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Gear failure forces cutter to end boat chase

The Coast Guard cutter Dallas was forced to abandon its chase of a high-speed drug vessel in the Caribbean last month because faulty flight-deck gear meant it couldn’t deploy its helicopter, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen said Thursday. The smugglers got away.

Allen quoted the Dallas’ skipper, Capt. Eric P. Brown: “It appears the inopportune failure of a crucial piece of obsolescent equipment lost the day.”

Allen mentioned the problem aboard the Dallas as a part of his appearance before a Senate subcommittee considering the Coast Guard’s fiscal 2009 budget request. As has become routine in his public appearances around Washington, Allen described what he said was the lifesaving service’s “bona fide capacity shortage,” caused by aging ships and an insufficient number of personnel.

“There is a limit to what any organization can accomplish when the overall end strength has not changed in 50 years,” Allen said. What’s more, last year the Coast Guard spent $76 million on unanticipated repairs, he said.

The Dallas had to let the drug smugglers go because it couldn’t turn on its flight deck lights, meaning it couldn’t launch its armed MH-65C Dolphin helicopter, the first of the Coast Guard’s own upgraded, armed helicopters. Talking with reporters during a break in Thursday’s hearing, Allen said the Dallas’ crew was able to repair the problem after a few hours, but that by the time they got their gear working again, there was no way to pursue the smugglers.

“The window is minutes,” said Cmdr. Brendan McPherson, a Coast Guard spokesman who accompanied Allen to the hearing. After losing track of a drug runner’s boat that can go 40 knots or faster, “even the helo won’t help,” he said.

The flight deck problems were at least the second major problem during this deployment of the 41-year-old high-endurance cutter, which sailed from its homeport of Charleston, S.C., in January. The ship had to stop and turn around for repairs before it got out of sight of land on the day it sailed because its equipment for making fresh water broke.

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