Chief Aviation Pilot Henry Clark White, Coast Guard Aviator No. 115, could be forgiven if he felt he was flying yet one more boring afternoon flying patrol over the Gulf of Mexico, 1 August 1942. But this flight would turn out to be no ordinary mission for him, or for the Coast Guard. By mid-summer in 1942, Coast Guard aviators had flown more than 6,000 patrols, cruising almost 2.5 million square miles, over nearly 18 million square miles of seas and oceans, during the first year after America's entry into the Second World War.

CG MADE 42 ATTACKS

For in all those millions of miles over flown since Pearl Harbor, there had been 42 separate times when Coast Guard aircraft made bombing attacks "against enemy subs actually sighted or whose probable position [was] developed and determined by various methods of contact," according to a report written that summer. No German submarine had yet been sunk by Coast Guard aircraft, nor had there been so much as confirmation of any real damage to one.

About 100 miles south of the air base at Houma, La., White and his sole crewman, RM 1/c George Henderson Boggs, Jr., flew through a layer of scattered clouds at 1,500 feet. Through the open windows of their twin-engine Grumman J4F-1 Widgeon utility amphibian, the V-212, they could see about 10 miles across the hazy gulf sea. Boggs kept alert on the radio because reports had been arriving with increasing frequency during the last days of July that a German submarine had slipped through the Florida Straits and into the gulf, ready to continue the mayhem being felt by maritime traffic all along the eastern seaboard.

White lolled the Widgeon over the passes of the Mississippi River, near the buoy marking a sunken United Fruit ship, and headed off toward the northeast on his assigned patrol route. Moments later he spotted the U-boat. There it sat, all 252-feet of it, pointed toward the west. Through heavy static from other, more powerful radios crowding the airwaves, Boggs immediately sent an SSS message, indicating that a sub had been sighted, and that a sub had been sighted, and that the Widgeon was moving in for the attack.

White started to loop the Widgeon behind the sub, positioning for an attack from the stern with the lone depth charge attached to a wing of the aircraft. But immediately it became obvious that as soon as White and Boggs had seen the sub, the sub had seen them, and the grey war machine began to slide underwater in a crash dive. White and Boggs had stumbled upon the U-166, at Type IXC U-boat launched in Germany only nine months earlier.

ONE SHOT SCORES A DIRECT HIT ON U-BOAT

The Widgeon banked sharply to starboard and from a half mile away began to glide towards the sub. White watched the sub going under fast and pushed his amphibian into a 45-degree dive, aware that he had one shot and one shot only. At an altitude of 250 feet, White released his single depth charge.

"The submarine was visible during the entire approach," White later wrote, "being just under the water but still clearly visible when the bomb was released." Boggs stuck his head out of the window and watched the depth charge fall into the Gulf waters, its fuse set to explode 25 feet below the surface. Boggs watched as the charge plowed into the starboard side of the submarine and exploded.

White pulled out of his dive and circled around. Boggs radioed the sub's last position, and soon two Army observation planes were on the scene looking for surface debris. After the Widgeon's relief had arrived, they headed back to the air base to discover they had scored a direct hit on the U-166. The submarine had been sent directly to the bottom.

As the only submarine sunk by Coast Guard aircraft during World War II, the successful attack earned White the Distinguished Flying Cross, while Boggs was awarded the Air Medal for his participation.

RETIRING THE V-212 AFTER THE WAR

As for the Grumman Widgeons, their role in World war II was soon forgotten. Sold off as war surplus, a later generation would know these durable war-tested maritime aircraft as merely "da plane" that carried souls to Fantasy Island. One of the Widgeons that survived the war was White's own V-212. It passed through several different owners before making its final flight to the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Fla., about 10 years ago. It was given a fresh coat of paint, Coast Guard World War II colors, and put on display, not far from where it made its greatest contribution to the freedom of the seas.