A common sight over Rio Linda, as the mighty USCG HC-130 make’s it’s downwind leg toward landing at McClellan Field. McClellan is the home of USGC Air Station Sacramento, where they fly the HC-130 aircraft on Search and Rescue(SAR), Law Enforcement, and Logistics missions, from south to the equator, west to Hawaii, and north to Alaska.
Just over a year ago, USCG Air Station Sacramento lost an HC-130 in a midair collision with a U.S. Marine Corps Bell AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter near San Clemente island. There were two crewmen aboard the Marine training flight. The helicopter crew was looking for a missing boater 50 miles off the Southern California coast. All nine members of the military perished.
- High Flight
- Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
- And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
- Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
- of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
- You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
- High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
- I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
- My eager craft thro’ footless halls of air….
- Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
- I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
- Where never lark nor even eagle flew—
- And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
- The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
- Photo by Tom McGarry
- Poem by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
