(High Endurance Cutter Campbell (W-32) on Caribbean migrant patrol. Photo USCG).

God bless the Coasties- there is not a finer bunch of Americans anywhere. We are blessed to have their presence here in Traverse City. My respect for them began when we got rescued in a 36ft Columbia yacht when we had run out of wind and good ideas, and fried the oil line on our engine. That was off Gloucester, Mass, more years ago than I care to remember.

The realization came again a few years back when I stood with some State Department people on a dock in Port Au Prince, Haiti, watching the Coast Guard High-endurance Cutter Campbell disembark 451 undocumented migrants rescued at sea, or detained at GTMO. This was the second largest group of returnees to be landed since 1992, and they packed the weather-decks of the white-hulled ship.

The Haitians looked passive, accepting their fate. The debarkation was conducted in an orderly manner under the watchful eyes of burly Haitian Port Captain Max Paul and approximately fifty loitering “Attaches.” One of them was an irritating individual who persisted in coming up inside my comfort zone to make sawing motions with his hand under his neck, grinning with a sickeningly macabre slack jaw.

I stood with the U.S. Coast Guard liaison officer to the Port Captain. He knew all the Haitian officials and who the murderers were. He said he got Christmas cards from some of them. He lived in this world, and the crew of the good ship Campbell came here, mostly unarmed, and unafraid, and did their duty well. We can be proud of our Coast Guard- they are shot at more than the Navy most days.

Scattered around the world are little parts of America, operating day and night. Some are little ships, like Campbell. Some are big ones, with a population the size of a small city. I remember a Christmas a long time ago, when the world was young and I was a sailor on a bird-farm. We had been gone for a long time, and had no idea when we would return to our homeport. The Admiral who ran the show decided we needed a morale boost, and authorized an air-show for the entertainment of the crew. I was selected from a small cast of aspirants to do the narration from the tower.

It was cold in the Arabian Sea, and the wind from the North brought a fine dusting of Iranian sand to the flight deck. The airplanes made tracks through it on the black non-skid surface of the flight deck. It reminded me of home, and the look of the blacktop after the first trace of snow in the winter.

The sea was choppy and white capped, the bow was coming around into the wind as Midway prepared to launch aircraft. The Air Group Operations officer turned to me and said: “It’s going to be a wonderful show. The Russian tattle-tale is in the landing pattern, the starboard catapult is down, and the weather is disintegrating.” He smiled his wolfish Fighter Pilot smile. “What could go wrong?”

(Natya MSF M-61conducting tattle-tale surveillance of an American Carrier Battle Group. The fleet minesweeper was present to provide targeting information for Soviet Long-Range Aviation bombers. They would be the first casualties of war at sea. Photo USN).

The little Natya-class Russian (Project 266M) appeared out of the haze and passed astern. We watched the airborne four-engine representatives of the Global Communist Conspiracy disappear to the north into the sand cloud. Somewhere up above our fighters patrolled on their wings. The broken catapult had slowed the launch. We had twenty aircraft to get airborne, and there was a frantic burst of activity on the flight deck to accomplish the mission. Heavily armed aircraft trundled forward, launch bars attached, salutes exchanged between the Shooter and the Pilot, and then they were gone with roar of jet engines, the slam of the catapult shuttle against the water break and a cloud of oily steam.

(IL-38 May aircraft conducts a surveillance pass on USS Midway (CV-41) in the North Arabian Sea, 1979. Photo USN).

When the last aircraft was gone, the flight deck crew left their stations, removed their float-coats and helmets, and formed a long line down the port side of the ship to watch the show. The yellow, red, green, brown and purple of their jerseys is intended to let an observer know instantly what their job’s are: Ops, Ordnance, Catapult/arresting gear, Maintenance, fuels. Now, casually arrayed along the deck, the random colors gave an almost festive holiday air.

I got in the Air Boss’s seat and started to read the introduction to the show, and then looked up to see four medium bombers saunter past in a diamond formation, followed closely by the in-flight refueling demonstration. The light-attack and fighter diamonds were not far behind. “There it is!” I said into the microphone. My words reverberated across the flight deck “The entire first half of the airshow for your viewing pleasure!”

The KA-6 tanker was about four seconds in lag pursuit of the bombers, and the re-fueling basket was a stately thirty feet in front of electronic warfare aircraft, who was frantically trying to catch up. I didn’t have time to comment, though, as the fighters and the light bombers roared on by. I threw a dozen pages of the script in the trash and relaxed. The show was so out of phase that the words didn’t matter.

The crew didn’t seem to mind. They just wanted to see their airplanes doing their thing, and just for a moment play the carefree tourist. For a moment, they are free.

Suddenly a haze-grey Phantom dropped out of the sand loud astern, driving very low and slow, hook down, nose cocked up, flaps trailing, right on the edge of a stall. His high-speed partner was still lost in the haze, but suddenly broke out, no drop tank, clean as a whistle and moving at about warp eight.

The slick F-4 grew from speck to real airplane, roaring toward us at 550 knots, then 650 and then amidships BOOM he leaves trans-sonic, shattering the sound barrier close aboard with a visceral impact like a punch to the gut. He passed under the slow Phantom and pulled hard; up he goes, speed of heat, opening the fuel dumps and spiraling straight up, leaving a delicate sugar-candy swirl as he vanished vertically into the sand.

I can still hear the cheers and shouts of delight even through the heavy glass of the Tower and across the years. It was a magic moment in an endless series of gray days. And then the Boss took his seat again. “I need all hands in complete flight deck uniform! I need a ready deck! We’ve got airplanes to recover!”

Happy Holidays, guys and girls. Wherever you are underway.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303