As all good sea stories should start, This ain't no shit!

Back in the 80's the drug war was in full swing. I was deployed to GITMO in an HU-25 Guardian. AKA the Falcon or pocket-rocket. It was a sleek business jet that was reconfigured for Coast Guard use. It was fast, it was new, had a modern avionics package, and brought the Coast Guard into the jet age. And it was just plain fun to fly.

We were also teamed up with a C-130 that was fitted with Side Looking RADAR (SLAR). We were a hunter-killer team looking for, and identifying, drug boats. The way this worked was the C-130 would fly straight and level (for the SLAR to work effectively), would identify targets of interest, and pass their position to us in the Falcon. We would fly to them, drop down to 50 feet or so, and look for telltale signs of druggies. If the target fit the profile, we would divert surface units to intercept and board. Then on to the next target. The whole process was pretty slick and worked well. Most of the time.

Now one of the unique things about Coast Guard aviation is that we are fixers and flyers. For instance, when on the ground, I worked as an Aviation Electronics Technician who worked on the avionics components in the Falcon. And since the Falcons were brand new and our air station was the first to get the brand-new operational aircraft, most of them had "bugs" in them. While fixing them, we became experts on the systems.

While flying, I was an aircrewman qualified as the Avionicsman who ran the sleek and powerful RADAR and acted as sorta the navigator as well as radioman. My position in the reconfigured jet sat sideways in the rear of the cargo department. What was nice about sitting sideways was that if I looked just to the left of the RADAR panel, I could look out the window at the short close together waves (important later).

Enough background and on to the story. This particular morning, we were pretty bored, as there were few targets, and we were fairly far out in front of the C-130. With time on our hands, the Pilot in Command (PIC) was our Executive Officer which is the number 2 in the Chain of Command under the Commanding Officer. We'll call him something unique for this story, XO. The time was around 0600 on this bright and sunny Carribean day.

XO: Radio, any interesting big targets out there?

Me: One, I passed him the vector and distance.

As luck would have it, it was a cruise liner. Our first pass was around 300 feet. The XO said he wanted to do a low pass to say hello and wave the flag.

Other Crewman: You do realize they are shooting skeet off the fantail, Right? (the second pass was briefed that we would fly at 100 feet back to front.)

XO: Its OK they will see us coming and hold their fire.

We go around and line up at 100 feet for the pass, rear to forward of the Cruise Liner.

At O-dark-thirty (For emphasis-the sun was out) this guy flies by and says "Good Morning, Good Morning from the US Coast Guard" through our 600-watt exterior loudspeakers. (Those poor folks that stayed up late enjoying the night life had an unexpected early wake up.)

About that time, something caught my attention to the left. I look out the window and the waves are high and big gaps are between them. I quickly switched from the navigation page on the nav system (I don't remember the correct name) to the Present Position page. My vision locked on the altitude readout. 50 feet, 45 feet.

Me: "ALTITUDE< ALTITUDE< ALTITUDE!!!!!"

30 feet, 25 feet. I locked my seat belt harness. 20 feet. I hear full power being ramped up on the engines. Oh Shit Oh shit Oh shit!!! 15 feet.

We pitched up and the altitude reading read out 30, 40, 50... We leveled out at 200 feet. It was awfully quiet for the next few minutes as we went back to where we were supposed to be.

Then it started. The tense silence was broken when the XO said that it actually wasn't that close. I'm thinking to myself, WTF? 15 feet and descending at 200 knots isn't close? The XO went on with some BS that the readout in the nav system is connected to the barometric altimeter (BARALT) system. Watch the altitude, and he spun the BARALT setting up and down.

The altitude readout spun up and down with it, but amazingly settled back at 200 feet. He was full of shit but there wasn't the place to call him out and the rest of the day, and deployment, went by the book.

But once back at Homeplate, I paid an immediate visit to the Flight Safety Officer.

I guess that day Just wasn't the day my number was up.