Cove alum named Coast Guard’s Exceptional Pilot of the Year
Fri, 2016-07-08 05:00
News Staff
By CHUCK TAYLOR
Cove Leader-Press
Eric Oliphant, a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Coast Guard and member of the Copperas Cove High School class of 1991, has been named the United States Coast Guard’s Exceptional Pilot of the Year.
Currently in his 10th year with the USCG, he was nominated and won the Exceptional Pilot of the Year award for his performance as a pilot, especially during a February 14 rescue in very high seas off the coast of North Carolina. He and his crew battled 70 mph winds and 20-to 30-foot seas in a rescue which saved four lives from the sailing vessel Trio.
In Oliphant’s nomination, Capt. R.S. Craig of the Elizabeth City Air Station, called Oliphant the “go-to pilot for challenging operational missions.”
In addition to the February rescue operation, Oliphant commanded medevac missions, saving critically ill patients on the Coast Guard Cutter Harriet Lane, the motor vessel Princess Anne, as well as the vessel Houston Express.
Additionally, Oliphant led a 16-day deployment “in support of alien migrant operations and counter-drug missions off the coast of Haiti and throughout the Caribbean, mitigating logistical challenges while maintaining the utmost in flexibility during several changes to mission tasking.” He has also worked with the United States Secret Service for a two-day Presidential security mission along with a fourday mission during the United States papal visit of Pope Francis. In the past, Oliphant has also flown with his crew during Hurricane Ike, rescuing 24 people in the Houston (Galveston) area.
Oliphant is also a unit flight examiner and has been “consistently rated as one of our best instructors by those he teaches and is highly regarded for his extensive knowledge and vast helicopter experience.”
Craig called Oliphant the epitome of what all aviators aspire to be.
When not flying, his duties involve commanding the maintenance division of rotor wing aircraft as the primary maintenance test pilot and the rotary wing engineering officer. With his 20 years of cumulative service in the Marines and the Coast Guard, Oliphant hasn’t decided whether to remain in the service or possibly fly helicopters which serve the oil rigs on the Gulf of Mexico.
During his years in Copperas Cove, Oliphant attended Hattie Halstead Elementary and graduated from Copperas Cove High School. He then went on to Texas A&M University where he met his wife, graduated and joined the U.S. Marine Corps as an officer. He spent 10 years with the Corps and then transferred to the U.S. Coast Guard. Oliphant moved over to the Coast Guard because that would allow him to spend more time at duty stations rather than the rapid redeployment that the Marines required.
Oliphant is currently stationed at Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and he and his family live up the road in Chesapeake, Va. He has been married for 20 years and has a 16-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son.