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What's New on the Historian's Office Website?
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We've added the recording LT Jack Rittichier made shortly before his
death in combat about the rescues he carried out while stationed with
the Air Force's rescue service in Vietnam. We've also added the
videotaped oral histories of some of the heroes of the Coast Guard's
response to Hurricane Katrina, including
CWO
Lewald who commanded CGC Pamlico.
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We recently received, courtesy of HMC James T. Flynn, Jr., USNR (Ret.),
the historian of the Coast Guard Tug Association, scanned photos of some
of the myriad of patrol craft that served on the arduous Greenland
Patrol in World War II. We've added those photos to the cutter
histories of each: Aklak,
Alatok,
Amarok,
Arluk,
Arvek,
Atak,
EM Reed,
EM Messick,
EM Northumberland,
Kodiak,
Nogak, &
Tampa! Thanks Jim!
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"Cosmic Air":
a pictorial history of the Coast Guard's efforts to
resupply the far-flung chain of LORAN stations in the Pacific via Coast
Guard aircraft.
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We've updated the historical information and added photography to the
histories of the first tender named
Acacia -- the only
U.S. buoy-lighthouse tender ever lost to enemy action; her follow-on, the 180-foot WLB
Acacia
-- now a museum ship on the Great Lakes; & we've also added
information on the dangerous 1971 "Deep Freeze" deployment of the
icebreaker Staten
Island provided by a crewman who took part in the
expedition.
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"Chicago's Christmas Ship": an article by Ms. Debbie Allyn Jett about the
CGC Mackinaw's historic role as the Windy City's "Christmas Ship".
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A biography of Lieutenant Robert H. Prause, Executive Officer of the
lost cutter Escanaba, who developed the famous "Retriever" method of rescuing
survivors from freezing water which was first used during the famous
rescue of the survivors of the torpedoed troop transport Dorchester
off Iceland during World War II.
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We've added photography to the
Westwind's official history.
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The Atlantic Area Historian Dr. William Thiesen submitted a number of biographies, including
the first Hispanic-American graduate of the Coast Guard Academy Paul
Powers Perez (Class of 1945); World War II hero and Hispanic-American
Coast Guardsman Joseph Tezanos
who served aboard USS LST-20 and the Joseph Dickman, and
Captain Henry Hemingway
who
commanded the cutter Snohomish during the Gold Lifesaving Medal rescue
of the crew of a sinking merchant ship in 1923.
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SPAR Lillian
Vasilas' oral history: in it she describes her career in the
Coast Guard during World War II, including basic training at West
Palm Beach, service as a driver and then as a radio
operator in the Washington, D.C. area
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Seaman 2/c John Cullen's
oral history: Cullen was the Coast Guardsman on beach
patrol on Long Island when he came across a team of Nazi
saboteurs who had just landed from a U-boat. Read about what
happened next in this historic encounter far from the conflict in
Europe!
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We've added
a
new research guide that list archives, libraries, museums,
etc. around the country that have research materials
on or related to Coast Guard History.