Photo: A Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter with a special yellow paint scheme lands at Coast Guard Air Station Astoria, Ore., Jan. 15, 2016. (Coast Guard/Jonathan Klingenberg)
DefenseMediaNetwork has published an excellent article commemorating the Coast Guard Aviation history in honor of its Centennial. I’ve looked around a bit, and I have not found a better one.
Chuck Hill's CG Blog 
The article is fine. However, like all others on the topic the discussions and battles of the early legislation are left out. The discussions are interesting because they set the tone for CG Aviation that did not get an appropriation until 1928. The Coast Guard was very ambitious in its plans for aviation. However, it failed to curry favor with the Army and Navy to expand as it should. Both of the others services feared the Coast Guard would compete for “military” missions which would cut into their budgets.
The compromise was that the Coast Guard set its aviation to be for humanitarian purposes only. It would have no military mission and this continues to the present. Having only life-saving functions allowed Coast Guard Aviation to become the direct descendant to the U. S. Life-Saving Service that had no military mission either.
CG Aviation is modeled on the U. S. Life Saving Service. It has its own stations, and virtually its own rules and regulations that are apart from the seagoing Coast Guard. The USLSS wasn’t seagoing either.
I wish that someone would take the time to put together a comprehensive history. I realize some books have been written but these, like all Coast Guard History, copy previous books without attempting any original research. All history is not valor, heroism, and glamor. There is also the other side that had as large an impact on the Service and the branch.