I was stationed at the San Francisco International Airport from early 71 till roughly mid 1973. It was a Coast Guard Air Station. We had 4 helo's plus C-130 and Hu16 fixed wing. We always maintained a ready crew for a helo and a C-130, but the helo's usually got the call when there was a crash, boat in trouble, accident, etc. because it made it possible to retrieve remains or injured people quicker than could otherwise be accomplished.
I was called a plan captain on the helo's. The 1409 was my aircraft. The title just meant you were capable of working on/repairing most anything on the bird other than electronics. They wanted this capability in case there were mechanical issues that forced you down somewhere. Then they could just send you parts to hopefully effect repairs and get going again. A buddy of mine, named Walt, was a plane captain on a different helo.
The ready crews would rotate of course, around the clock. Poor Walt got more than his share of gruesome calls. Two in particular stuck with me: a small commuter passenger plane took off from the coast up near the border with Oregon, had trouble, clipped a large smokestack and then cartwheeled into the ocean. Walt was there for a day plus, retrieving body parts from the ocean.
His second one was a small plane that took off in the bay area and crashed into the water shortly after. Suffice it to say the pilot got sliced and diced by the control panel. Poor Walt was a real quiet, sincere, easy going guy. These two really affected him. He was quite rattled for a long time after.
My worst was a guy, his wife and 4 kids (small kids sitting on the laps of the bigger ones in the back seat) took off late evening from the Bay area heading East, no flight plan, the pilot not IFR rated. They flew into the side of a mountain in the dark. The two bigger kids had the smaller ones absorb much of the impact and thus were somehow able to find their way down the mountain in the middle of the night to get help. We got called to haul everyone off the mountain. The terrain was so steep we couldn't even land.
The plan hit so hard the engine was between the two front seats. The vertical stabilizer had swung up in an arc and punctured the cabin ceiling. Had those two kids not done what they did I don't think they'd have even found the plane for weeks, since they had no idea where the clown was heading.
I often though we should have left the guy up there. You can't fix stupid.