Welp, another day, another military plane appears to have drawn another dick in the sky.
Two of them, actually, and we kinda want to say that these two — sketched by a Coast Guard HC-130J over the Pacific Ocean Monday night — indicate that military sky drawings of male genitalia are getting “better,” but then we’d be calling them a good thing, and we aren’t doing that.
“Funnier,” maybe. Definitely more detailed.
Coast Guard officials did not directly confirm that the flight path was specifically flown to create the image, but an official told Task & Purpose the service is reviewing the flight.
“We are aware of the situation,” a Coast Guard spokesperson said in a statement texted to Task & Purpose. “The Coast Guard holds its aircrews to the highest standards and we find this absolutely unacceptable. This action holds zero operational value. We are looking into the incident and will hold the responsible personnel accountable.”
Here’s what we know.
A four-hour flight
On Monday night, a Coast Guard HC-130J, tail number CGNR 2014, took off from Long Beach Airport — also known as Daughtery Field — for a flight that would last a little over four hours.
The plane’s path was captured on flight tracking sites that recorded the aircraft’s route far off the Pacific coast of Mexico.
First spotted by the Coast Guard-focused Reddit community, the crew flew a path that cut west off San Clemente Island and headed south for about 200 miles over the open waters of the Pacific.
Nautical twilight ended just after the plane took off, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory, but Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles confirms a bright moon, more than half-full, was up for the entire flight. As the crew flew along 2,000 feet above the empty ocean, lit only by stars and lazy moonlight, maybe they thought no one was watching.
Unfortunately, the flight tracking system known as ADS-B, and the civilian websites that follow it, never looks away.
About 200 miles south of Los Angeles, the crew turned east and began a lazy figure eight, followed by a five-mile race-track pattern. Then, a little farther east, the crew appeared to string together about a dozen turns in a row, creating three tracks in the sky — and on the watching flight tracker — that are difficult not to notice.
The identity of the crew is unknown and likely will remain so, but the actual aircraft is identified in the flight data as CGNR 2014, an almost brand-new plane that’s already been on some notable missions. The Coast Guard took delivery of the HC-130J in 2022, making it one of the Coast Guard’s newer long-range search and cargo aircraft. According to a Department of Defense photo archive and news reports, CGNR 2014 is assigned to Barbers Point, Hawaii, and responded to both the wildfires in Maui and delivered 80,000 lbs of relief supplies to Vanuatu after Tropical Cyclone Lola in November 2023.
A short history of military sky ‘art’
This has happened before.
On Nov. 16, 2017, residents of Okanagan, Washington looked up to a penis in the sky, etched by the contrails of a Navy EA-18G Growler from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Washington.
The Navy’s chief admiral for aviation was not amused.
“The American people rightfully expect that those who wear the Wings of Gold exhibit a level of maturity commensurate with the missions and aircraft with which they’ve been entrusted,” said Vice Admiral Mike Shoemaker, Chief of Naval Air Operations. “Sophomoric and immature antics of a sexual nature have no place in Naval aviation today.”
Two Marines in a T-34 trainer did it in 2018. Then, in 2022, an Air Force tanker appeared to draw one in Syria, but officials swore it was just normal flight patterns — a reasonable defense for the always-circling tanker crews.
And let’s not act like this is something American aviators invented — Roman soldiers drew them on Hadrian’s Wall.
UPDATE: 7/9/2025; This story has been updated with a statement from the Coast Guard.
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