A Caribbean Caper with Steel Band Background Music
The odds that LT C.B. Scott Jones could avoid a takedown by Rear Admiral Dan Gallery were very low. After all, the Admiral had been on the 1920 U.S. Olympic wresting team, and if he wanted to, could have ordered Jones to pin himself to shorten the match. As is was, Jones was standing at attention in front of the Admiral’s Chief-of-Staff, and had just been told that the Admiral wanted to court martial him for upsetting his Steel Band Diplomacy in the Caribbean.
Admiral Gallery’s storied career included capturing the German submarine U-505 in WWII. This hero was on his final active duty tour as Commandant of the Tenth Naval District in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and had turned his full energy to building goodwill in the Caribbean by the touring U.S. Navy Steel Band that he had ordered into existence. With training in Trinidad and Tobago, the navy steel drummers were a great hit and even played the White House. .
Home based at NAS Jacksonville, VP-18 maintained a three aircraft P2V Detachment at NAS Roosevelt Roads. The O-in-C of this detachment was a PPC qualified Lieutenant. Tours were a comfortable three weeks. My policy was to allow my crew to select any destination in the Caribbean when we were not the alert or standby aircraft. This gave us an opportunity to become familiar with the islands and airfields in our operating area. We had little knowledge about or interest in Admiral Gallery’s Steel Band. Our job was to hunt submarines, not to limbo.
A favorite crew destination, for all the usual reasons, was Port au Prince, Haiti. Even in the late 1950s, Haiti was the poor man of the Caribbean, and certainly no match economically or militarily for its Hispaniola neighbor, the Dominican Republic, headed by dictator Molina Trujillo. From time to time, Dominican exiles living in Cuba and supported by Fidel Castro, would attempt to invade the Dominican Republic to depose Trujillo. One such effort took place on June 14, 1959. That was crushed, and Trujillo began a major modernization program for his military, especially his Air Force that already included over thirty De Haviland Vampire jet fighter/bombers, and over forty
F-51D Mustang fighters. Trujillo kept his military on high alert, anticipating another rebel invasion attempt.
Filing a VFR flight plan to Port au Prince airport was routine. NOTAMs were checked, weather was clear, and the P2V-7 launched from Roosevelt Roads into a mini adventure that would end up with LT Jones on the carpet with Admiral Gallery.
With one crewmember left at the airport to assure security of the aircraft at Port au Prince, the rest of the crew shopped for treasures in town. Two hours later, Jones filed another VFR flight plan for the return trip to Roosevelt Roads. In those days, flight planning support at Port au Prince was minimal in the extreme. You first had to locate someone interested in your departure who would then try to locate a form for you to fill out and sign.
Our departure was on a designated airway that crossed approximately 25 miles of Haiti, and then 60 miles of Dominican real estate before hitting the coastline. Almost exactly at the coastline, an F-51 made a pass at us and returned to fly wing on our port side. With a closed fist, the pilot signaled a series of vertical circles with his right hand. The message was well understood, “lower your landing gear and follow me to a landing.” I briefed my excited crew about what was going on, and told them that we were not going to comply with this order. Firing up our two jets, I advanced all four engines to take off power settings; and started a descent from 5,000 to 200 feet over the water. The F-51 pilot’s response was to pickle off several hundred 50-caliber rounds from his tight wing position. I came up on Guard channel, and in Spanish asked him what was going on? There was no radio reply. I then told him and anyone else up on Guard that we were over international water and proceeding to Roosevelt Roads. I told the Co Pilot to call San Juan flight control on HF and report our position and to tell them that a Dominican fighter aircraft was harassing us. The F-51 pealed off and the moment of truth was at hand.
I told the crew to buckle in tightly, as I was going to be taking evasive action. As we all know, the P2V-7 is not configured for air-to-air combat, and the pilot cannot get a good view of his Six-O’clock position. We were not going to outrun an F-51, and now at 200 feet and well over 200 knots, it was a bumpy ride. I made frequent turns to check the most likely attack position, but the F-51 never appeared again.
However, before we could relax a pucker, a Vampire jet bounced us. No rounds were fired, and we watched him climb and head to the beach. That message was clear; it was a “gotcha” tag, a bloodless coup.
Less than two hours later we landed at Roosevelt Roads, where orders were waiting for me to proceed immediately to San Juan. As I was driving to San Juan in the Detachment’s pickup, I realized that I had successfully run a risky bluff with a crew that had never been in combat. I had experienced two Korean cruises in VF-191, flying off the USS Princeton, and would have loved to have turned with the two fighter jocks that ruined our day. I imagine they were disappointed to have been called off the attack, or were frustrated, but disciplined, by rules of engagement with U.S. operational aircraft.
After the Chief of Staff told me that the issue was the Steel Band and goodwill in the Caribbean, I waited for the obvious question. “Why the hell did you place your crew at risk, and a possible incident that could have been avoided?” I only had one card to play; there was a very special piece of ASW equipment aboard my aircraft. We had the prototype of an advanced Julie-Jezebel acoustic search and echo-ranging gear, the only one on the East coast. I told the Captain that I felt obliged to protect that system even to the point of going down with it.
He eyed me carefully, and then played his trump card, “But you ignored the NOTAM that told you the airway you took was closed, and that any aircraft that violated Dominican airspace would be intercepted.” I replied that no such NOTAM was available at NAS Roosevelt Roads when I filed for the flight to Port au Prince. He said that he had been assured that the classified NOTAM existed. I replied that I wish someone had done their job and shown it to me. The Captain asked again, “You were not shown the classified NOTAM?” I assured him that was the case. Without a smile he dismissed me with, “I’ll talk to the Admiral, but you don’t have to worry about a court martial.”
The Caribbean was beautiful and calm that day, but sometimes the sea state isn’t the story, and people do what people do. On that day we all walked away with a special life experience to share. That’s my story, except for the following postscript.
The June 1959 invasion shook up Trujillo. He recognized the vulnerability of a nighttime landing on his north shore. He had spent his money on an Air Force that had no nighttime reconnaissance capability. He asked the U.S. for help, and my Detachment Alpha got the mission assignment. With quasi-combat experience, my crew was almost over eager to fry the eyeballs of Dominican patrol boat crewmembers, and insisted on low passes burning and churning every time we picked up a boat on radar and fired up our 70 million candle power searchlight. No medals, no ribbons, but that good feeling and adrenalin rush that goes with Naval Air.
C.B. Scott Jones
(13-48)