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Stupid questions about USCG Aviation

Does anyone have a good source of information providing a list of USCG Officer jobs? I was reading the CG OCS forums and I got the impression that it is somewhat difficult to work on a ship (cutter or whatever the correct terminology is) and only those who truly want it are able to get it. Is that true?
 
positiveg89 said:
Does anyone have a good source of information providing a list of USCG Officer jobs? I was reading the CG OCS forums and I got the impression that it is somewhat difficult to work on a ship (cutter or whatever the correct terminology is) and only those who truly want it are able to get it. Is that true?
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Last time I saw any statistics from the Factory- about 70% of Academy Grads went to ships and 30% went to shore/aviation/special units. Those numbers are opposite at OCS. 30% of OCS Grads go to ships and 70% fill other billets.

I know several OCS grads who have gone to s staff tour and then gone to ship AFTER that because they REALLY wanted to be afloat. And "Needs of the Service" still applies.
 
sardaddy said:
It does depend but the hard fills are Air Station Atlantic City and HITRON in Jacksonville, FL. They suck up billets like a vacuum and many don't like the missions. After that, Kodiak, Alaska and Air Station Borinquen in Puerto Rico are the next hard to fill. That is at least on the H-65 side. H-60s Don't have as many duty stations and most are pretty good. Even the billets at Kodiak are better.
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Could you explain a little further on what you mean by "they suck up billets like a vacuum and many dont like the missions"? what sort of missions are crews out of these locations flying? and please explain the billet suck up in more detail.
 
By sucking up the billets, I mean that we send more pilots to those stations than any other stations because they have so many aircraft and they usually transfer pilots every three years so higher turn over rate with more pilots equals greater chance of going there. One station does mulitple missions making it a heavy workload. They do the normal stuff other units do such as Search and Rescue and maritime patrols but they also guard the capitol region doing air intercepts. Lots of time away from home and the workload is immense. The other, HITRON, deploys more than just about anybody but they do no search and rescue it is only counter drug so people don't like to go there either. Neither are bad missions but some really want SAR missions because that is why they joined and others don't like the intercept mission.

Because of that, most people don't put those locations on their dreamsheets but the billets need to be filled somehow so the locations are like black holes sucking in unsuspecting victims to fill the empty billets.
 
Brunes said:
Last time I saw any statistics from the Factory- about 70% of Academy Grads went to ships and 30% went to shore/aviation/special units. Those numbers are opposite at OCS. 30% of OCS Grads go to ships and 70% fill other billets.

I know several OCS grads who have gone to s staff tour and then gone to ship AFTER that because they REALLY wanted to be afloat. And "Needs of the Service" still applies.
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I don't want to put down the afloat tours because I don't know what they entail. But from what I've read, it doesn't seem like it's something I'd want to do. Do non-flying ashore jobs suck that much or do people just genuinely want to be afloat?
 
I think the numbers are even higher than 70%.....probably closer to 90%+ for Academy grads going to sea and it will only get higher with the reduction in flight school billets. From talking to the cadets around here this summer, most of them say the few non-afloat tours (sectors, flight school, etc) go to the top graduates and are pretty coveted. Although the two years on a cutter were a good experience for me, I definitely knew I wasn't making a career out of riding on waves and have no desire to go back to sea!
 
So when did the requirement go away for first time aviators to have previously done a ship assignment? I think I remember all my Coastie contemporaries in the HTs were LTJGs who had already spent time on Cutters and such.
 
CoastieFlyer said:
I think the numbers are even higher than 70%.....probably closer to 90%+ for Academy grads going to sea and it will only get higher with the reduction in flight school billets. From talking to the cadets around here this summer, most of them say the few non-afloat tours (sectors, flight school, etc) go to the top graduates and are pretty coveted. Although the two years on a cutter were a good experience for me, I definitely knew I wasn't making a career out of riding on waves and have no desire to go back to sea!
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It's been about 4 years since I talked about Academy grad numbers and I didn't take the reduction in flight billets into account. So you are probably right.
and +1 on the boat feelings. It was a good learning experience- I picked up alot of leadership tools/ideas..but I don't wanna go back to the DWO life.

PhrogLoop said:
So when did the requirement go away for first time aviators to have previously done a ship assignment? I think I remember all my Coastie contemporaries in the HTs were LTJGs who had already spent time on Cutters and such.
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The Academy Class of '05 (I think) was the first to send folks direct to flight school...They have about 7. My class had 11. I think the class of 08 had 19 or 20??
 
CoastieFlyer said:
I think the numbers are even higher than 70%.....probably closer to 90%+ for Academy grads going to sea and it will only get higher with the reduction in flight school billets. From talking to the cadets around here this summer, most of them say the few non-afloat tours (sectors, flight school, etc) go to the top graduates and are pretty coveted. Although the two years on a cutter were a good experience for me, I definitely knew I wasn't making a career out of riding on waves and have no desire to go back to sea!
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If non-afloat, non-flying tours usually go to the top graduates at the CG Academy, why is it that most OCS graduates get them? Isn't CG OCS used to complement Academy spots, such as in the other services?
 
Because the Coast Guard wants their academy grads to experience a tour at sea, so they only offer a handful of non-afloat tours. They use OCS grads to fill in the rest, which are mostly land based billets.
 
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