CG Air Station Kodiak Alaska Patch

Coast Guard aviation came to Kodiak in April 1947 as an air detachment of seven pilots, 30 enlisted men and one PBY Catalina, the first permanent Coast Guard air unit in Alaska. From that start grew Air Station Kodiak, the largest command in the Seventeenth Coast Guard District and in the whole Pacific Area. Its crews cover roughly four million square miles of water. That takes in the Gulf of Alaska, Bristol Bay, the Bering Sea and the Pacific coast of the state. Few rescue units anywhere fly over colder or rougher water.

The Navy started building a naval air station on Kodiak Island in September 1939 and commissioned it on June 15, 1941, and PBY Catalinas flew from it early in World War II. The station became Naval Station Kodiak in October 1950, and in 1972 the Navy turned the site over to the Coast Guard. Since then Kodiak has been one of the Coast Guard's main bases in Alaska. Air Station Kodiak flies the HC-130 Hercules for long-range search, MH-60 Jayhawk helicopters for heavy offshore rescue and MH-65 Dolphin helicopters that also deploy aboard cutters. The work is fishing vessels taking on water, medevacs from remote villages and searches that run hundreds of miles from the nearest runway.

The patch is a shield 4.25 inches wide and 4.5 inches tall with a cut edge that follows its outline. A light blue banner across the top reads COAST GUARD AIR STATION in red, and the dark blue canton below it carries SEARCH & RESCUE in white. Eight white stars sit in the pattern of the Big Dipper and the North Star from the Alaska state flag. A Kodiak brown bear stands up on its hind legs in the middle, mouth open, over red and white stripes, gripping a blue scroll that reads KODIAK ALASKA. It has an iron-on backing and can also be sewn on.

Air Station Kodiak crews fly into weather that would keep most aircraft on the ground, because the call usually comes from a boat that cannot wait for it to clear. Commercial fishermen in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska know the sound of a Jayhawk or a C-130 overhead better than most. The flight crews, rescue swimmers and maintainers who keep those aircraft flying in that climate earn their reputation on every launch. A tour at Kodiak is one that Coast Guard aviators talk about for the rest of their careers.

Put it in a shadow box with your aircrew wings and a photo of the hangar, or on the jacket you wear to a Coast Guard reunion. It also makes a good gift for a rescue swimmer, a pilot or a crewman who served a tour on Kodiak Island. A bear, the Dipper and the North Star, all of it Alaska.