Take Me To Your Leader

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Playing Chicken

This 'true incident' has circulating for years. A testy exchange between radio operators, one on a US Navy warship, each demanding that the other change course to avoid a collision and ends with the second radio operator informing the warship, "This is a lighthouse. Your call."

Variations abound for this story. The warship is sometimes an aircraft carrier (USS Coral Sea, USS Nimitz, USS Enterprise), sometimes a battleship (USS Missouri). It also supposedly happened in a variety of locations; sometimes the lighthouse is American (Puget Sound, North Carolina), sometimes the incident takes place in Canadian waters (Newfoundland).

The story is old Navy lore. It is a prime example of a "TINS" story. It circulated in the US Navy for years, possibly decades before email versions began.

Debunked: US Navy aircraft carrier engages in radio exchange to tell other party to move to avoid collision. Other party was a lighthouse!

Given the number of variations on the story, it is not easy to disprove each variant of this 'true story.' All versions have two common flaws:

- The dialogue is not correct nautical communication. Ships communicate by internationally agreed upon procedures, much as airplanes are governed by air traffic control and communications procedures.

- The US warship did not follow correct navigational procedures.

Some of the ships reputedly involved in the story have alibis: the USS Coral Sea and the USS Missouri had both been decommisioned. Another thing to note: all lighthouses on US shores have been unmanned and operated automatically for over ten years.

References:

• The United States Navy: The Lighthouse Joke