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A couple of days after Christmas, on December 27, 1960, an unidentified man telephoned the Coast Guard in Cleveland, Ohio, and said that a bomb had been placed in the lighthouse at the end of the breakwater at the entrance to Cleveland Harbor. Because the lighthouse had reportedly been locked up for the season on December 15, and because of the winter weather conditions, officials doubted that the threat was real. However, the Coast Guard could not take any chances.
Bos’ns Mate 1st class Brian Curtis, and Bos’ns Mate 2nd class John Johnson, were dispatched on a 15-foot ice skiff (SKF-ICE) from the Coast Guard Station on Whiskey Island. Their mission was to cross the ice to the breakwater and then walk across the breakwater to the lighthouse. Their mission after that was somewhat sketchy. If they found a bomb, not knowing how to defuse it, they would probably have to get out of there plenty quick and radio for a bomb squad to come out.
However, getting to the lighthouse was easier said than done. According to a story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “The ice was thin in spots and they had trouble almost all the way. At one point Brian Curtis fell through the ice, but Johnson managed to pull him out and onto the skiff right away.”
When the men were finally able to reach the breakwater, they soon realized that that it was virtually impossible to walk the remaining mile and a quarter over the slippery walkway to reach the lighthouse. In fact, they discovered three nearly-frozen hunters who had become stranded on the breakwater. If it had not been for the bomb threat, the hunters might have perished.
The Coastguardsmen, now both wet and cold, had no choice but to return to the Coast Guard Station at Whiskey Island with the three nearly frozen hunters, who now owed their lives to Johnson and Curtis, and also indirectly, to the anonymous person who had called in the bomb threat.
Still trying to get someone to the lighthouse, the Coast Guard summoned the USCG Ojibwa, a 110-foot tug boat that was in Erie, Pennsylvania, at that time helping coal boats navigate through the ice. The vessel, under the command of CWO B. A. Morris, was ordered on a 14-hour nighttime mission to plow its way through the ice until it could reach the lighthouse by 8am the next morning. Two men from the tug boat, led by Chief Frank Kubiak, searched the lighthouse from top to bottom for the reported bomb. None was found, which was probably a good thing, because it was unclear what they were supposed to do if they found it.
This story appeared in the
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