This book offers a complete history of the pioneers, planes, and services of U.S. Coast Guard aviation. It covers seven decades of aircraft development, from the early stick and wire seaplanes to today's E2C Hawkeyes, and recounts the human drama of aviators risking their lives in dangerous trial-and-error flight testing, search-and-rescue missions, wartime enemy surveillance, and law enforcement.
Building on the highly successful A History of U.S. Coast Guard Aviation, this book details all aircraft used since the Coast Guard introduced its air arm in 1916.
About the Author: Barrett Thomas “Tom” Beard entered the Navy as an enlisted man in 1953 and completed flight training as a Navcad in 1955. With a commission in the U.S. Naval Reserve, he flew operational missions—including carrier landings—in A-l Skyraiders and E-l Tracers. He qualified in more than a dozen other types of Navy aircraft, including F-9 Cougars. He served two tours as flight instructor in his ten years with the Navy. In 1965, following his return from a Vietnam tour at Yankee Station, Mr. Beard entered the Coast Guard. He flew in SAR operations in the HU-16E Albatross, the C-130 Hercules, and the HH-52A Seaguard. He qualified as a seaplane pilot, a shipboard helicopters pilot, and a Coast Guard standardization pilot, accumulating more than 6,000 military flight hours during his career. Mr. Beard holds an FAA airline transport pilot rating and a commercial helicopter rating, plus a Coast Guard master’s license for inspected vessels. After retiring in 1975, Mr. Beard returned to college, earning a master’s degree in history from Western Washington University in Bellingham. Following employment as a museum director, he turned back to the sea, in sailboats. Over the past twenty years, he and his wife, Carolyn, have sailed nearly 150,000 miles and visited about fifty countries as they’ve circled the world one and a half times. Mr. Beard takes vacations from these voyages to return home to research and write articles in his field of maritime history.
A thirty-foot yacht, adrift well out to sea, sends, "MAYDAY! MAYDAY! Please respond to our plea!" Hearing this call for help, the United States Coast Guard leaps into action. A team of four highly trained rescue specialists head out in an H-60 Jayhawk helicopter. Battling fierce conditions, the Coast Guard team finally locates the disabled boat, rescues the crew, treats injured passengers, and carries them back to safety. Complemented by dramatic, striking illustrations, Chris L. Demarest's text brings into vivid focus one of the many important jobs performed by the U.S. Coast Guard. A detailed author's note provides additional information about the search-and-rescue process, making this a terrific book for any school or home library.
Exciting rescue stories on the high seas! The Coast Guard’s rescue personnel are second to none, and Coast Guard air and sea rescue missions have been the subjects of celebrated newspaper accounts, books, and movies, including The Perfect Storm. The Coast Guard is one of the nation's five military services, which exist to defend and preserve the United States. In The Greatest Coast Guard Rescue Stories Ever Told, the editor has pulled together some of the finest writings about air and sea rescues that capture readers imaginations, culled from books, magazines, and elsewhere. It is an unforgettable collection, and includes stories by Kathryn Miles, Eric Hartlep, Gerald Hoover, Martha Laguardia-Kotite, Geoffrey D. Reynolds, Kalee Thompson, H. Paul Jeffers, and many others.
Rescues from the Sky features the true stories of the US Coast Guard Aviation Medical Rescue Service as seen through the eyes of a wet-behind-the-ears flight surgeon fresh out of training. The events it recounts took place during the author's experience while stationed at US Coast Guard Air Station San Francisco from 1971 to 1973. The rescues are described in detail and include, among others: - The crash of a 747 on the runway on the author's first day of work - The hijacking of a 737 by two Bulgarians - The rescue of a woman bleeding from an abortion performed on a Russian submarine - Saving the life of a sailboat owner in Half Moon Bay who had a heart attack and fell unconscious while sailing in thirty-mile-per-hour winds toward a rocky shore - Rescuing a Czech crewman who developed appendicitis fifty miles at sea in a storm with fifty-five mile-per-hour winds Intersecting the dramatic rescues is a love story between the author and a young nurse and how their medical careers get in the way of their growing need to be together. The book also traces the author's training that led to his becoming a flight surgeon prior to his tour of duty. Though written under a pseudonym for personal reasons, this is a work of non-fiction that has been approved by the Motion Picture and Television Office of the United States Coast Guard. Several of the incidents recounted are also well documented in newspapers from the era. This book is ideal for anyone who likes adventure, excitement, humor, emergency medicine, aviation adventure, a tender love story, or all of the above....
Soon after 2:00 a.m. on Easter morning 2008, the fishing trawler Alaska Ranger began taking on water in the middle of the frigid Bering Sea. While the first mate broadcast Mayday calls to a remote Coast Guard station more than eight hundred miles away, the men on the ship’s icy deck scrambled to inflate life rafts and activate beacon lights. By 4:30 a.m., most of the forty-seven crew members were in the water. Many knew that if they weren’t rescued soon, they would drown or freeze to death. Two Coast Guard helicopter rescue teams were woken up in the middle of the night to save the crew of the Alaska Ranger. Many of the men thought the mission would be routine. They were wrong. The helicopter teams battled snow squalls, enormous swells, and gale-force winds as they tried to fulfill one guiding principle: save as many as possible. Deadliest Sea is a daring and mesmerizing adventure tale that chronicles the power of nature against man. Veteran journalist Kalee Thompson recounts the harrowing stories of both the rescuers and the rescued while paying tribute to the courage, tenacity, and skill of the dedicated people who risk their lives for the lives of others.
Indicting U.S. Coast Guard small boat rescue policy and those who fail or refuse to change it, Noble (a former member of the Coast Guard) narrates a 1997 rescue operation which resulted in the death of three members of the rescue team. Noble himself was present at the rescue station on the night of the operation. He relies on his own observations and the words of a number of other officers involved in the case, who collectively suggest that overwork and other easily addressable problems led to the fatalities. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.
