World War II

From Prohibition-era rum runners to Axis spy networks during World War II, Elizebeth Friedman and the Coast Guard team known as Unit #387 cracked thousands of secret messages that helped disrupt criminal operations and support the Allied war effort.

From icebound Greenland to the burning deck of USS Callaway and the beaches of Luzon and Iwo Jima, Norman Thomas drew what cameras could not: the fear, sacrifice, and human cost of war witnessed at close range.

Before he became “Mr. Defense” and a Pro Football Hall of Famer, Emlen Tunnell saved a burning shipmate with his bare hands, jumped into freezing water to rescue another, and carried that same courage into a career that changed football history.

In a flash off Guadalcanal, the Coast Guard-manned USS Serpens vanished while loading depth charges, killing 197 Coast Guardsmen, 51 Army stevedores, and a Public Health Service surgeon. Only two men aboard survived the blast that remains the service’s deadliest disaster.

Carrying a Speed Graphic through bombs, bullets, and surf from Sicily to Salerno, Normandy, and Southern France, Coast Guard photographer Robert Sargent turned one LCVP’s approach to Omaha Beach into “Into the Jaws of Death”—an image that came to define D Day even as the man behind the lens faded into a footnote.

As new mission threats have evolved, the Coast Guard’s canine team capability has also evolved.

Whiteouts, razor ice, and lurking U‑boats—inside the little-known Arctic campaign where sled patrols, convoys, and daring rescues kept a vital lifeline alive.

Since the late 1800s, the United States Coast Guard and its predecessor agencies have played an essential role in U.S. polar operations. A new kind of ship, the icebreaker, evolved to serve U.S. commercial and strategic interests spread in the Arctic.

The Coast Guard has a rich history of underwater operations. Since the early 1940s, the service has nurtured a diving capability that has become vital to modern Coast Guard missions.

In the still darkness of a foggy June night in 1942, what began as a routine beach patrol turned into a daring encounter with Nazi saboteurs—the first enemy operatives to land on U.S. soil since the War of 1812.