1903

December 17-Life-Saving Service personnel from Kill Devil Hills Life-Saving Station helped carry materials to the launch site for the first successful heavier-than-air aircraft flight by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, NC. The life-savers were John T. Daniels, W.S. Dough and A.D. Etheridge.


1916

April 1-Second Lieutenant Charles E. Sugden and Third Lieutenant Elmer F. Stone received orders to attend aviation training at Pensacola Naval Air Station.

August 29-Naval Appropriation Act of 1916 provided the authorization, but not the funding, for ten Coast Guard Air Stations to be located along the coasts of the Atlantic, Pacific, Great Lakes, and the Gulf of Mexico.

October 28-Second Lieutenant Norman B. Hall was ordered to the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company to study aircraft engineering and construction.


1917

March 22-The first Coast Guard aviators graduated from Pensacola Naval Aviation Training School. Third Lieutenant Elmer Stone became Coast Guard Aviator #1 and Naval Aviator #38.


1919

8-27 May-Third Lieutenant Elmer Stone pilots the first trans-Atlantic flight on board the US Navy?s NC-4 Curtiss seaplane. For this feat he received a Congressional Medal. He also established a world speed record for amphibious planes. Elmer Stone later aided in the development of the catapult and deck landing gear for aircraft carriers.


1920

24 March-The first Coast Guard Air Station was opened at Morehead City, NC. Operating with six Curtiss HS-2L flying boats borrowed from the US Navy, the air station was closed after fifteen months due to lack of funds.


1925

In May of 1925, the Coast Guard established an Air Unit at Gloucester, Massachusetts on Ten Pound Island. The Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics donated a UO-1 for a period of one year for Coast Guard operation. Service personnel constructed a battery-powered radio set for the amphibian aircraft. The transmitter using a simple oscillator amplifier circuit arrangement while the receiver was of the conventional regenerative detector type.

The UO-1 was returned to the Navy in April, 1926.


1926

The first permanent Coast Guard Air Station was established at Cape May, NJ.


1932

Congress authorized funds for the Coast Guard to design aircraft which met the service?s needs. Previously, the Coast Guard had used aircraft that had been designed to fulfill the needs of the other military services.


1934

All Treasury Department aviation activities were consolidated under Coast Guard control.


1935

July-Frank A. Erickson received his wings and was designated a Coast Guard aviator. He later became the Coast Guard?s first helicopter pilot. With great foresight he championed the use of helicopters on board ships for law enforcement and life-saving. In 1944 he received a commendation for conducting, in violent winds and snows, the first lifesaving mission with a helicopter.


1938

April 18-Donald B. MacDiarmid was appointed Coast Guard aviator. Highlights of his distinguished career included being the commander of Patrol Squadron 6 in Argentia, Newfoundland. This was the only all Coast Guard patrol squadron to serve in World War II. MacDiarmid was promoted to the rank of captain on 6 December 1950 and took command of Air Station San Diego. While there, he developed open ocean crash techniques which are still used today by commercial airlines.


1939

Coast Guard became a major participant in the Neutrality Patrols with the outbreak of war in Europe.

April-United States took responsibility for the defense of Iceland. Coast Guard aviation moved to the island to participate.


1942

November-Lieutenant John A. Pritchard and Radioman Benjamin A. Bottoms rescued two members of a crashed B-17 in Greenland, but lost their lives in an attempt to rescue a third member of the downed aircraft.

December-Coast Guard participated in the establishment of the first air-sea rescue unit at San Diego, California.


1943

October 5-US Coast Guard Patrol Squadron No.6 was commissioned and became Air Detachment, North Atlantic Ocean Patrol. This unit engaged in ice observation for the International Ice Patrol, which resumed its operations after a wartime interruption.


1944

March-The Commandant of the Coast Guard was named to head the US Air-Sea Rescue Agency, which ceased to exist in 1949.


1946

June 30-The U.S. Navy returned eleven air stations to the operational control of the US Coast Guard.

September 3-The U.S. Air-Sea Rescue Agency, was renamed the Search and Rescue Agency.


1947

23 July-A US Coast Guard amphibious plane made a 900-mile (round trip) instrument flight in heavy fog. The plane landed in a rough sea some 450 miles NE by E of Argentia, Newfoundland to pick up a 18-year old seaman, in need of an emergency appendectomy, on USCGC Bibb. Long-range amphibian flights of this type were the hallmark of Coast Guard aviation between the1930s and late-1950s.


1949

27 February-15 June-Aerial ice observations were made by long-range aircraft operating from Argentia, Newfoundland. International Ice Patrol operations, during the 1949 season, were for the first time, conducted entirely by aircraft.

April 6-A U.S. Coast Guard H03S-l helicopter completed the longest unescorted helicopter ferry flight on record. The trip from Elizabeth City, North Carolina, to Port Angeles, Washington, via San Diego, California, a distance of 3,750 miles, took 10 1/2 days to complete and involved a total flight time of 57.6 hours.


1952

March 4-On a test basis, an air detachment of three helicopters and their crews was established at Air Station Brooklyn. It operated in support of port security operations.


1957

July 5-A P5M Martin seaplane from the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station, San Francisco made an offshore landing at the extreme operating range of 950 miles southwest of San Francisco to remove a seriously ill seaman, who had been transferred from the merchant vessel Kirribilli to USS George.


1965

April-U.S. Coast Guardsmen evacuated over 3,000 stranded persons through the use of helicopters and small boats, when rain and melting snow in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa caused record floods along the Mississippi and Red Rivers. US Coast Guard helicopters have been used to rescue flood victims since 1946.


1977

The Coast Guard established a program to acquire a new short-range recovery helicopter. This led to the adoption of the HH-65A.


1980

April-May-A Coast Guard Air Detachment made up of helicopters was established at Key West, Florida, to aid in the rescue of refugees fleeing from Cuba. Over 115,000 Cubans transited the Straits of Florida.

4 October-The cruise ship Prinsendam was abandoned some 200 miles off the Coast of Alaska. Over 500 passengers and crew were rescued, most by helicopters flown by the U.S Coast Guard, U.S Air Force, and Canadian military. This was the most successful rescue of its type and was carried out at the extreme operational range of most of the aircraft involved.

1986

The Coast Guard's role in the interdiction of smuggling by air is established by the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. The legislation increased funding for the Coast Guard and authorized the loan, by the Navy, of two Grumman E2C Hawkeye aircraft. CGAW-1, Coast Guard Airborne Warning Squadron One, was established the following year at Norfolk.


1989

CGAW-1 moved to a new location at the Grumman facility located in St. Augustine, Florida. Two more E2C's were loaned to the Coast Guard by the Navy. One E2C, #3501, crashed during a landing at Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico and all four crewmen on board were killed. CGAW-1 was disbanded soon thereafter and the remaining E2Cs were returned to the Navy.


1994

On 6 May 1994 the Coast Guard retired the last HH-3F Pelican helicopter in Coast Guard service. This ended the Coast Guard's "amphibious era," as no aviation asset left in service was capable of making water landings.


2000

On 24 November 2000 the Coast Guard created an Aircraft Acquisition Projects Office (G-ACJ). The new office was assigned to oversee the acquisition of a Gulfstream C-37A executive aircraft to replace the Commandant's aging C-20B. The office was also tasked with acquiring Lockheed Martin C-130J and C-130-J-30 Super Hercules aircraft to replace the service's aging HC-130 fleet.