As the nation grappled with the Great Depression in the 1930s, the Coast Guard struggled with now-familiar tight budgets and operated a mix of aircraft in very small numbers. For $8,000, which was not a small sum, the service purchased a single Consolidated N4Y-1, or Model 21-A open-cockpit biplane trainer and used it mostly as a “hack,” or taxi, from 1932 to 1941. It was similar in appearance to the Stearman N2S-3, a version of the Army’s PT-17 primary trainer, and the Coast Guard picked up 11 of those for training and courier duties. Also similar in appearance, and acquired because of good experience with the earlier OU-1 and OU-4, was the Vought O2U-2 Corsair, a stately biplane deemed ideal for coastal survey duties.

Coast Guardsmen take tremendous pride at having flown aircraft as large as the Catalina, the bigger Consolidated P4Y-2G Privateer, a naval version of the B-24 Liberator bomber and, in later years, the HC-130J Hercules.

Also during the 1930s, a high-wing Stinson RQ-1 Reliant cabin monoplane pulled light transport liaison duty.

Other land- and sea-based aircraft continued to save lives, patrol coastlines, and enforce laws as Coast Guardsmen lived rugged and uncomfortable lives and the nation coped with the great downturn that preceded history’s greatest war.

During the 1930s, aircraft were deployed aboard cutters for the first time. Each 327-foot cutter embarked a Grumman JF-2 or Curtiss SOC-4 biplane amphibian to assist with opium smuggling patrols off the West Coast, fishery patrols in Alaskan waters, and a standby for SAR missions.

It was a decade when several new air stations were opened. On Jan. 22, 1936, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia announced that the city of New York had executed a 50-year lease to the Coast Guard to occupy almost 10 acres on Jamaica Bay. On April 23, 1938, the Coast Guard Air Station (AirSta) Floyd Bennett Field, also called AirSta Brooklyn, was established. It had a long and distinguished life as home for fixed-wing and later rotary-wing aircraft until decommissioned in May 1998.

The Coast Guard invested in two generations of Hall biplane amphibians and one of these, a PH-3, was among aircraft destroyed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

 

World at war

In World War II, the service expanded from 17,000 personnel at the outbreak to a peak of more than 175,000. Coast Guardsmen operated an air arm that guarded American shores, pioneered the development of helicopters, and expanded SAR to reach thousands who needed it.

The war did not absolve the Coast Guard of its mission of non-combat rescue. In November 1942, Lt. John A. Pritchard and Radioman Benjamin A. Bottoms rescued two members of a crashed B-17 Flying Fortress bomber in Greenland, but lost their lives in an attempt to rescue a third member of the downed aircraft. By chance, that was the same year the Coast Guard participated in the establishment of the first air-sea rescue unit at San Diego, California, beginning a long history of military components dedicated solely to helping others to live.

As part of its World War II saga (during which time it reported to the Navy), the Coast Guard operated what was, for many years, its only flying squadron. Patrol Squadron Six (VP-6) was established Oct. 5, 1943, at Argentia, Newfoundland, under Cmdr. Donald MacDiarmid with six PBY-5A Catalina amphibians. The squadron was redesignated Patrol Bomber Squadron Six (VPB-6) in October 1944 and operated in Greenland. When it was disestablished in January 1946, for decades later, it was the only flying squadron the Coast Guard had ever operated.