Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City
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Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City is a United States Coast Guard air station located at Elizabeth City, North Carolina, along the Albemarle Sound. It is one of the busiest air stations in the Coast Guard, operating missions as far away as Greenland, the Azores and the Caribbean. [1]
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[edit] Operations and Missions
Coast Guard Air Station (CGAS) Elizabeth City is an operational air station. It is one of several command units located on the Support Center Elizabeth City base.
In addition, the Support Center complex houses the Aviation Technical Training Center (ATTC) (a headquarters level command which trains enlisted Coast Guardsmen in aviation ratings in "A" Schools and advanced "C" Schools), the Aircraft Repair and Supply Center (AR&SC), and Station Elizabeth City. [2]
The missions of CGAS Elizabeth City include search and rescue (SAR), Maritime Law enforcement, International Ice Patrol, aids to navigation support (such as operating lighthouses), and marine environmental protection (such as responding to oil spills). [1]
Currently, CGAS Elizabeth City maintains and operates four C-130 Hercules aircraft and five HH-60 Jayhawk helicopters.
[edit] History
CGAS Elizabeth City was commissioned on August 15, 1940, with four officers, 52 enlisted men and ten aircraft including three Hall PH-2 seaplanes, four Fairchild J2K landplanes, and three Grumman J2F Duck amphibians. Located sixty miles north of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, north of Albemarle Sound and along the East Coast's northern most ice-free river, the old Holowell Plantation near Elizabeth City, North Carolina, was selected by the United States Coast Guard in 1938 for its potential strategic value as a seaplane base.
During World War II, the air station was under United States Navy control conducting Search and Rescue (SAR), anti-submarine and training missions. Since then the air station's missions and assigned aircraft have shifted and grown with changing national priorities and technologies. In 1966 Air Station Elizabeth City expanded after absorbing the air stations in Bermuda and Argentia, Newfoundland. [2]
Recently the station was the setting (and used as a double for Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak AK) in the Kevin Costner film, The Guardian.
[edit] Geographic location
CGAS Elizabeth City is located at . [3]
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ a b CGAS Elizabeth City Operations and Missions, http://www.uscg.mil/d5/airstation/ecity/missions.html
- ^ a b Air Station Elizabeth City, NC, History. United States Coast Guard web site. Retrieved on 2006-12-16.
- ^ CGAS Elizabeth City Info, http://www.uscg.mil/d5/airstation/ecity/info.html
