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PBY Catalina Elizabeth City Model

$299.00

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Description

PBY Catalina Elizabeth City Model

Fly from Coast Guard Station Elizabeth City again in this handcrafted PBY Catalina model. Each piece is carved from wood and handpainted to provide a piece you’ll love. 18 inches.

The first PBY obtained by the Coast Guard, V189, was purchased from the Navy in the spring of 1941. It was specially outfitted at Air Station San Francisco with a nine-lens-camera for mapping coastal regions around the country. While the arrangement worked well in the lower 48, after two mapping trips to Alaska the camera was transferred to a newer PBY-5A (PBY BuNo 08055), an amphibian, making it more versatile in the extreme environment of Alaska. The detachment operated out of NAS Kodiak.

Because of the Navy’s great need for PBY patrol aircraft in the North Atlantic and the Pacific it would be early 1943 before the Coast Guard acquired them in significant numbers.

In 1943 Construction of the Pacific LORAN chains began. Coast Guard PBY aircraft, V189, reported for duty, having been assigned by Headquarters to transport personnel, mail, supplies, and materials, to the various sites to expedite the construction. Flight surveys of the sites for the Loran stations were made. These inspections provided a good grasp of the problems involved in the landing of materials and the construction of the stations. Construction of the Loran chains began in Alaska and the construction of additional chains followed the battles across the Pacific to Japan. V-189 was permanently assigned to this Top Secret project.

On 5 October 1943 an all Coast Guard Patrol Squadron, VP-6 CG, home based at Narsarssuak, Greenland, code name Bluie West 1, became operational. Thirty officers and 145 enlisted men were assigned to the squadron. In the hostile environment of the North Atlantic VP-6 provided anti-submarine patrol, air support for convoys, search and rescue, intelligence survey flights, as well as mail and medical supply delivery. https://cgaviationhistory.org/aircraft_/consolidated-pby-5a-6a-catalina/

In December of 1943 the Navy established its’ first Air Sea Rescue Squadron at Air Station San Diego. An all Coast Guard unit, it led to the Coast Guards heavy involvement in Air-Sea Rescue. Starting in 1944 the Coast Guard had the Search and Rescue responsibility for the Continental Sea Frontiers. By the end of 1944 there were 114 PBY-5A/6As in Coast Guard service.

United States Coast Guard Air Station is co-located at Elizabeth City Regional Airport in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, along the Pasquotank River near the opening of the Albemarle Sound. It is the largest [1] and busiest Coast Guard air station in the U.S., operating missions as far away as Greenland, the Azores and the Caribbean.[2]

Coast Guard Air Station (CGAS) Elizabeth City is located on the campus of the Coast Guard’s Base Elizabeth City. and is one of several commands located on the Coast Guard’s premier Base. In addition, the Base Elizabeth City 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 Aviation Logistics Center (ALC) and Station.

The missions 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).[2]

Currently, CGAS maintains and operates five HC-130J Hercules aircraft and four MH-60T Jayhawk helicopters.

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 amphibious aircraft. 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 warfare, and training missions in tandem with Naval Air Station Weeksville, a lighter-than-air airship facility approximately two miles to the southeast that was in operation from 1941 to 1957.

Since then, the AIRSTA Elizabeth City’s missions and assigned aircraft have shifted and grown with changing national priorities and technologies. In 1966 the Air Station expanded after absorbing the coast guard air stations at Kindley AFB, Bermuda and NAS Argentia, Newfoundland.[3]

Recently the Support Center, home of Air Station Elizabeth City was the setting (and used as a double for Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak, Alaska) in the Kevin Costner film, The Guardian. Support Center personnel were instrumental in providing the infrastructure and support necessary to the filming of the motion picture. Wiki

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