Editors note: Please click above to download high resolution images.

By USCG Auxilarist Drew Herman

Even after World War II ended, young Coast Guard recruits at the electronics school in Groton, Conn., promised not to say the word "loran" and risk a leak about the top-secret navigation system that guided American bombers to targets in the Pacific.

"Everything was very confidential," said Don Funk, who manned the loran station on Attu Island for 13 months starting in 1946.

Not that he had much opportunity to tell anybody about his job as he stood watches on the most remote island of the Aleutian chain--close to Russia than to the mainland of Alaska.

"It was isolated duty," said Funk, now 86 years old and a resident of Lansing, Mich.

When the need for secrecy ended, the long range navigation system, or loran, revolutionized navigation for mariners and pilots, helping Alaskans settle the state's vast interior and develop the nation's most productive commercial fishing industry.

But manning the remote posts needed to operate the system remained one of the loneliest jobs in the world, until the last Coast Guardsman left Attu on Aug. 27, 2010.

The decommissioning ceremony for Loran Station Attu took place one day later than scheduled because dense fog typical for the Aleutians forced a Coast Guard C-130 to divert to nearby Shemya Island overnight. The airplane from Air Station Kodiak brought Funk and other guests and dignitaries to the island for a few hours before leaving with the entire 20-man crew.

"Loran's been around a long time," said Chief Warrant Officer Jeff Rosenberg, the last commanding officer on Attu. "And now it's gone."

Rosenberg noted about 1,300 Coast Guardsmen have served on Attu in the course of 66 years, one month and 21 days, a figure he has memorized.

In June 1942, forces of the Imperial Japanese Army landed on Attu. American forces won back the island 11 months later in a series of bloody engagements, the only land battle of World War II on American soil.

The isolation, rugged beauty and sense of history stay with everyone who served on Attu.

At the decommissioning, Coast Guard Cmdr. James Boyer, chief of port and waterway management in Alaska, quoted a 1945 memo from Col. James R. Kilgore of the U.S. Army Air Force. Kilgore credited the loran stations with making the Allies' victory possible, and he described the Coast Guardsmen's crucial work as "unglamorous, tedious, monotonous and requiring painstaking exactitude."

Funk joked that the posting at Theodore Point, in a different part of Attu from the final station, amounted to incarceration. He remembers the excitement of mail call every 10 weeks or so when a dory or landing craft approached the beach.

"Four guys would row like the dickens through the rocks" [to meet the mail], he said.

Those early teams did not enjoy the relative luxury of a cozy barracks that made life easier for their successors.

“We just had Quonsets that sunk in the mud,” Funk said. “We didn’t have a flagpole; it would’ve blown down.”

Although the accommodations improved over the years, the extreme weather conditions never changed. After the decommissioning ceremony, a color guard hauled down the Stars and Stripes from a flagpole that has always spent the winter months safely stowed out of the frequent hurricane-force winds.

Funk’s assessment of loran duty applies to the last day at the station as much as to the first.

“It was a challenge,” he said. “Everybody kept things running no matter what. You had to.”

Following his time on Attu, Funk had his choice of duty station. He returned to home waters and helped install navigation equipment for Lake Michigan that’s still functioning. After leaving the Coast Guard, he worked as a salesman and as a Michigan state trooper, but he remembers with pride his role in the 20th century navigation revolution.

“Every little boat on the Great Lakes had loran,” he said.

Boyer pointed out that loran made a particular contribution to shaping life on the Last Frontier including the expansion of commercial fishing in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska during the 1950s.

“Alaska fisheries were built on loran,” Boyer said.

And even though GPS technology has replaced loran during the last two decades, leading to the August decommissioning ceremony on Attu, loran’s legacy continues in the newer technology.

“The fundamentals of GPS are based on the loran concepts of time differentials,” Boyer said.

Ron Caswell arrived on Attu 25 years after Funk left to stand watch at the loran station as a Coast Guardsman in 1972. Today Caswell lives near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and works as an engineer for the International Space Station. But like Funk, he jumped at the chance to return to Attu to attend the decommissioning and relive his earlier adventure.

Caswell shares Funk’s deep feelings for their remote post and the work they performed there.

“Of all the things I have done in my life, I am most proud of my service in the United States Coast Guard,” he said. “It still boggles me why anybody would want to join a different branch when the Coast Guard does so many different things.”

Caswell earned his degree on the GI Bill, he said, “So everything I did with the Coast Guard benefited my life. Hopefully I benefited the nation with my duty also.”

Standing on Attu again for the first time in 37 years, Caswell recalled a hike he took with an Air Force visitor, when they stood on a mountain overlooking the center of the island, more isolated from other people than possible even in a giant national park.

“I’ve never experienced that feeling ever since,” he said.

Once when a Coast Guard cutter had to wait at Attu for spare parts, the station crew got to celebrate Coast Guard Day on Aug. 5 with a ball game.

“That was pretty unique for this whole year to have enough people at one time to have a baseball game,” he said.

When the Air Station Kodiak C-130 took off from Attu after the decommissioning, only a handful of contract employees remained on the island. They will spend a few weeks preparing the station’s buildings for a future without much human attention. Without the loran station, Attu will have no residents. The few dozen Aleuts who lived there before World War II were forcibly removed by the Japanese and never returned to re-establish their village.

In the coming years, biologists, historians and anthropologists will visit occasionally for various projects, including repatriation of the thousands of Japanese soldiers buried there.

The last residents of Attu climbed out of the C-130 onto the tarmac at the airport in Anchorage in the first stage of dispersing to their new Coast Guard assignments. The young men gathered their bags, shook hands and joined Funk and Caswell as veterans of the most remote post in the U.S. military.

Petty Officer 2nd class Nathan Kinzel served on the Charleston, S.C.-based cutter Dallas before he asked for the assignment to Attu.

“I needed a break just from life in general,” said Kinzel, who enjoyed getting in a lot of reading.

Seaman William Sniffen came to Attu straight from basic training.

“I thought it’d be interesting,” he said. “I thought I’d learn a lot.”

Sniffen understands the connection earlier loran crewmen feel to Attu.

“It’d be cool to come back here eventually,” he said.

Attu can fairly claim the title of “last place on Earth,” since no inhabited land lies farther west on this side of the International Date Line. In effect, the sun sets there last.

Although soon nobody will be there to see those sunsets, about 1,300 Coast Guardsmen found out how they looked and felt.

For Caswell, the return visit to Attu “went by too fast.”

“I’m not sure ‘home’ is the right word, but it felt comfortable. It felt like a very familiar place to be,” he said.

“What a unique experience, to get to spend time out at a place like this”

For more than 50 years lurking below the surface of the frigid Alaska waters lies the Canadian Pacific Railway ship Princess Kathleen, resting at an angle on its port side, reminding Alaskans of its presence by releasing fuel periodically tainting the surface with its sheen.

During foul weather September 7, 1952, the cruise ship previously used as a transport vessel during World War II, ran aground and eventually sank in the vicinity off Lena Point, Alaska, near Juneau with an unknown amount of bunker oil and other petroleum products remaining in its tanks.

An attempt to recover the oil was made years ago but due to the lack of technology, the attempt was unsuccessful.

During the early months of 2010, Capt. Melissa Bert, commander Coast Guard Sector Juneau, decided to establish a unified command with Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation after receiving in increase in reports of sheening coming from the Princess Kathleen wreck site.

The unified command came together in an attempt to remove the oil from the aged and presumably fragile tanks of the Princess Kathleen.

The Princess Kathleen was already deemed a risk of pollution prior to witnessing significant environmental impact.  The unified command took proactive actions to proceed with a lightering operation before shorelines or wildlife became covered in 50-year-old bunker oil. 

“Upon coming up with a solid plan we decided to take time into our own hands and removal of the oil seemed to be the most logical action,” said Bert.  “Tackling a potential threat prior to it coming to fruition eliminates the possibility of a major disaster, is cost effective and protects both people and the environment.”

The Coast Guard along with ADEC, Global Diving and Salvage and other contracted agencies worked tirelessly for four months putting in 24-hour days with the intentions to finish the removal of oil in the safest and most effective manner.

However, as no good plan goes without a hitch, there were obstacles that the unified command and on-scene contracted workers had to battle through. 

In Alaska the weather is often unpredictable and thus challenging.  With the vast distance between Alaska and the Continental U.S., it becomes a daunting task when mission essential equipment from Seattle is delayed by inconvenient weather impeding barge transit.

“Due to the inclement weather we probably lost about 20 days of work that would have otherwise expedited the oil removal process,” said Cmdr. Kurt Clarke, Coast Guard Sector Juneau chief of response.

The unified command was able to lapse all obstacles and with the bad also came the good.

Advanced technology allowed the unified command to address the historic problem that had been plaguing the community of Juneau for so long.

The use of technologies such as remote operated vehicles permitted the unified command the luxury of being able to complete a visual inspection of the hull, structural integrity and underwater environment without putting divers at risk.

“The remote operated vehicles allowed for us to get a visual of the deteriorating tanks and pipes to better strategize how we were going to remove the oil without taking the risk of sending our divers into unknown spaces,” said Kerry Walsh, casualty response project manager for Global Diving and Salvage.  “The importance for the removal of oil was extremely high due to the condition of the tanks, anything from a recreational diver to an earthquake could have caused the imbalance needed to rupture the pipes resulting in a major oil release.”

Based on the condition of the vessel upon initial survey, there was a significant amount of oil that was released from the tanks, but still contained within the vessel’s hull.  From this finding along with the rivets quickly deteriorating, it was determined that it was only a matter of time before considerable releases of oil would suffocate the pristine coastline.

“We caught this just in time,” said Scot Tiernan, state on-scene coordinator.

The unified command was able to access each tank of the Princess Kathleen and pump the contents into a tank barge floating above the Princess Kathleen.  In this topside tank, the product and waste water were heated and re-circulated back to the Princess Kathleen’s tank.  This process allowed an even and gradual heating of the product and permitted for a higher pumping rate once heated. 

Once the closed system was properly heated to approximately 120 degrees, the use of a skimmer was employed in the topside tank.  This allowed for the recovery of nearly pure oil from the tank and significantly reduced the amount of wasted water generated. 

After approximately four months of round the clock work, the Coast Guard and State of Alaska’s proactive approach eliminated the inevitable pollution risk of an estimated 110,000 gallons of extremely toxic and environmentally destructive bunker C, heavy oil.  This was all accomplished without a significant release or negative impact to the environment or wildlife. 

Additionally, the wreck was returned to a condition that closely matches the original condition of the wreck upon the start of the project and is available for continued use by recreational divers and historians alike.

Overall the monetary cost for removing the oil from the Princess Kathleen was approximately $12 million but with major oil cases such as the Cosco Busan in San Francisco Bay looming in our history, it proves how economical it is to take care of the oil problem prior to a release.

On November 7, 2007, the cargo vessel Cosco Busan hit the San Francisco Bay Bridge spilling approximately 58,000 gallons of medium grade fuel oil seriously impacting wildlife by killing thousands of birds, polluting the pacific shore and costing more than $100 million to clean up.

With the oil removed from the Princess Kathleen reaching almost three times the amount spilled by the Cosco Busan, it’s unimaginable what kind of impact a spill would have had on the pristine and environmentally sound Alaskan waters not to mention the cost.

“The preventative cost of cleaning the Princess Kathleen was less than 10 percent of what it would have been if a catastrophic release had occurred,” said Rear Adm. Christopher Colvin, Coast Guard 17^th District commander.  “Considering the alternatives, the cleanup of the Princess Kathleen was remarkable and an extremely cost-effective success.”

The team work amongst all involved was pertinent to the mission.

“The unified command worked well together ensuring everyone was engaged and on the same page further validating the success of the mission,” said Walsh.

The Princess Kathleen now lays dormant still more than 50-feet below the surface and still at an angle on its port side, only now safer.

“The unified commands hard work and proactive approach in removing the oil from the Princess Kathleen serves as a model for future salvage plans and should encourage others to take preventative measures,” said Bert.

With more than 7,000 sunken vessels barricading the United States coastal waters boasting approximately 180 million gallons of oil still intact within their corroded hulls the community of Juneau can rest assured the Princess Kathleen no longer serves the threat of a potential hazard caused by an oil release.

Editors note:  Please click photos above to download high resoluation imagery.

A family tradition
The sun beat down in Perdido Key, Fla.  It was May 13, 2010, and the wind kicked up the sand.   It was a hot afternoon and five family members wanted to play in the surf during their family reunion. 

On the surface, the surf seemed to be just right that day so the family threw a light blue raft into the water and hopped on.  They were body surfing and boogie boarding, so the raft seemed ideal.  

Shaun, Leah and Allison O’Grady, all siblings between the ages of 24 and 32, along with Matt and Ashley Morris, also siblings ages 24 and 26, jumped atop the raft, placed their backs together and pointed their feet off the side of the raft. 

“We’ve been doing this family tradition for about three or four years,” said Shaun.  “The raft I have is huge and to my family’s dismay, it takes up half of the car!  We were just having fun, floating around in the ocean.  It’s really a good time for all.”

All of them would get washed back to shore each time they took the raft into the surf, laughing while spinning around in the ocean. 

“I’m usually the one in charge of the raft,” said Shaun, the oldest of his sisters.  “Since I’m the tallest, I can take the raft out farther, about 40 or 50 yards out from the beach.” 

However, as the five family members kept taking the raft into the surf, time and time again Leah said to the others they were getting farther and farther away from the shore.  Plus, they would get knocked off the raft by waves but continued to enjoy their time in the surf.

When one of the waves knocked them off, Shaun and Ashley bumped their heads together.  She decided to head to shore which was probably the best decision by Ashley since she is not a strong swimmer.

“I didn’t think anything of what Leah said,” said Shaun.  “I just figured we’d have more time in the surf and everyone would get to ride longer.  I told everyone to start kicking so we can try to make it back to the beach.”

But as the four family members began to kick, they didn’t get very far.  It was like they were frozen in time and stuck in one place. 

They had to continually kick to try to make it to shore.  Little did they know that a strong rip current was brewing underneath their raft waiting to carry them out to sea.

The next thing they knew, a wave hit them.

In the Surf
“We were all knocked off the raft and as soon as I got above the water, I didn’t see the raft,” said Shaun.  “I didn’t see my cousin Matt, but thankfully I did see my two sisters.”

Once Shaun and his sisters made it back to the surface, a big flurry of waves began to pummel them, one right after another. 

“Those waves were big the whole time,” said Shaun.  “Every time we would get hit by a wave, we’d come to the surface, catch a breath and then another wave would hit us.  We had floated out pretty far too, maybe 75 to 100 yards.”

Shaun didn’t realize how serious the situation was until he looked at his sister Leah and she had a look of concern on her face. 

“She’s always been a very confident and stable person,” said Shaun.  “When I saw that look of panic in her face and it grew worse as the seconds went away, I started to get worried too.” 

As Shaun could feel the pull of the undertow upon him, he told his sisters to get on their backs to try and conserve energy.  Plus it seemed to be the easiest way to get in strokes against the strong waves. 

As the three siblings were trying to swim toward the beach and keep from getting pushed under by the waves, they kept looking for their cousin Matt. 

Rescue on the way
Even though Matt was also knocked off the raft, he was able to stay with it...somehow. 

“It seemed like after I got back on it, 10 minutes had gone by,” said Coast Guard Petty Officer 3rd Class Matt Morris, aviation maintenance technician with Air Station Kodiak.  “As I searched for them, I kept getting knocked off but managed to stay with the raft.  Finally, I spotted them between waves about 50 yards further out than I was.”

Matt’s cousins were waving frantically and he realized he had to help as they were getting pulled out by the rip tide.  If he didn’t help the outcome could be fatal. 

“I began to paddle out and it took me about five minutes,” said Matt.  “As soon as I got to them, they grabbed a hold of the raft.  My one cousin, Leah, was panicking while the other had to shed some clothes just so she could tread water better.” 

Matt stayed level-headed and calm.  He told them, they weren’t out of this yet and they all needed to kick and head toward shore.  His Coast Guard training kicked in and he calmed them down.  The four family members joined forces and paddled the raft parallel to the shore with the current. 

“As we got closer to the shore, we entered deep water again between the sand bar and shore getting pounded by waves and struggling to keep a hold of the raft while trying to keep everyone together,” said Matt.  “Eventually we made it to shore with over a half hours worth of struggle to get back to land.”

Thankfulness
Exhausted and safe on the beach, it hit them how bad the situation was and how fatal it could have been.

“I kept thinking as I was out there with my sisters, this is not how I’m going to die,” said Shaun.  “This is not how I’m going to go.”

The family later learned the beach had a double red flag rip tide warning.  However, the condominium they were staying in did not have any flags along the beach and they were not watching the news that day to hear the warnings. 

“We later learned when watching the news that evening that a 22-year-old male had drowned the same day just further down the beach” said Shaun.  “That put it into perspective how lucky we were.” 

Shaun credits his cousin Matt with his and his sister’s survival in the surf that hot and windy May afternoon. 

“He definitely saved us,” said Shaun.  “I don’t even know how he got the raft.  He realized how important it was to get the raft and if he didn’t have it, there’s no way he would have rescued us.”

Matt has been enlisted in the Coast Guard for three years and has been in aviation for two.  He is a loadmaster aboard the HC-130 Hercules aircraft and performs training flights on a regular basis.  Matt has trained for in-air emergency situations and the emergency situation in the surf was no different.

“I think my training with the aircraft helped me keep my head together,” said Matt.  “I realized the task at hand and also had to keep everyone else calm so we could work together to achieve the desired outcome.”

The O’Grady siblings and Matt’s sister are alive today because of the actions of their cousin Matt. 

“It gave my sisters more comfort knowing he works for the Coast Guard,” said Shaun.  “We are all alive today because of him.  We’re so thankful.”

by PA1 David Mosley

Late in the year of 1897, an urgent letter was dispatched to Capt. Francis Tuttle, commander of the Revenue Cutter Bear.  Tuttle and his crew had just returned to Seattle following a long summer spent operating in Alaskan waters, when the letter was received informing Tuttle that eight whaling vessels and 265 crewmen were trapped in the ice of the Arctic Ocean near Point Barrow. 

Tuttle along with an all volunteer crew turned the ship around as soon as it was resupplied and headed for the ice bound north.  Speed was a crucial factor; every day lost meant that the ice would be further south, adding days and miles to their efforts to reach the whalers.

When the cutter encountered heavy ice in the Bearing Sea, it was determined they could go no further north than the vicinity of Nome.  It was here the desperate plan to use dogsleds on an overland rescue would be started, and it is here where the first ever Coast Guard sponsored musher, competing in the 2010 Iditarod, crossed the finish line in 4th place.

The Iditarod, which follows another great historical story of delivering life saving diphtheria serum to Nome, challenges mushers and their teams against nature, against the wild and sometimes treacherous Alaska wilderness.  The Iditarod race is a 1,049-mile race that extends from its ceremonial start in Anchorage across Western Alaska to the gold sands of Nome.

The 2010 Iditarod is the 38th running of the race, with 71 teams entering the field.  The race places men and women mushers on the same playing field, with 16 women running this year’s race.

Teams have come from all over the world, from across the United States, Canada, Scotland, Belgium and even Jamaica, each braving the late winter Alaska weather and striving to cross beneath the burl arch finish line in Nome.

“This is the one event that galvanizes Alaskans,” said Stan Hooley, executive director, Iditarod Trail Committee, as he addressed a crowd at a pre-race meeting.

With the unifying strength of this race in mind, Cmdr. Darryl Verfaillie, commander of Marine Safety Unit Valdez, approached Coast Guard Recruiting Command about sponsoring a musher and his team in the race.

“The Coast Guard has a proud history here in Alaska,” said Verfaillie.  “In our early history here in Alaska, dog sleds were used to help perform pivotal rescues of trapped whaling ship crews.  We are proud to pay respect to a rich Alaska Coast Guard history by participating in this great race.”

Once having received the green light by Recruiting Command, Verfaillie approached the Education department of the Iditarod, asking them for a recommendation of a musher to sponsor. The Education department helps school teachers use the race to teach and promote school studies to students across North America and around the world.

According to Iditarod.com, thousands and thousands of students, preschool — through university level complete Iditarod related school projects, practicing their skills in math, science, social studies, reading, writing, technology, and other curriculum areas.   

Preschool teachers use the race to help develop beginning math and reading skills, university professors use the race to inspire students to use real time math data from real events to gain skills in statistics class, and all curriculum areas in between, help students build basic skills through the Iditarod activities.

The education department responded to Verfaillie’s request and suggested Ken Anderson, a nine-time veteran of the race.

“It is an honor for me to be able to team up with the Coast Guard and help support a great organization,” said Anderson about his sponsorship.

Anderson, who owns Windy Creek Kennels just north of Fairbanks has finished the race as high as forth and has had two top five finishes.  The 2010 race will be his 10th time running the grueling marathon.

“It is exciting to be sponsored by the Coast Guard,” said Anderson.  “I think it is kind of a neat relationship, that we share some similarities.  In the Iditarod (like in the Coast Guard), it doesn’t matter the weather, it doesn’t matter the conditions, when you are called out you go.”

The Coast Guard has a long proud history of working in Alaska, and as the summer Arctic ice melts further and further north, the Coast Guard finds its self once more focused north.

“This is a great opportunity for the Coast Guard to partner with the Iditarod as the Coast Guard continues its outreach into the north,” said Verfaillie.  “What better way to get the word out than to join forces with the Iditarod.”

By Petty Officer 1st Class David Mosley

A one-man band is a musician who plays a number of musical instruments simultaneously using their hands, feet, limbs, and various mechanical contraptions to impart a total musical experience to an audience. 

The Coast Guard’s Long Range Radio Navigation or Loran could be described in a similar manner, but unlike a single man playing multiple instruments, Loran is much more like a symphony that has encompassed more than 30,000 musicians since 1942, all striving to play a perfect single note.

On Feb. 8, 2010, this symphony played its final show, where under the direction of the President of the United States, Loran, with little fanfare came to an end.

So what was Loran?  Loran is a word that was coined by Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. L.M. Harding in early 1942 from the letters of “LOng range RAdio Navigation.”

Loran was originally developed to provide an accurate navigational tool for U.S. coastal waters and later covered the continental United States as well as most of Alaska.  The system provided a better than .25 nautical mile absolute accuracy. 

Loran has been a constant source of reliable navigation since its conception by the radiation laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1941. Specialists at MIT developed this new electronics technology as a method of navigation with a long effective range.  Initial tests proved its reliability as far as 800 miles from a transmitting site during daytime tests and 1,400 miles at night.

The first demonstrated use of the new Loran technology took place on June 12, 1942 with an airship using the signal to navigate off shore from New Jersey and Delaware to Maryland.  Subsequent tests conducted aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Manasquan off of Newfoundland during the summer of 1942 and aboard a B-24 Liberator on July 4, 1943, further proved the reliability and accuracy of the new navigation system.

Using the momentum from the initial successful tests, a September 1942 survey crew from the Army Air Force, the Coast Guard and MIT went to the Bering Sea and selected sites on St. Matthew, St. Paul and Umnak Islands as locations for Loran navigational signal locations.  The Coast Guard was directed on Jan. 28, 1943 to establish these remote Alaska sites.

With the Jan. 28 directive, Loran was delivered to the remote regions of the Alaska frontier providing reliable navigation for Coast Guard and Naval ships in the region during and after World War II.

The development of the Loran stations in Alaska, started a domino effect across the Pacific, with new Loran sites being surveyed and constructed on the Hawaiian, Phoenix, Marshall and Micronesian Islands.  The signal was eventually pushed into Guam, Saipan, Philippines, Japan and the China Sea, covering most of the Pacific Ocean.

During the World War II rush to implement Loran across the Pacific, Loran was extended from the Bering Sea, almost on the Arctic Circle to points south of the Equator close to Australia.  Few locations directly benefited from the new technology as the remote areas of Alaska, and when the 1950’s saw the introduction of commercial fishing to the waters of Alaska, Loran was there. 

“Loran provided reliable navigation information critical for fishermen to drop and relocate their fishing gear throughout the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska,” said Rear Adm. Christopher Colvin, 17th Coast Guard District Commander at a ceremony ending the Loran signal at the Tok, Alaska Loran Station.  “Today more fish is caught in the Gulf of Alaska than in all of New England; and more fish is caught in all of Alaska than in all of the other states combined.  This fishery was built on Loran.”

Since the World War II Loran rush, the signal and technology has been increased and refined in its reliability and accuracy.  The advances in technology spurred the reduction of broadcast stations from those scattered across the Pacific to eventually just 24 U.S. stations being manned and operated in partnership with Canada and Russia.

Loran has as a result of further technological advancements in the last 20-years become an antiquated system.  With the introduction of Global Positioning Satellite System or GPS, Loran is no longer required by the armed forces, or the transportation sector and has been relied upon less and less.

Following certifications by the Coast Guard and by the department of Homeland Security that Loran is not required for maritime navigation or as a back up to the Global Positioning System, Loran operations ceased on Feb. 8, 2010 in U.S. waters.  

So like a symphony player lovingly putting away their instrument after a performance, Loran station crews across the Coast Guard are packing away the equipment that has reliably and continually played for over 67-years.

“This is the best job in the Coast Guard,” said Senior Chief Petty Officer James Maciejewski, Officer in Charge of Coast Guard Loran Station Tok, at the station’s signal termination ceremony.  “This is a sad day, I am going to miss this place, the people of Tok, my crew and most of all the job.”

“The history of Loran is the history of Guardians serving in some of the most remote locations and harshest environments on the Earth,” said Adm. Thad Allen, Coast Guard commandant in his official blog, iCommandant.  “We will always recognize those who have served at Loran Stations with admiration and gratitude.”