The Coast Guard Flight Officer Badge is a military badge of the United States Coast Guard that was issued until approximately 1988.
A Naval Aviation Observer insignia for Coast Guard personnel was first created in 1920 as a means of recognizing Coast Guard co-pilots and aircraft in-flight support personnel. The badge was the equivalent of the Naval Aviation Observer insignia for USN and USMC personnel. During the Second World War, issuance of the Coast Guard Aviation Observer insignia reached its peak, and the decoration was awarded throughout the Korean War. In the late 1960s, the Coast Guard Aviation Observer insignia began to be phased out due to a change in the structure of aviation training and the elimination of the title of Coast Guard Aviation Observers from approved aviation billets.
In the mid-1980s, the Coast Guard Flight Officer insignia was briefly reinstated in the Coast Guard when the service took temporary custody of two E-2C Hawkeye aircraft from the U.S. Navy. This was part of an initiative to stand up a larger complement of Coast Guard E-2C aircraft, primarily in the counternarcotics and drug interdiction roles, augmented by Coast Guard HC-130s that would also be equipped with similar radar systems. The Coast Guard Flight Officer insignia is similar to the Naval Flight Officer insignia, minus the crossed sea anchors. The service recruited E-2C NFOs from the Navy, recommisioning them in the Coast Guard, as well as selecting a number of serving Coast Guard officers for NFO training.
A fatal Coast Guard E-2C aircraft mishap in the early 1990s spelled the end of the Coast Guard E-2C and enhanced HC-130 programs and the service transferred the remaining E-2C aircraft back to the Navy.
In the 21st-century Coast Guard, the Coast Guard Flight Officer Badge has been declared obsolete, although it is still authorized for wear on Coast Guard uniforms.
Famous quotes containing the words coast, guard, flight, officer and/or badge:
“Have we even so much as discovered and settled the shores? Let a man travel on foot along the coast ... and tell me if it looks like a discovered and settled country, and not rather, for the most part, like a desolate island, and No-Man’s Land.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“When we are high and airy hundreds say
That if we hold that flight they’ll leave the place,
While those same hundreds mock another day
Because we have made our art of common things ...”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“That’s all right, sir. A commanding officer doesn’t need brains, just a good, loud voice.”
—Cyril Hume, and Fred McLeod Wilcox. Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon)
“It would much conduce to the public benefit, if, instead of discouraging free-thinking, there was erected in the midst of this free country a dianoetic academy, or seminary for free-thinkers, provided with retired chambers, and galleries, and shady walks and groves, where, after seven years spent in silence and meditation, a man might commence a genuine free-thinker, and from that time forward, have license to think what he pleased, and a badge to distinguish him from counterfeits.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)