C (BuNo. 159892) on 26 October 1978. A
Soviet trawler, the Mys Sinyavin, also participated, making this
a unique case of cooperation by the principal antagonists of the Cold
War.
- "27 Hours in the Cold Alaska Sea."
AD1 Greg King writes
about the rescue of the crew of the fishing vessel Clover Leaf in April,
1980 while serving as an HC-130 crewman based at AIRSTA Kodiak.
- 1937 rescue at sea
by a seaplane from Air Station
Salem: a period illustrated magazine article.