Show Notes
This week's Coast Guard aviation stories come courtesy of a special guest co-host: Deuce, a newly retired Coast Guard aviator (and, briefly, the service's senior space attorney). Sticks and Bago hold down the fort while Deuce walks through the Coast Guard's oddball, everything-service mission set — including how commercial space launches are about to become a Coast Guard headache.
From there it's classic So There I Was territory: sleeping inside a helicopter to escape a snoring ops officer, a Katrina-era rescue that saved six sailors drifting toward Morocco, and the almost-unbelievable ditching of a Pan Am Clipper next to the Cutter Pontchartrain. Deuce also breaks down why the Coast Guard is quietly building out a drone rating for search and rescue.
Big thanks to DC Artworks for sponsoring the show — go check out dcartworks.net for genuinely one-of-a-kind aviation art.
More from So There I Was
Why Smart Pilots Do Dumb Things is the title of Heater’s paper. It helped save the Red Eagles. However, this episode opens with a different lesson: never look at your ten o’clock at Groom Lake.
“Clara Ship” is what A-6 Intruder pilot Duker radioed when he couldn’t even see the carrier. Forget the ball. He couldn’t find the boat.
Navy P-3 pilot Derek "DA" Adametz beat a collapsed lung and Hodgkin's lymphoma, then fought the waiver board all the way to squadron command.
F-100 pilot Ike flew 195 combat missions with an iron sight and nerves of steel. He takes us from night close air support to a 50-pound-fuel landing to the 1986 Libya raid.
Retired Marine Lt. Col. Tim "Monk" Miller nearly punched out mid-nap over Ramadi, then built the Strike Fighter League, where guns are where it's at.