10/15/97 3:11USNS Muller and the ASA
Courtesy of Mike Sannes
I spent a 6 month tour on the USNS Muller.We were out at sea 4 weeks, and then would spend one week in Ft. Lauderdale (Hollywood) Florida. It was a USNS ship with a civilian crew. We were there TDY with a Navy Security unit. We cruised just outside the 3 mile limit. Since they used microwave we had to be line-of-sight. Castro used to call us the "big ear". One time we knew he was going to crash a small plane into us and then board us in an "act of mercy". We had a spotter in the mast (remember this is a civilian ship and had no guns), he saw the plane approaching and we were monitoring on the hand held radio. Suddenly everything went quite, a few minutes latter he came running in saying "I'm not staying up there he's going to hit us". They scrambled some jets from Key West who were on alert and they chased him off. Often they sent gun boats out to harass us, sometimes every few hours so we couldn't sleep. Occasionally they shot across our bow. We had a real gung ho skipper. We had scuttles fore and aft. We would have sunk the boat if we were in danger of being boarded. What's the chance the Air Force (US) would have let us make it to shore ?
It was a single screw ship about 300 feet long with a lot of antennas.Once the engine quit and we started drifting into shore. It was very early on a foggy morning. We drifted close enough into Havana harbor that we were looking up at the hotels on the beach. We got the engine working and headed
back out to sea. They never noticed us.
It was a unique experience, I had more sea time than most sailors then.
Mike Sannes email: msannes1@san.rr.com