Groton — Ten area Civil Air Patrol members have been recognized for their participation in Homeland Security missions.

Each of them have been awarded the Civil Air Patrol's Homeland Security Ribbon which requires completion of at least 10 sorties. Together, they have flown about 75 mission and accumulated 800 man-hours of flight time. Most of the flights have been Long Island Sound Patrols (LISP).

The awardees are all members of the Thames River Composite Squadron based at the Groton-New London Airport.

The awardees are Lt. Col. Richard Doucette, Maj. Keith Neilson, and Capt. Edward Miller from East Lyme, Salem's Lt. Col. Thomas Wisehart and Maj. Scott Farley, Lt. Col. Lawrence Kinch from Gales Ferry, Ledyard's Lt. Col. John deAndrade, Maj. Willi Lintelmann from Old Saybrook, Maj. Paul Noniewicz, Lyme, and Lt. Col. Stephen Rocketto, an Oakdale resident.

The LISP program is sponsored by the Connecticut Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security and flown in cooperation with the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Long Island Sound. Patrols are flown throughout the summer boating season and cover Long Island Sound from Fishers Island to Bridgeport, the Connecticut River south of Goodspeed, and the Thames River.

The air crews monitor the marine traffic radio, search for distressed boats, and examine bridges and the Riverhead Oil Terminal on the north shore of Long Island. The patrol utilizes Cessna 182 Skylanes equipped with VHF and FM radios, airborne camera equipment, and radio direction finders. Crews consist of a Mission Pilot, an Observer responsible for navigation and radio communications with the Coast Guard, and a Scanner who operates the cameras.

Missions depart from Groton during peak boating times and generally run for around three hours. Depending upon the season and the weather, as many as five flights might be flown on a holiday weekend. During the course of these missions, the Thames River fliers have rendered aid to the Coast Guard in identifying boats in trouble, spotted floating debris whales, and shore fires, and reported the illegal pumping of bilges.

Over the past several years, the squadron has also supplied hurricane damage photographs for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and flown National Weather Service meteorologists to assess storm damage, coopperated with State and Federal law enforcement agencies in counter-drug operations, and located emergency service beacons which have been inadverdently activated.

Civil Air Patrol, the official auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force, is a nonprofit organization with 60,000 members nationwide. CAP, in its Air Force auxiliary role, performs 90 percent of continental U.S. inland search and rescue missions as tasked by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center and was credited by the AFRCC with saving 75 lives a year. Its volunteers also perform homeland security, disaster relief and counter-drug missions at the request of federal, state and local agencies.

The members play a leading role in aerospace education and serve as mentors to more than 24,000 young people currently participating in CAP cadet programs. CAP has been performing missions for America for more than 70 years.