While bopping around the Gulfport harbor as I often do last week, I saw this bad boy spinning down in the public parking lot next to USCG Station Gulfport, the one typically full of boat trailers on the weekend.
Not that typical…
On closer look, it is an MH-60T Jayhawk, the Coast Guard’s big SAR bird. As only 42 are around, they are pretty rare compared to the more commonly encountered MH-65 Dolphin.
Getting closer still, she sports a “New Orleans” assignment banner on her cowling as well as a gold Fleur de Lis and “Alvin Callender Field” homebase on her hatch. Her number is 6047.
Of interest, of the 42 MH-60Ts on the USCG’s inventory, 39 are converted HH-60J Jayhawk rescue birds, and three are former Navy SH-60F Oceanhawks that were given to the Coast Guard to cover attrition.
Speaking of which, the big Sikorsky we see above was SN 70-1804/ Bu.No 164615, an S-70B-4 (SH-60F) built in 1995. She was seen extensively in HS-11 “Dragonslayers” livery (code AB-612) over the years including deployments with USS Enterprise and USS Theodore Rosevelt until she was converted and refreshed in 2016 to a Jayhawk.
As for U.S. Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans, which was established in 1955 to help close the gap between Mobile and Houston after the old USCG seaplane base at Biloxi was shut down, they have been an all-Dolphin unit for some 35 years. In fact, they were the first operational HH-65 unit in the Coast Guard, and had as many as five of them assigned, putting in amazing work during Katrina.
6047 is the NOLA’s first MH-65 as the air station last year began transitioning from the MH-65D Dolphin to the Jayhawk, “which will improve the Coast Guard’s operational capabilities along the Gulf Coast in support of Search and Rescue (SAR), Catastrophic Incident SAR, Marine Transportation System, and the offshore maritime environment.”
