The 83-foot Coast Guard cutter USCG 1 off Omaha Beach on the morning of D-Day, tied up to an LCT and the Samuel Chase

When the Coast Guard switched all of its on-line servers to the DOD system, now many months ago, it was frankly a disaster for those of us who frequently look for Coast Guard history information on line. It resulted in a large number of broken links on my “Heritage” page, and loss of access to many documents. I have not purged the broken links because I hope the titles will reemerge. Of course this information is still out there, but its just no longer available on-line.

It appears they have been working to rebuild the site on the new servers. They seem to have done a lot in preparation for the upcoming 75th D-Day Anniversary. Unfortunately there are still huge holes in the on-line presence. The cutter section is particular thin, including only Active and the Coast Guard manned LCI(L)s that participated in the Normandy invasion, but it does appear they are laying the ground work for more complete information.

While the site is certainly not comprehensive yet, it is at least getting more interesting.

A recent addition is listed as a chronology, but it is really more of a “This Day in Coast Guard History.” Below is a sample.

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May 23

1928  CGC Haida and the USLHT Cedar rescued 312 passengers and crew from the sailing vessel Star of Falkland near Unimak Pass, Alaska after Star of Falkland had run aground in the fog the previous evening.  Both the cutter and the tender managed to save all but eight from the sailing vessel.  This rescue was one of the most successful in Coast Guard history and was also one of the few instances where the Coast Guard and one of its future integrated agencies worked together to perform a major rescue.

1930  Lieutenant Commander Elmer F. Stone received a medal from Congress for extraordinary achievement in making the first successful trans-Atlantic flight in 1919.  Stone was the pilot of the Navy’s NC-4.

1946  Commodore Edward M. Webster, USCG, headed the US Delegation to the International Meeting on Radio Aids to Marine Navigation, which was held in London, England.  As a result of this meeting, the principal maritime nations of the world agreed to make an intensive study of the World War II-developed devices of radar, LORAN, radar beacons, and other navigational aids with a view to adapt them to peacetime use.  This was the first time that the wartime technical secrets of radar and LORAN were generally disclosed to the public. [USCG Public Information Division News Release, 7 June 1946.]

1972  President Richard Nixon and the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, N. V. Podgorny, signed the “Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”  Under the agreement, the U.S. Coast Guard was the lead U.S. agency, in association with the EPA and MARAD, for the Task Group on Prevention and Cleanup of Pollution of the Marine Environment from Shipping.

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Meanwhile if you are looking for Coast Guard history, there may be more on-line information and certainly a huge number of photographs on the Naval History and Heritage web site. Here is a good example. Also Wikipedia can be a good source.