East

East. . , “During World Wars I and II, New York City and the Port of New York comprised the nation’s largest center of Coast Guard operations. Port Security specialists guarded the arrival and departure of millions of troops and thousands of tons of war material, troop supplies and munitions. Merchant convoys were escorted across the Atlantic and along the Eastern Seaboard by Coast Guard cutters homeported in New York harbor such as the Tampa, Seneca, and Campbell. The ‘Mosquito Fleet’ of small Coast Guard and Coast Guard Reserve vessels, many of them converted private yachts, conducted anti-submarine patrols in the seaward approaches to the harbor. , During World War II, the Manhattan Beach Training Center, located in Brooklyn, was the largest Coast Guard basic training camp in the nation. The Brooklyn-built 83-foot ‘matchbox fleet’ of Rescue Flotilla No. 1 provided search-and-rescue operations during the invasion of Normandy, saving hundreds of allied soldiers from the deadly inshore waters.”