While the Coast Guards many battles at sea in the War on Drugs are widely known, its participation in the ground offensive is not. Indeed, the Guard didnt just send its cutters to interdict narcotics-laden vessels attempting to bring their illicit cargo into Uncle Sams territorial waters, it sent ground troops to foreign lands to train their forces and, when necessary, directly engage the enemy. But to create the type of force needed was no small task and would not be without tribulation, both from within and outside the organization. The road traveled to complete the mission was laden with obstacles. This is not a story about the Coast Guard you know, or think you know. Rather, this is a story about the other side, the side that history nearly forgot; not the standard, but the antithesis of standard. It is a story that will undoubtedly make even the most seasoned Coast Guardsmen question their understanding of the organization to which they belong. To be sure, This is not your fathers Coast Guard.

Located a few miles north from the border of the United States and Mexico, the U.S. Coast Guard has maintained a continual presence in San Diego since 1935. It was in May of that year that a single air detachment, led by Cdr. Elmer F. Stone, began operating out of a commercial hangar at Lindbergh Field. From those humble beginnings, a base was constructed on 23 acres of tidelands adjacent to the airstrip and eventually formed into Sector San Diego. Through the years, their units and missions have evolved as new technology and changing world events dictated new missions for the Coast Guard. Today Coast Guard Sector San Diego stands as a model of interagency cooperation for the Department of Homeland Security as the Coast Guard works with other federal agencies to protect San Diego's maritime domain.

Since its original printing in 2002, Pub 1 has served as the Coast Guard's capstone doctrinal publication. It defines its principles and culture. It describes its history, missions, purpose, and ethos. It communicates who and what the Coast Guard is and how it accomplishes its missions. This May 2009 update includes data on roles and missions, forces, historic evolution, and values.

At home and overseas, the United States Coast Guard served a variety of vital functions in World War II, providing service that has been too little recognized in histories of the war. Teaming up with other international forces, the Coast Guard provided crewmembers for Navy and Army vessels as well as its own, carried troops, food, and military supplies overseas, and landed Marine and Army units on distant and dangerous shores. This thorough history details those and other important missions, which included combat engagement with submarines and kamikaze planes, and typhoons. On the home front, port security missions involving search and rescue, fire fighting, explosives, espionage and sabotage presented their own unique dangers and challenges.

This collection of essays, written by some of the foremost historians in the field of Coast Guard history, highlights the wartime roles played by the United States’ oldest federal maritime service, from its inception through the last decade of the twentieth century. The Fighting Coast Guard features three distinct sections: “Beginnings,” which includes a short overview of the US Revenue Cutter Service (the USCG’s primary forerunner, established in 1790) and two chapters on World War I; “Conflagration,” the role of the USCG during the World War II era; and “The Cold War and Beyond,” an assessment of the Coast Guard’s participation in the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, and the Persian Gulf War of 1991. The Fighting Coast Guard is a significant contribution to the limited historiography of the Coast Guard and a critical analysis of various wartime roles undertaken by the Coast Guard during America’s twentieth-century conflicts. Because the Coast Guard operated as part of the Department of the Navy during the two world wars, its service and history is often overlooked or envoloped by the larger service, while the USCG’s limited participation in cold and hot wars since 1945 is often ignored altogether. This anthology provides readers with a solid overview while highlighting some of the service’s most important contributions as a combatant force. This definitive study of the role of the US Coast Guard in wartime, from its modern inception in 1915 through the end of the twentieth century, is long overdue and will shed new light on America’s smallest military service.