Operation Prime Chance

Thanks for your service petty officer. If you have more to tell Sherri we're all interested like the People magazine commercial from a long time ago I want to know!

It was just that when we were there we were told not talk about it, but now I saw that it was declassified. I just remember we picked up the Army guys in Bahrain; unusual joint operation. Also, I did think the Vulcan guns on the Hercules were for surface operations instead of anti-air. We regularly docked at the Hercules and I can't remember the name of the other barge. The Army flew at night only and were never on deck during the day. I do remember the briefing when they got aboard, the pilot explaining that he had Hellfire missiles on his helicopter. And they only flew with the googles. I was a JOOD at the time doing night watches on the bridge and we wore night googles often ourselves.

I remember when we returned to San Diego, the guys with the Vincennes were told to turn around from their normal Westpac and go straight to the gulf, only one month between long deployments. Their crew was verbal about how upset they were. Then about a month or so later we saw the headlines that they shot an Iranian airliner down. The reason it hit home for us was because on our previous deployment, an Iranian F14 fighter with a an AUG8 radar lit us up, we were ready to shoot, then we got a confirmation from the Air Force that it was an Airbus...! I knew that the F14 rode above the Airbus lighting us up to provoke... and that's what I thought happened to the USS Vincennes.