USCG Aviation At 100 (Depending how you count it)
While the Wright Brothers had huge, often-unsung help for their first powered flight in December 1903 from the nearby U.S. Life-Saving Station at Kill Devil Hills, it took time for the service’s descendant, the U.S. Coast Guard, to get full-time airpower of its own.
Just as the Wright Bros.’ flying machine lifted off, one of the witnesses pressed a rubber bulb attached to a box camera, capturing for posterity the miracle that occurred near Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. The man who took this photograph, probably the most famous aviation photograph in history, was Surfman John T. Daniels of the U.S. Life-Saving Service.
Some 100 years ago this month, the Coast Guard purchased three Loening OL-5 amphibians in October 1926, soon after Congress appropriated $152,000 to establish a permanent aviation detachment for the Coast Guard during that trying time of Prohibition and the service’s involvement in the offshore “Rum War.”
These three amphibians, USCG Nos. 1, 2, and 3, along with two Chance-Vought UO-4s (Nos. 4 and 5), were the Coast Guard’s first wholly-owned aircraft, and their purchase marks the true “beginning” of Coast Guard aviation. They operated these types from Gloucester, Massachusetts, on Ten Pound Island and Cape May, the latter the first permanent CGAS establishment Congress authorized.
Loening OL-5, “The first airplane constructed for the U.S. Coast Guard Air Service. Loening amphibian model OL-5 No. 1, delivered Oct. 1926 – autographed at the bottom of original photograph reads: ‘To Secretary Mellon with best regards, Mr. Grover Loening.” October, 1926; Photo Number 10-30-26 (n)., along with “Machine gun and rung mount ready for action – showing magazine and shell catcher in place. Gloucester, Mass.”; 8 March 1929; Photo Number 3-8-29 (14).
USCG Loening OL-5 No. 1, waterborne take-off
Before then, the Coast Guard had borrowed surplus Navy aircraft: four Curtiss HS-2L flying boats and two Aeromarine 40Fs operated from Morehead City, North Carolina, circa 1920-21, and a single UO-1 from Ten Pound Island from 1925-26.
Yes, USCG Aviator No. 1, 3d Lieutenant Elmer F. Stone, had been minted at Pensacola as Naval Aviator No. 38 in 1916, operated an all-USCG aviation detachment from the armored cruiser USS Huntington during the War, and had flown one of the four Navy NC-4 Curtiss seaplanes across the Atlantic in 1919, but he and the service’s six other Great War-era aviators and assorted aircrews were assigned to Naval air stations in this country and abroad, flying Navy planes. For instance, CG Aviator No. 2, 1LT Charles E. Sugden, commanded the Naval Air Station at Ille Tudy, France, and earned the French Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Another, 2LT Philip B. Eaton (CG Aviator No. 6) commanded Chatham Naval Air Station and piloted one of two R-9 seaplanes that attempted to bomb and machine-gun SM U-156, a surfaced U-boat off Nauset Beach in July 1918.
The service continued to fly its OL-5s as late as the mid-1930s, by which time other, more modern types had replaced them.
Just 15 short years later, by 1941, the service had over 90 minted aviators, a mixture of 51 aircraft on hand of six types (Curtiss SOC-4, Douglas RD4, Fairchild J2K, Grumman JF-2, and PH-2/3 Hall flying boats) along with dozens of new (and armed) Catalina PBY-5s, OS2U Kingfishers, and Grumman JRF2/3/5Gs inbound, and nine established CG Air Stations (Port Angeles, Washington; San Francisco, California; San Diego, California; Biloxi, Mississippi; St. Petersburg, Florida; Miami, Florida; Elizabeth City, North Carolina; Brooklyn, New York; and Salem, Massachusetts) around the country.
Still, you have to give it up to the humble OL-5, the USCG’s first dedicated air asset
Early Flight by Dante Bertoni, CGAP. An OL-5 amphibian airplane flies over St. Joseph North Pier Lights at Lake Michigan, 1926-1935.