As the U. S. Coast Guard celebrates a centenary of aviation, it is fitting to take a look at how the process began. Stories about the beginnings of aviation in the service generally begin with Captain Benjamin Chiswell, U.S. Coast Guard, who in 1916 suggested to aviation pioneer Glenn Hammond Curtiss to convert a “surfboat into a flying boat.”[1] In his enthusiasm, Chiswell noted this would be the “biggest find for the Coast Guard of the century.” Although popular history gives Chiswell’s letter claim as the “germ” of Coast Guard aviation, other proposals came more than a year earlier.
Rescuing the Rich
The first proposal for aviation in the Coast Guard came from the era of conspicuous consumption and the philanthropic nature of the nation’s super wealthy. These private advocates believed aviation could be a formidable asset for “saving life and property” at sea. On 2 January 1915, Henry Woodhouse of the New York Aero Club of America wrote to Assistant Treasury Secretary Byron R. Newton offering the use of “one or two aeroplanes” to the U. S. Revenue Cutter Service. [2] Club members Edward Gould, Rodman Wannamaker, W. K. Vanderbilt, and William Vincent Astor represented the leaders, with Astor the primary benefactor.
Vincent Astor’s personal experience showed him the value of better and faster means of searching at sea. On 5 November 1909, he sailed on the family yacht, the Nourmahal, from Jamaica with his father John Jacob Astor; Herr von Galtenborn, Vincent’s personal tutor; and 45 crew. A rare, late season hurricane arose in the Greater Antilles where the yacht sailed. Although the Nourmahal carried a wireless telegraph and operator, the storm broke the system and contact with the yacht stopped. Astor’s private secretary in New York reported the yacht missing.
Ten days following loss of contact, Captain Worth G. Ross, U.S. Revenue Cutter Service, ordered three cutters to begin a search.[3] The Algonquin, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, already at sea, searched south of Puerto Rico. The Yamacraw sailed from Savannah, Georgia, and another unnamed cutter joined the search. The Treasury Department also sent wireless messages to commercial shipping to be on the lookout for the Nourmahal or any other vessel in distress. After widespread speculation in the national press about the fate and location of Nourmahal, news of her whereabouts came on 21 November. She had been in San Juan since 15 November riding out the storm, which cut communications from the Caribbean for two weeks.
There was a congressional reaction to the search. In January 1910, Georgia Congressman Thomas W. Hardwick offered a resolution calling for an investigation of the Revenue Cutter Service for providing rescue services for Astor. Hardwick claimed, and not wrongly, that Astor’s power and wealth afforded him special status and treatment. The newspapers were filled with articles about the Revenue Cutter Service sending cutters to search for Astor’s yacht alone, with no mentions of the searches for other unaccounted for vessels. The primary point of Hardwick’s resolution was to determine if the service was extending services to all in a fair and equal manner and not just to the wealthy and influential.
House Resolution 188.
Resolved. That the Secretary of the Treasury be requested, if not incompatible with the public interest, to Inform the House of Representatives what action, if any, was taken by the Treasury Department, through the Revenue-Cutter Service, in order to discover the whereabouts of the seagoing yacht of John J. Astor during the time the same was supposed to be lost during the latter part of the year 1909; also what expenditure, if any, was made by the Treasury Department on this account.
On 10 January 1910, Charles D. Hilles, acting Treasury Secretary, answered the query.[4] He admitted that the purpose of the search had been to find John J. Astor and the Nourmahal; however, he denied Astor’s prominent status had any effect on the decision to start the search. Hilles continued for 14 pages extolling the rescue work of the Revenue Cutter Service, the legal precedents, and similar cases. He wrote that there “was nothing unusual in the efforts of the Revenue Cutter Service to find the Nourmahal.”
Hilles’ letter did affect the future of the Coast Guard. The Revenue Cutter Service—and the Coast Guard after it—always sensitive to criticism, in particular from Congress, viewed the defensiveness of the Secretary’s remarks as foreshadowing a future loss of funding, prestige, and more tangible matters such as ships and men. Although favoritism and acquiescence toward political patrons played heavily in the service’s relationships with Congress, marine companies, and the public, the Revenue Cutter Service tried to avoid public notice of them.
Coast Guard Aerial Corps Bill
The 1909 incident killed any chance for the Revenue Cutter Service to receive aircraft from a powerful group of men regardless of their public ideals and philanthropy. Bryon R. Newton’s interest in the 1915 donation turned to favoring a legislated approach.
Virginia Representative Andrew Jackson Montague introduced a bill on 28 March 1916 “To Create the Coast Guard Aerial Corps.” It was appropriate for Montague to serve as the bill’s author as his congressional district included the area on the James River west of Captain Chiswell’s station and the early Curtiss-run Atlantic Coast Aeronautical Station at Newport News, Virginia. Curtiss trained naval pilots at the station and the Coast Guard observed the training. Coast Guard Captain Charles A. McAllister, chief engineer of the U.S. Coast Guard in Washington, D.C., authored the bill.
H. R. 13830, “To Create a Coast Guard Aerial Corps,” provided:
Section 1. That for the purpose of saving life and property at sea contiguous to the coasts of the United States, and for the national defense, there is hereby created the Coast Guard Aerial Corps, to be operated as a component part of and by the personnel of the United States Coast Guard.
Section 2. That for the purposes of this Act the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized to establish stations, in connection with existing Coast Guard stations, at such points on the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Pacific coasts as he may deem advisable to maintain an efficient aerial patrol of the entire coastline. He is further authorized to equip such stations with such numbers and types of aircraft as he may deem necessary for the purpose.
Section 3. That in order to provide the operating force, the numbers of officers authorized in the existing grades of second and third lieutenants and second and third lieutenants of engineers in the Coast Guard are hereby increased fifteen in each of said grades; an officer in these grades may be assigned to aviation duty who may qualify to the satisfaction of the captain commandant for those duties. A grade of warrant officers in the Coast Guard, to be known as aeronautic machinists, is hereby authorized; it shall consist of sixty expert machinists, who shall have the same status as other warrant officers. Commissioned officers serving with the Aerial Corps shall be entitled to and be paid 25 per centum additional pay to that which they would otherwise be paid on ordinary Coast
Guard duty; aeronautic machinists of the grade of warrant officers shall receive 25 per centum additional pay to that which they would otherwise be paid as machinists in the Coast Guard.
Section 4. That at one of the Coast Guard stations, to be selected on account of its adaptability for the purpose of special instruction in aeronautics, the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized to employ one expert instructor in aeronautics, at a salary of $4,000 per annum, and one assistant instructor, also skilled in aeronautics, at a salary of $3,000 per annum.
Section 5. That to carry out the purposes of this Act, there is hereby appropriated for the purchase or construction of aircraft, alterations and additions to existing stations, to provide suitable accommodations for the machines and men employed, for not more than three repair stations, and for travel and other incidental expenses necessary for the formation and establishment of the Aerial Corps, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of $300,000, to remain available for a period of two years from the date of passage of this Act.
As the title of the bill indicated, the purpose was to create a separate entity within the Coast Guard to operate in addition to the separate corps received from the former U.S. Life Serving Service. The supporters used lifesaving as a rationale to promote the concept of Coast Guard aviation. This idea implied no military function because that would have been a competitive challenge to the Army and Navy. On 1 May 1916, hedging future sales and believing the Coast Guard aviation bill may pass, Glenn H. Curtiss delivered a Model H-7 Super America for Coast Guard use at Newport News, Virginia. This was the first Coast Guard manned aircraft equipped with a wireless radio for reporting derelicts and ships in distress.[5]
Competition for Funding
However, the bill faced tremendous competition from the Army, the Navy, a faction wanting to create a federal Department of Aviation, private committees and commissions seeking to establish coastal patrols (supported by retired Rear Admiral Richard Byrd), and a fledgling airmail service. Obstructionists in Congress followed the conservative Navy’s stance, which advocated for major ships and more guns. In 1916, the Army’s aviation corps consisted of 12 aircraft with a cut in appropriations to $300,000; the Navy faced aviation elimination because Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels did not believe the Navy needed aircraft and stalled that appropriation. Although there was a need for 2,000 aircraft for national defense, Congress offered 200.
Montague’s bill went nowhere. Byron R. Newton, who served on the Central Committee for the National Aerial Coast Patrol Commission, believed the bill was flawed. His position on the committee included advocating for a competing aviation service, and everyone wanted the first slice.
Although Newton had no technical aeronautical expertise, he had enthusiastically supported aviation since his job as a reporter for the New York Herald where he witnessed the first flights of the Wright Brothers. His gave his redraft of H. R. 13830 to Senator Joseph E. Ransdell, Louisiana, for the first submission (S. 5971) on 11 May 1916; Montague submitted the revised bill (H. R. 15736) on 17 May 1916.[6]
The changes included a definite number of ten aviation stations placed at strategic locations on the “Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Pacific coasts.” Newton also sought the same Navy aviation pay and allowances for the Coast Guard. Added for the stations were a final number of 40 warrant officers and enlisted men to care for the 20 aircraft. Unlike Montague’s bill, which provided for a separate aviation section and federal funding, this second bill offered only permission for future aviation in the Coast Guard and provided no funding.
The Newton redraft became Amendment No. 170 in the Naval Appropriation Act for the Fiscal Year 1917.[7] In 1918, Captain-Commandant E. P. Bertholf testified that Army and Navy aircraft could be used for humanitarian work but this would depend upon the willingness of the individual station commanders. The amendment and Bertholf’s testimony proved toothless and stifled any aviation growth in the Coast Guard. During a 1920 congressional hearing, Captain William E. Reynolds kept the funding requests modest, asking for small plots of land next to water.
After the lifesaving-station scheme, he took the recommendations of Captain Stanley Parker and contemplated the exclusive use of hydroplanes. Land-based aircraft would require more physical space and were unsuited to the Coast Guard’s primary mission of saving lives and property at sea. In 1921, the Navy loaned six aircraft to the Coast Guard for use at the lone aviation station in Morehead City, North Carolina. Otherwise, progress halted until the first appropriation in 1926. In the budget process for that fiscal year, the Coast Guard sought increased funding for its work in prohibition enforcement. It received $150,000, or about half of that proposed in 1916, for ten aircraft—again about half.[8] The same bill authorized $340,000 “to purchase training planes to furnish aviation training for 409 graduates of the Naval Academy who will finish their academy course in June [1926].”
Loss of Momentum
What began as a philanthropic exercise ended in a failure; the Coast Guard was unable to convince Congress that aviation would be beneficial to the nation. The service also failed to understand how loud the competing factions would prove to be in the debate and how detrimental to its project. Although the Coast Guard’s senior leadership subscribed to new forms of technology, they did not develop alternative concepts and plans for aircraft use. Still looking at its popular lifesaving corps, the Coast Guard pinned its hopes on its humanitarian mission and continued to fail in developing support among Congress and the public.
Humanitarianism did not win out. It was the advent of Prohibition that ended the drought with a small shower of funding. The law enforcement mission added a temporary reason and rationale for Coast Guard aviation. The funding was sparse, however, and the Coast Guard eventually lost aviation momentum into the mid-1930s, when it had to start again in preparation for war work.
The Coast Guard learned from its funding struggle in 1916 to keep its desires and wants small to succeed. It also learned not to tread on the larger aviation programs of the Army and Navy. It settled for a limited, nonmilitary humanitarian role for its aviation program, where it remains in the present day.
Master Chief Wells is a long-time researcher and author of U.S. Coast Guard and Revenue Cutter Service history.
[1] Benjamin Chiswell to F. A. Hunnewell [USCG constructor at Baltimore, MD]. April 18, 1916. Chiswell misspells his name as “Hunniwell” in the letter. Hunnewell was skeptical of Chiswell’s plan. U. S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office, Washington, DC.
[2] National Archives, Records of the U. S. Coast Guard, Record Group 26, Entry 283, General Correspondence, File 64, War, 1915. Henry Woodhouse to Assistant Treasury Secretary Byron R. Newton.
[3] “Hunt on for Astor Yacht,” The Washington Post, 18 November 1909, 1.
[4] “Use of Revenue-Cutter Service in Locating Yacht of John J. Astor,” Letter from the Acting Secretary of the Treasury, 17 January 1910, House of Representative, Document No. 549, 16st Congress, 2nd Session.
[5] “Giant Curtiss Flying Boat Tested,” Aerial Age, 1 May 1916, 2017.
[6] Joseph E. Ransdell, S. 5971, “To provide for aviation in the Coast Guard.” May 11, 1916. Andrew Jackson Montague, H. R. 15736, “To provide for aviation in the Coast Guard.” May 17, 1916.
[7] Public No. 241 [HR 15947] “An Act Making appropriations for the naval service for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1917, and for other purposes.”
[8] “First Deficiency Appropriation Bill, Fiscal Year 1926.” House of Representatives, Report No. 175, 69th Congress, 1st Session, 1 February 1926. (To accompany H. R. 8722).