Kodiak was a Navy creation. Construction began in September 1939, and Naval Air Station Kodiak was commissioned on 15 June 1941, months before Pearl Harbor. Its PBY Catalina patrol squadrons were part of the war in the North Pacific, and in 1943 the station supported the campaign to retake the Aleutian Islands. The wartime base was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark on 4 February 1985.

The Coast Guard came in small. On 17 April 1947 it commissioned an air detachment at the Navy base with a single PBY Catalina, seven pilots and thirty enlisted men — the same year detachments opened at San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Navy redesignated its installation Naval Station Kodiak in October 1950 and stayed until 1972, when the base passed to the Coast Guard; Coast Guard Base Kodiak was formally established on 25 April 1972. Wikipedia gives the base 3,000 acres, and the air station 85 officers and 517 enlisted personnel.

Wikipedia puts Kodiak’s area of responsibility at about 4,000,000 square miles, taking in the Gulf of Alaska, Bristol Bay, the Bering Sea and Alaska’s Pacific coast. To work it, the station flies the full range of Coast Guard search aircraft: HC-130J Hercules for long-range search and patrol, MH-60T Jayhawks for long-range rescue, and MH-65 Dolphins for shorter-range rescue.

The Hercules fleet is the newest. CG-9’s HC-130J page, updated in 2026, names Kodiak among the stations operating the J model; the fleet passed 100,000 flight hours on 8 July 2025. The helicopters are in transition: the Coast Guard plans an all-MH-60 force, and the MH-65 is due to be phased out, in fiscal 2035–2039 according to its programme office or by the early 2040s according to the MH-60T programme.

The station flies from Kodiak Airport, whose three runways are owned by the Alaska Department of Transportation. The longest, 8/26, is 7,534 feet (2,296 m); 11/29 and 1/19 are each about 5,000–5,400 feet. FAA data note jet starting units on the field available to the Coast Guard only.

Kodiak was not the Coast Guard’s first foothold in Alaska. The Coast Guard Aviation Association records an air detachment at Annette Island, in the far south-east of the territory, from 1944; the station was later moved to Sitka, which is still an air station today. The Kodiak detachment followed in 1947, the same year as San Juan, as the service spread its postwar search and rescue network across the oceans; by the mid-1950s Coast Guard aviation had 127 aircraft at 22 air stations and detachments, from Sangley Point in the Philippines to San Juan.

Kodiak’s aircraft have followed the service’s changes, from the single Catalina of 1947 to the Hercules, which first reached the Coast Guard in 1959, and to today’s mix of HC-130Js and two helicopter types. The next change is already set: the Coast Guard plans to convert eight Dolphin stations to the MH-60T with 36 aircraft it will produce itself, the first conversion having begun in summer 2024, and to retire the MH-65 by the late 2030s or early 2040s.

On 8 December 2004 the bulk carrier Selendang Ayu ran aground at 17:05 off Unalaska Island in the Aleutians. Two HH-60J Jayhawks from Kodiak were on scene. The first winched nine crew from the deck and flew them to the cutter Alex Haley; the second took off nine more and flew them ashore.

At about 18:15, during a further hoist, a wave broke over the ship’s bow and engulfed the helicopter in spray. Both engines flamed out from water ingestion, and the Jayhawk crashed into the sea and sank. Six of the ship’s crew who had been lifted aboard were killed; three of the helicopter’s people were rescued by another aircraft. The wreck spilled about 350,000 US gallons of fuel oil and diesel into the Aleutians.