HC-1 Fleet Angel Rescue

HC-1 "Fleet Angels" (Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 1), Combat SAR · USN · 1965-1975

The Navy's first helicopter squadron — established as HU-1 at NAS Lakehurst on 1 April 1948 and redesignated Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 1 on 1 July 1965 — flew rescue from Ream Field, Imperial Beach, and from any deck the fleet could offer. Between 1965 and 1967 the Fleet Angels pushed thirteen combat search-and-rescue detachments into the Gulf of Tonkin, their Kaman UH-2 Seasprites riding destroyers and carriers to pluck downed aviators out of the water and from behind enemy lines, work that earned the squadron a Presidential Unit Citation. This rescue patch renders the mission literally: a hand out of the clouds lifting a survivor from the sea while his aircraft burns on the horizon, under the motto A PUGILLO MARIS — "from the grasp of the sea." Across forty-six years the Angels logged more than 1,680 rescues before disestablishing on 29 April 1994.