As Promised . . .

. . . a few stories from my cousin, Greg, the Submarine Chaser.

Once, while tracking a sonar signal off the coast of England, my cousin determined that it was, indeed, a Russian sub. Interested in why a Russian sub was daring to move so close along the English coastline, he followed it and continued to track it from his airplane. After a few minutes, he heard some other noises on sonar and began to isolate them. Turned out a British sub was tracking the Russian sub and Gary was tracking both of them - the Brits protecting their mainland and the Russians trying to be "sneaky"!

There was another time that he dropped a sonar ball from a helicopter to over 500 ft. in depth, near the bottom of the ocean at this point. It was attached to the helicopter by a heavy cable so they could haul it back up again and the cable fed them the data from the ball. Suddenly, the helicopter began pitching and the data scope went dead. The pilot yelled to Greg to pull the ball up. When he did, it had been destroyed and was quite smashed. They took it back to Base and found out it had been attacked by a VERY large shark who tried to eat it, then decided it didn't taste good, and spit it out. It was scrapped and they got a new sonar ball at the cost of $100,000.

Search and Rescue is a secondary mission to all military personnel with access to Emergency Equipment. Once, while on assignment, they received an S.O.S. A family boat had crashed on a deserted island. Greg was lowered from the helicopter in a harness and was lifted back up with a baby under each arm. Later, after getting 3 adults to safety in the helicopter, he was lowered back down to save the family dog.

Another Mission for his Unit was Sovereignty Patrols. Once every 24 hours, all the borders of Canada had to be flown over to check for people illegally trying to take over Canadian land. He said that the North Pole belongs to Canada and he regularly patrolled over the Pole. They also looked for Drug Runners (he said he caught a lot) and polar bear poachers. He said one polar bear skin will sell on the Black Market for $30,000 - $40,000.

He explained that every country that borders water has a 12-mile limit around their land mass. Other countries are not allowed to enter this airspace or ocean space without permission of the government. He often tracked ships, other planes, or subs that entered the 12-mile limit. I asked if he ever found subs lurking where they weren't supposed to be.

"Oh, yes," he answered. "Quite often."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Notified the Proper Authorities and let the Diplomats work it out," he said.

Daelyn's class decided he was a Spy! They oohed and aahed and Greg was quite pleased.

Greg also explained that there's a 200-mile limit around each country for fishing rights. Each country has the right to control the commerce of it's water for 200 miles in every direction.

"Aren't there places in Canada where there's another continent closer than 200 miles?" I asked.

"Yes," Greg explained. "Russia is much closer than 200 miles to Alaska. In fact, on a clear day, you can stand on the Alaskan Peninsula and see Russia."

I was suitably impressed. "So what do they do about the 200-mile thing?"

"They split it exactly down the middle. And don't get me wrong. This is a VERY big deal. Countries get fightin' mad if you fish in their territory. That's one of the things we had to watch for."

Then there was the time that they were very far north in cold waters. He was getting a repeating signal on sonar and isolated it to a particular class of submarine based on the number and sound of the 5 engines. After reporting it to Base, they discovered it was just a colony of shrimp talking to each other. Shrimp communicate through squeaks and they get much more active in colder waters. His 5-engine sub was a colony of millions of shrimp!

He had lots of other amazing stories to keep my children's classes entertained. I had a wonderful time. I never knew my Cousin was such an interesting fellow.