Ninety years ago, on Sunday, New Year’s Day 1933, Lt. Cmdr. Carl Christian von Paulsen started out on what would become one of early Coast Guard aviation’s best-known search and rescue cases. 

Descended from German nobility, Carl Christian von Paulsen graduated from the Revenue Cutter Service Academy in 1913 and received his commission as a third lieutenant in the service. At the end of 1919, he began a series of flight schools that would result in his becoming one of the most highly trained aviators in the service. In 1920, he graduated from the Navy’s flight school with the designation of Naval Aviator (Seaplane) and received the designation of Coast Guard Aviator #6.

One of von Paulsen’s first aviation assignments would alter his career and the course of Coast Guard aviation. In 1924, after completing a tour on the new Cutter Tampa, he assumed command of Coast Guard Section Base 7, located at Gloucester, Massachusetts. In his three-and-a-half-year tour of duty, von Paulsen re-established Coast Guard aviation using a borrowed U.S. Navy Vought UO-1 seaplane and waterfront property to improvise a small air station. With the UO-1, von Paulsen proved the value of Coast Guard aircraft for spotting rum runners and carrying out search and rescue missions. Thereafter, aviation remained a permanent branch of the service. Establishing Coast Guard aviation on a permanent basis proved a monumental step in the…