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,…