Aquidneck probes Iraqi shipwrecks for arms, spies

Sea Power, Aug 2003 by Brown, David

Boarding Team Finds Materiel During CG's Largest Deployment Since Vietnam

The sailors of the U.S. Coast Guard are renowned for their achievements, from running down drug smugglers in the Caribbean to protecting America's ports to rescuing wayward vessels. Now add one more accomplishment to the list: helping the U.S.-led coalition topple Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.

Coast Guard officials sent 11 cutters and approximately 1,300 personnel to the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf to support Operation Iraqi Freedom, in the service's largest overseas deployment since the Vietnam war.

And their contribution counted. Vice Adm. James Hull, Atlantic area commander, pointed out that Coast Guard units were an integral part of the battle plan. "This wasn't the Coast Guard raising its hand saying Oh, take me to the battle,' " Hull said. "It was the combatant commanders looking at their war plans and deciding what they needed, and they told us what they wanted."

Describing the missions the Coast Guard supported, Hull said officials sent 650 Coast Guardsmen to the Mediterranean and another 650 to the Persian Gulf for the war.

Mediterranean Forces

The Coast Guard contingent that participated in the Sixth Fleet area of operations protected coalition ships as they moved through the area, from the Strait of Gilbraltar to the extreme eastern edge of the Mediterranean.

During the war, the Mediterranean was a busy place. Two Navy carrier strike groups, centered around the USS Harry S. Truman and the USS Theodore Roosevelt, launched strike aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles into Iraq, and several sealift ships carried supplies and equipment for the foothold the Army was to establish in Turkey. An invasion from the north was later scrubbed because of tensions with Turkey.

As ships passed through the Strait of Gilbraltar, they were protected by Coast Guardsmen from Port Security Unit 305 (PSU 305)-home-based at Fort Eustis, Va.-which was working out of Rota, Spain. In the eastern half of the sea, sailors from PSU 309 set up shop in Souda Bay, Crete, to protect shipping in the area. Those Coast Guards-men weren't able to exercise their full muscle in the region, Hull said, because countries in the area began to step up their own security measures after they saw the Coast Guard presence.

"The result was, the host nations participated to a greater extent than anticipated," he said. "Although [the Coast Guard units] were frustrated a little bit, it forced the host nations to look at what they were doing to protect their facilities."

Also in the eastern Med were four 110-foot patrol boats: the St. Petersburg, FIa.-based USCGC Pea Island and USCGC Knight Island, the USCGC Bainbridge Island from Highlands, N.J., and the USCGC Grand Isle from Gloucester, Mass. The Hamilton-class 378-foot high-endurance cutter USCGC Dallas, homeported in Charleston, S.C., conducted operations at Gibraltar, performed boardings throughout the Mediterranean, then served as plane guard for the carriers Harry S. Truman and Theodore Roosevelt after ships from their strike groups moved to the Red Sea.

Hull said cutters have pulled plane guard duty before, but it was a rarity for a cutter to be the only surface ship protecting two carriers. The Dallas' contribution was vital one night after a sandstorm kicked up, making it nearly impossible for jets to land on the carriers. The Dallas' mast lights, Hull said, lit the way home for those jets. "They integrated well in naval operations and performed superbly in independent operations," he said.

Persian Gulf Forces

In the northern Persian Gulf, Coast Guard units saw more action. A mixture of patrol boats, law enforcement detachments, and port security units provided a layered defense stretching 40 miles from the mouth of the Khawr Abd Allah (KAA) waterway all the way up to the Iraqi port city of Umm Qasr.

In the south, law enforcement detachments embarked aboard two Navy 170-foot coastal patrol ships, USS Chinook and USS Firebolt. The Hamilton-class high-endurance cutter USCGC Boutwell, from Alameda, Calif., also was deployed in the area. In early April, Law Enforcement Detachment 205, embarked aboard the Chinook, discovered an Iraqi weapons cache in coastal caves in southern Iraq. The detachment found rocket launchers, grenades, missiles, explosive devices, gas masks, uniforms, and ammunition.

Four 110-foot cutters patrolled the waterway: the Highlands, N.J.-based USCGC Adak; Atlantic Beach, N.C.-based USCGC Aquidneck; Miami, Fla.-based USCGC Baranof; and Portland, Maine-based USCGC Wmngell. The crew of the cutter USCGC Sapelo, but not the boat itself, was in the area as well, spread out among the other cutters.

The Adak saw action early on 21 March, capturing three Iraqi sailors floating in the water after they abandoned their patrol boat before it was sunk by coalition forces. The sailors were among Operation Iraqi Freedom's first enemy prisoners of war.

The four 110-foot patrol boats spent the war and its after-math monitoring the dozens of shipwrecks, left over from the Iran-Iraq war, Operation Desert Storm, and from Iraqi Freedom, that littered the KAA. The boarding teams were there to make sure Iraqis were not using the wrecks as hideouts to monitor coalition ship movements and perhaps as staging grounds for small-boat attacks. The waterway could have proven a hazardous chokepoint, considering it was the main route for humanitarian ships to get to Umm Qasr. While searching one of the southernmost shipwrecks, a boarding team from the Aquidneck discovered AK-47s, uniforms, and unspoiled food hidden inside.