- Lieutenant Commander Adam McCarthy,
I'm currently serving at Air Station Kodiak,
I'm flying C-130J's as a pilot.
I've just transitioned to that aircraft
from the C-130H aircraft.
This past Sunday marked a historical day
as our last C-130H departed from Kodiak
en route to Barbers Point
and we are now currently fully transitioned
to the C-130J aircraft.
A little bit about my background is,
I started out enlisted and I came here,
actually to Kodiak, in 2004
as a brand new AET3 out of A School.
I was able to have the honor pleasure
of qualifying as a basic air crew member
on the C-130H and move up through the ranks,
and I actually attain a position
of radio operator and navigator,
tactical system operator,
basically every qualification
that I could have got in my rate for the aircraft.
And I fell in love with the plane
and it's capabilities
and the missions that we did in this area
and I decided at that point
that I wanted to continue on
and learn how to fly that aircraft.
I was fortunate to get picked up for OCS
and I was eventually picked up for flight school
after many attempts and I found out,
to my surprise and my pleasant surprise
at flight school, that I would be
flying the C-130H aircraft.
I remember multiple cases where
we would go out and one time
we actually found a vessel with three
individuals on board,
small boat that had been missing for eight days
when we found them and they had survived
for that long with only a few bottles of water
and a small amount of food.
And my navigator was able to pick them up
on radar and we flew over,
after multiple days of searching for them
and found them and the joy on their faces
was surreal and just amazing
to be able to vector in a Good Samaritan vessel
and watch as those men climbed aboard that vessel
and knowing that there's three lives saved
there that day and that they could go home
and see their families
who had been worrying about them.
So, it's just an amazing, a rewarding mission
and the C-130 is so capable
that it can do search and rescue,
law enforcement, and also logistics
and many other of the Coast Guard's
many missions that we do.
I'm from Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point.
I was fortunate to get transferred back here
to Kodiak again, my first duty station in the H.
And to see the C-130H to it's final
few flights here, to once again fly
as a aircraft commander and to do the missions
of this challenging environment.
The C-130 is tasked with going,
flying along Aleutian Islands
and all over Alaska
and flying in some of the worst conditions,
the strongest crosswinds,
the lowest ceilings, fog, ice.
Just to be able to taxi on an icy runway
with an aircraft where you have absolutely
no traction, no friction
and zero breaking applications,
to learn how to do that with this aircraft,
it was an amazing thing to achieve.
And now, knowing the C-130J is taking over here,
and conducting those same missions,
and doing it in a way where we have
more capability now,
whereas the C-130J has the ability to fly faster,
higher, and burn less fuel than the C-130H.
The crew contingency is a little bit different,
so that takes some getting used to.
But, all in all, the aircraft is more capable,
it's modernized, compared to the H,
and it's well suited to do the mission up here
that it's tasked to do.
So I look forward continued C-130 presence
in Alaska, flying the new C-130J.