OK, I know we are bouncing around a little bit, like on the waves during the Salt Water Summit, the one where the General Secretary of the Communist Part of the USSR decided that it was all about over, and he needed to salvage what he could out of the wreckage. President George H.W. Bush was coming to assure him of our support for whatever it was he had to do, and would be happy to meet on neutral turf- or surf, as the case was in the waters off the Island of Malta.
Presidential Follies
01 December 1989:
The plan for the day was filled with timelines and land mines.
The President would be arriving at about 1132. He would be preceded onto Forrestal by the Press Corps and ADM Howe. We would then demonstrate a fictional version of our ‘routine’ Carrier
Qualification program, then the plan was to escort the President to the Mess Decks to have lunch with the Troops. Then the agenda called for a trip up to Hangar Bay One for an address to the crew (rumored to be a Major Policy Speech). Then, immediately following the Commander-in-Chief’s departure, ADM Howe would proceed to Mission Planning to receive two contingency target briefs and give a few general remarks to the Squadron CO’s and FID Department Heads.
There was the possibility of General Scowcroft, the National Security advisor, walking through the spaces just to complicate things. I awoke with the realization that the current epidemic of crud sweeping the ship had me fully in its sway. I had a sore throat, was achy and congested. Just the way to start the big day, I thought, and cursed the fact that we live so close together that if one person got sick, we all did.
I got up to Mission Planning in time to get all the materials out of the various safes and lockers. The spaces looked great. The night shift had worked their asses off and the deck gleamed. All extraneous items had been carted off and concealed in the Fan Room. If I hadn’t felt so bad things would have been great.
The day was grey and rainy. The bustling transport helos were displayed on the Plat Television monitor that hung next to the briefing podium. The hoard of press people dispersed on schedule, and the President was right on time. I watched the honor guard of flight deck people line up on either side of the red carpet that had been laid on the wet and oily deck in front of Marine One.
Mr. Bush, once the youngest Naval Aviator on active duty, gave a big glad hand to CAPT Thomassy and strode toward the island that towers above the black non-skid surface of the flight deck.
The number of people who had some contact with the President was impressive. Petty Officer Bussey from OZ Division was seated next to him for lunch. CAG was with him for about fifteen minutes during the flight demonstration. Lutt-man and Mark got to shake his hand after the speech. Steve S., the ship’s meteorologist, got a chance to give the President an impromptu weather brief. The President was a very accessible man, given the context of the massive security detail.
The scene on the hangar bay was equally impressive. Two Tomcats flanked
an A-7 Corsair at the forward end of the hangar and the A-7 nose was positioned immediately behind the presidential dais. Signal flags hung diagonally across the overheads and lend a colorful note to the acres of grey paint and white pipes. The White House Advance Team and even got out the flag manual and determined the signalmen hadn’t buried “Fuck the Navy” or other obscene messages in the arrangement of the flags, something I gathered was something of a tradition from the guys who run the flag-bag.
The Kitty’s Tomcat gleamed and is the best looking Fleet airplane I have ever seen. Troops were sitting on the wings and pilots manned the static display aircraft. CDR Shaky Jake was prominently posed on top of his A-7 directly behind the President. CAPT Thomassy lead Mr. Bush to the rostrum and was seated immediately on the President’s right. The tale went around that the President had visited an amphibious assault ship shortly after his inauguration.
The Flag Officer who was riding the ship personally escorted the President through his entire time on the ship. When the President discovered that the Captain had been shut out of the show, he wrote the skipper a personal letter and made a point of stopping by to talk to him the next time he was in Norfolk.
Nice touch. Mr. Bush is apparently a real gentleman.
He kept CAPT Thomassy front and center throughout the visit. The visiting Flags and Sweatpea were off the rostrum and down front where they couldn’t be seen. The Presidential remarks were pleasant and not the far-ranging address that we half-expected as a prelude to the Summit with the Soviets.
Mr. Bush led off with some banter about Navy chow, liberty risks in Toulon (“I think I can fix relations with the French”), then some very nice words about the Navy, sailors, tradition, and the meetings he would be having over the next two days with General Secretary Gorbechev.
The message that we were at the very center of something significant was clear. It made me feel proud to part of it all. The power and might of it was something to behold; the planning, the people, the shear vastness of what supports the President of the United States was mind boggling. From the C5A Galaxy transport aircraft filled with helicopters to Press Corps to the eighty cruise boxes filled with special communications gear. And of course, the advance team and then the press and all the horse-holders arrive. It is simply amazing.
When he finished his remarks, the President gathered up his papers and the circus left town. In the midst of all this was Assistant Ship’s Intel officer John K. realizing he is standing in the crowd next to CBS’s Leslie Stahl and exchanging pleasantries; a report of a coup attempt in the Philippines for which the President in a spare moment authorized U.S. Air Support to President Aquino; Skipper ‘Bitch’ Richardson trading his P.I.-carved uniform belt buckle for three official White House Press Corps key-chains. Then a swirl of burned hydrocarbons and the President was gone.
The ship bonged him off with the traditional naval honorific, the one in which the individual ship CO is identified with his command. For instance, if FID’s skipper Thomassy flew off the boat, it would be “Forrestal, Departing!”
In this case, it was “United States, Departing. Impressive. Hearing it gave me a little shiver down the spine.
Which left us with ADM Howe. With the President gone, he suddenly became King again, and he obviously relished the role. We waited in Mission Planning for about a half hour before he swept in. Youthful. He couldn’t be past his early fifties. Those four large stars aligned precisely on each wing of his collar. He was wearing but two rows of ribbons, and there was one I didn’t recognize in front of the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. I did not find out until later that it was called the “Defense Distinguished Service,” something from the stratosphere you don’t often see wandering around on the waterfront.
Jonathon T. Howe was an interesting man to brief. He asked at the front end of the presentation whether he should trust a plan devised by a guy named Shaky and approved by a fellow named Sweetpea. He peppered the briefers with questions and I got the distinct feeling that the plan we briefed is the one we will execute, given half a chance.
Very interesting to consider what it would be like, for real. I stood at the back next to the phone so I could answer at the half ring. Which it did, constantly, due to the fact that we started flying again in the middle of the brief and Stevie Ray was giving the Cyclic event brief from the Weather Shack, since our podium was occupied. The brief went overtime, due to the questions, and the schedule was rapidly going to hell; ADM Howe had to be on a helo before dark and the ‘Gator was holding the launch so he could launch the Sea King safely with all the jets started and taxying into line for launch. ADM Howe was serene and did not pay much attention to the agony of the Loops who were trying to salvage the timeline.
After XO Gene Smith pitched his target, the ADM favored us with the CINC’s eye view of what was going on in his Theater: The crisis in Lebanon; chances of port visits in Turkey; why we probably would not get into Greece. Very interesting. I got the feeling that we might very well not have to go away to Lebanon before Christmas, but he was explicit about the fact that we were very much on the hook to execute the plans we have devised, some of them within a very few hours of notification. Then he talked about the impact of the budget cuts; the fact that Secretary Baker had been on the horn with the 14 NATO countries to personally assure them that they wouldn’t be sold down the river at the Summit tomorrow.
And, of course, the money thing. The impact of the budget cuts means that we are going to have to do all this with a five hundred-ship Navy and four fewer carriers.
The most interesting story was that of the decision to gap the carrier presence in the MED while America went west and we were still an unknown quantity after the fire back in Mayport that delayed our departure. He said that Gen Powell, CJCS, personally had authorized the gap but was really nervous that we wouldn’t show. A lot of people went out on a limb to get America home on time. His words made us feel good about the Leadership’s commitment to the Fleet. Hope it is still the same when Ike comes out to relieve us.
Eventually the Captains and Kings had all departed and it was back to business as usual. I got the New York Times from the 26th today (no letter mail, dammit) and the stories about the budget cuts are chilling. That, and the context of the bizarre rush to freedom of the East Block and I feel disoriented and amazed. I remember when the Berlin Wall was built. That event, and the Cuban Missile Crisis defined my childhood. And today the President is handing CAPT Thomassy a chunk of the same Berlin Wall mounted on a plaque! The mind reels.
The Op-Ed section of The Times contains page after page of analysis on what it all means.
“Malta rhymes with Yalta,” I said to somebody. “Gorby has to take something back home or the hardliners are going to carve his heart out and then what?” The realization strikes me that this is the last cruise of the old world; the fifty year anniversary of Germany’s most recent Ostmarch into Poland. Is it the end of the Second World War finally?
What are we going to do for a living?
I await with wonder what will come of this Summit. U.S. Aid to the Soviets? God, this is strange. After perusing the Times, I had some dinner and crashed for a couple hours. Later, filled with antihistamines, we got back to work. One day to the next big project, two days to Naples.
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com