U-BOAT RESCUE

U.S. Coast Guard PH-2 seaplane bottom left with Navy airship overhead

Carrying survivor ashore from PH-2

Photos: US Navy, US Coast Guard

PH-2 flying boat

The U.S. Coast Guard is, at its core, a humanitarian service and on July 9, 1942, the crew of a Coast Guard PH-2 flying boat rescued seven survivors of a sunken German U-boat off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

They had been adrift for two days when they were spotted by a U.S. Navy blimp.

Aboard the Coast Guard seaplane "we were given water and coffee," said Kapitänleutnant Horst Degen, commander of U-701. "We were delivered to the Navy Hospital at Norfolk where we were treated with the greatest care and attention and made into human beings once more."

A U.S. Army bomber had destroyed the U-boat on July 7, killing most of its crew. Survivors provided "incoherent accounts of the sinking," according to a U.S. Navy report, though a torpedoman recalled  "the main lighting failed, but the emergency lights were still on."

The website World War II Today said: "U-701 had made the most successful mine laying operation in US waters during the war. U-701 laid 15 mines off the entrance to Chesapeake Bay on 12th June 1942. The resulting minefield sank two ships and seriously damaged three others."

It also torpedoed the oil tanker William Rockefeller that June and sank a Navy patrol boat during a gun battle, according to the website.

The Coast Guard's PH-2 flying boat was a twin-engine biplane manufactured by the Hall Aluminum Aircraft Corporation in the 1930s.

MISSISSIPPI RIVER - 1927

Flood victims atop railcar

U.S. Coast Guard Relief Fleet

The U.S. Coast Guard performed valiantly during the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927, considered the most destructive river flood in American history.

Coast Guardsmen rescued 43,000 people and 11,000 head of livestock from waters that covered 27,000 square miles across state lines with depths up to 30 feet, according to Wikipedia.

The relief fleet consisted of 674 Coast Guardsmen and 128 vessels.

Parts of Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana were inundated, with the water beaching the banks at Vicksburg running 80 miles wide, according to Time magazine.

An Associated Press dispatch in The New York Times said: "From Cairo to the sea, the most menacing flood in recent years was sweeping down the Mississippi River and its tributaries tonight, urged on by continuous rainfalls throughout the basin." 

At least 500 people died during the months-long flooding, which led to the federal Flood Control Act of 1928 and construction of the world's longest system of levees.

More than 600,000 people were directly affected by the disaster.

Future President Herbert Hoover directed overall relief efforts.

A decade later, the Coast Guard was again pressed into flood duty when waters careened through the Ohio River Valley in 1937 - leaving at least 1 million people homeless and claiming at least 300 lives.

Path of flooding

COALING A CUTTER

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard

Coal was the primary fuel for ships during the 19th Century and early 2oth Century when muscles, steam and shovels ruled the high seas.

Loading coal was tedious and filthy, with crews sweating - and no doubt swearing - for hours to fill a cutter's fuel bunkers. Once a cutter was underway, coal was shoveled and shifted again and again toward the bunkers nearest the boilers.

Boiler stokers and firemen were known in the maritime world as the "black gang" because of the soot that covered their skin and clothes.

Bituminous coal was preferred by many commanders because it "had quick-firing quality and burned hotter, generating faster speeds," according to the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command, though anthracite burned cleaner.

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard
Coaling the cutter Bear on the Baring Sea Patrol in Alaska. 

Illustration of coaling from a collier.

Some liked it hot. Or were encouraged to do so.