Responding to the unthinkable
Twenty five years ago on the morning of September 11, 2001, the U.S. Coast Guard faced a mission no one had trained for. In the hours that followed, Coast Guardsmen coordinated the largest maritime evacuation in history, moving tens of thousands of people from Lower Manhattan by water. And in the following days, Coast Guard led the incident command responding to search and rescue at Ground Zero.
Oral Histories
Attack on America: September 11, 2001 & the U.S. Coast Guard
Operation Noble Eagle Documentation Project
Dive into oral history interviews that preserve an institutional record that official reports and after-action summaries alone cannot capture.
Rogue Wave: The US Coast Guard on and After 9/11
When crisis struck on September 11, 2001, the United States Coast Guard orchestrated the largest maritime evacuation in human history—safely moving over 500,000 people from the shores of Lower Manhattan in under nine hours. Read about how service members, civilian mariners, and first responders who answered the call in New York Harbor, at the Pentagon, and across the nation’s ports.
