The vast geographic distances of the present world conflict led, during the year 1942, to the Coast Guard's expanding its operations until its personnel and equipment are now spread over virtually every quarter of the globe. The demands of modern warfare have also placed new responsibilities upon the service and entrusted it with new functions. Notable among these during the past year were the landing operations undertaken by the Coast Guard during the American invasions of the Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific and of Northern Africa. Not only did Coast Guardsmen land the troops and marines involved in each campaign, but also manned transports and assisted in holding beach-heads for the unloading of supplies. The service suffered losses in personnel in both these theatres.
In 1942 the Coast Guard has continued to operate under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Navy, an Executive Order of the President having transferred it from the Treasury Department, of which it is normally a part, on the first of November 1941. However, its own Commandant directs and administers the service under the Chief of Naval Operations.
Special wartime demands upon all of the nation's armed services have necessarily caused Coast Guard vessels and personnel to participate directly in various Naval operations. Cutters of the 327-foot class are almost all used for escort work in convoys, while the smaller sea-going cutters are used, for the most part, as integral parts of the coastwise convoy escorts and anti-submarine patrol operated by the Navy to stop enemy submarine activity in America's coastal waters.
In the latter operations, the airplane has played a role of ever mounting importance. The nine air stations maintained by the Coast Guard, manned by Coast Guard personnel and equipped with the service's own planes, are working in close conjunction with Navy units engaged in anti-submarine patrol. This has necessitated a modification of the role traditionally played by the plane since the introduction of aircraft into the service. Normally, Coast Guard planes are used primarily for observation, searching, and relief of vessels or seamen in distress. Since the outbreak of hostilities, however, they have become an offensive weapon against submarines, and Coast Guard planes are now armed with depth charges. Besides doing coastal patrol in the anti-submarine operations, Coast Guard planes also participated in general convoy escort work, again with units of the Navy.
In view of the increased demands made by war conditions, certain activities and functions of the Coast Guard have, while being retained, undergone considerable change or expansion. These changes and expansions have, in turn, resulted in the introduction of several innovations of an emergency nature. The beach patrol, for example, is still maintained, but to a much greater extent than in peacetime. Surfmen, whose primary role in peacetime was humanitarian in nature, are now armed to deal with any incident involving enemy attempts to land agents on American shores. Horses were introduced in 1942 for use in a mounted patrol. The latter was first organized on a volunteer basis, with patriotic and public-spirited citizens offering their own time and horsemanship abilities to the service's new patrol. However, the advantages of the mounted patrol became increasingly obvious and the unit later became a part of the regular Coast Guard. On many stretches of the coast, the mounted beach patrol has proven exceptionally effective. It is possible for horses to cover much longer stretches of coast than men on foot; horses are suitable for covering terrain which it would be difficult for the latter to patrol completely and impossible for vehicles to cover; and, finally, it has been the experience of the service that mounted patrols have a greater range of vision and therefore of efficiency than foot patrols. At the present time, horses are quite generally used in most of the Naval districts in such coastal patrol work. An arrangement with the Army furnishes the service with horses from the Army Remount Centers.
One of the largest programs of expansion within the Coast Guard has been its tremendously accelerated provisions for Port Security, which involves the protection against fire, sabotage and negligence, criminal or otherwise, of all ports, waterfronts and harbor installations of the United States. In addition to our long coast lines on both the Atlantic and Pacific and on the Gulf of Mexico, this includes the Great Lakes and such important inland waterways as the Mississippi. Men have been trained in highly specialized and intensive schooling at Coast Guard Training Stations for this particular work, and the program as a whole has accounted for a considerable percentage of the service's unprecedented numerical increase in personnel.
Responsibility for the nation's waterfront security was first centralized to some degree in the Coast Guard, with the invoking on the twenty-seventh of June, 1940, of the Espionage Act of 1917. At the former date, under this action, the Secretary of the Treasury, under whom the Coast Guard was then operating, was entrusted with certain definite powers relating to the anchorage and berthing of vessels. To provide for the Coast Guard's becoming part of the Navy in wartime or on Presidential order, an amendment was subsequently made to make such powers transferrable from the Secretary of the Treasury to the Secretary of the Navy. Although there have been amendments to the Anchorage Regulations since then, the need became more and more obvious for an even greater centralization of authority. This need was met by an Executive Order (No. 9074), issued by the President on Feb. 25, 1942. This order gave the Navy primary responsibility for all waterfront security. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox relayed this authority and the attendant responsibility to the Coast Guard in a letter to Admiral King on April 29, 1942, and Admiral King in turn conveyed it to the Commandant of the Coast Guard in his letter of June 13, 1942.
Amplifications of the Port Security program followed rapidly to meet the new responsibility with the greatest effectiveness. Activities of the Port Security are coordinated by Rear Admirals on both the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts. The District Coast Guard Officers supervise the programs within their respective districts, but the several Captains of the Port are the actual enforcing agents. The nation's waterfronts are now doubly guarded. They are guarded from without, on the water side, by hundreds of picket and Reserve boats of the Coast Guard, as well as by 250 fireboats. From within, that is from the land side, they are constantly guarded by patrols who have undergone training for this specific purpose.
The combination of all the new and expanded activities has resulted in a comparable numerical expansion. The Coast Guard's present strength is well over 100,000, as compared to 17,546 men and 1,516 officers in 1941. To relieve the demands made upon the men in the service and to release for duty at sea many able men in shore establishments, an Act was passed by Congress and signed by the President in November 1942, creating the Women's Reserve of the U. S. Coast Guard Reserve, the popular name of which, the SPARS, was derived from the Coast Guard motto: 'Semper Paratus — Always Ready.' The numerical goal of the SPARS is 8,000 officers and enlisted personnel, who will be used only in shore establishments within the continental United States.
The Coast Guard's future role in the war is, of course, subject to developments as they occur, but the service is extremely well geared to assuming whatever new or expanded functions are entrusted to it.
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