The HU-25 Falcon on Display in Warrenton, and the Coast Guard Aircraft That Fly the North Coast Today
Photo: Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Coast Guard. 3/1/2003 / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Coast Guard Sector Columbia River, at the Astoria Regional Airport in Warrenton, keeps a reminder of an earlier era of Coast Guard aviation. A retired HU-25 Falcon jet was flown there on its final flight in June 2013 to be preserved on display.
A jet for searching the ocean
The HU-25 Guardian, known in service as the Falcon, was a militarized version of the Dassault Falcon 20 business jet. The Coast Guard began flying it in the early 1980s. The Falcon was fast and could cover large areas of ocean quickly, so it was used for:
- Search and rescue, finding vessels or people in the water and dropping rafts and pumps
- Law enforcement and fisheries patrols, including spotting illegal fishing and drug smuggling
- Pollution surveillance; some versions carried sensors that could detect oil on the water
- Medical transport and other missions
The jet displayed in Warrenton spent much of its career at Air Station Cape Cod in Massachusetts, where it flew Atlantic missions for decades.
Why the Falcons were retired
By the 2010s, the Falcons were old and expensive to keep flying. The Coast Guard replaced them with turboprop aircraft such as the HC-144 Ocean Sentry and, later, the HC-27J Spartan. These planes fly slower but can stay in the air longer and burn far less fuel, which matters on long patrols. The last operational Falcon was retired in a ceremony at Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas, in September 2014, after 32 years of Coast Guard service.
What flies on the North Coast now
Air Station Astoria has operated from the airport in Warrenton since the 1960s and is one of the busiest search-and-rescue air stations on the West Coast. It flies the MH-60T Jayhawk helicopter, a medium-range aircraft built for:
- Hoisting people from boats, beaches, cliffs and the water
- Medical evacuations from vessels offshore
- Searching the Columbia River bar, the coast and the lower river
Air Station Astoria crews work with Coast Guard boat stations such as Station Cape Disappointment across the river in Washington, which runs the service’s National Motor Lifeboat School, and with local fire, sheriff’s and ocean-rescue teams.
Seeing Coast Guard history on the coast
The Falcon is on Coast Guard property, so public access depends on the sector’s rules and events. Visitors can learn about Coast Guard and maritime rescue history at the Columbia River Maritime Museum on the Astoria waterfront.
Sources: U.S. Coast Guard Aviation History (Coast Guard Historian’s Office), HU-25 Guardian; U.S. Coast Guard District 13 and Sector Columbia River; Columbia River Maritime Museum.
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