(VADM Bob Kirksey, Mister Indian Ocean. Official Navy picture.)
I remember an endless line period on the Good Ship Midway a long time ago, when the world was young and I was a sailor. We had been gone from our home port in Yokosuka for an endless time, and had no idea when we would return to the Home Islands.
The Admiral who ran the show- Mr. Indian Ocean, Bob Kirksey, decided we needed a morale boost, since the eternal now of being at sea was starting to feel like the comfort of a wet sandy blanket. There was no past except the opaque sky, and no future beyond the next no-fly day.
Kirksey was just the sort of leader we needed, and Midway had come to expect over the years in the Far East- or Far West, where we had spent an amazing amount of time out of sight of land. I remembered some low hills that had been Oman on the horizon, but that was months ago. Since the return of the Ayatollah to Iran, the ships over which Kirksey was lord and master included thirty-five unit Seventh Fleet Battle Force in the Indian Ocean, and would be there (like us) a hostage to the Hostage Crisis.
The Admiral had a good sense of humor, and he was personally responsible for not squashing me like a bug. I was writing a serial detective story for the Midway Multiplex, which was sort of raunchy and sort of fun, and thoroughly non-regulation. I took pride pounding out the daily one-page on the IBM Selectric typewriter in Mission Planning, normally after the fourth event brief (two hours prior to launch) and before debriefing had really got rolling to collect the numbers for the day.
The story was as important to me as the summary sheets we filled out at the debriefing table in the back of mission planning: “Modes and Codes up? How much Fuel did you use? See anything interesting? Thanks, see you later.”
On the routine Combat Air Patrol missions, tanking, and regular exercise profiles provided to exercise other ships in the Battle Group there wasn’t a lot more to talk about then how much fuel the aircrews dumped, or whether the crypto boxes worked on the secure radios and IFF.
Writing a detective story in Midway’s Mission Planning seemed reasonable. In fact, it may be the only science-fiction noir crime novel ever transmitted by electronic Naval message since one of the Small Boys was going to be detached and would not get helicopter delivery of the broadsheet Battle Group newspaper.
There were others- probably Shoes- thought the stories might be dangerous and subversive, which of course they were.
Admiral Kirksey told the Shoes to back off. That was the sort of guy he was- and I never heard a discouraging word that I- or my fictional detective and his Girl Friday- had become an issue in the morning meeting.
Admiral Kirksey was a guy who did not sweat the small shit- and he realized that everything was exactly that, getting large only in the aggregate. He was a veteran of more than 240 combat missions over North Vietnam, and got his Silver Star going downtown to Hanoi. He got nailed by an SA-2 telephone pole that blasted out of the haze, invisible until it was right there and nothing could be done except ride it out- and continue the attack profile.
As the CAG- the carrier Air Wing Commander- he led the other pilots in his heavily damaged plane. The aircraft fire eventually burned out, and as he attempted a carrier landing, he discovered that the entire front of the plane had been blown away. He had to crash-land at Danang or one of the fields feet-dry in South Vietnam.
He was a shrewd judge of men, Mr. IO was, and he decided we needed a morale boost somewhere in the endless sand-colored days. He authorized an air-show for the entertainment of the crew. I was selected to do the narration from the tower- I have no idea why, but an Air Intelligence Officer in those days was mostly a clerk-orator.
It was cold that day in the North Arabian Sea, an odd recollection in this summer humidity that feels like Manama-on-the-Potomac where I write.
The wind from the northwest brought a fine dusting of Iranian sand to the flight deck. The airplanes made tracks through it on the black non-skid surface and it reminded me of Michigan in an early snow, the look of the blacktop on the first trace of snow in the winter.
The sea was choppy and white capped, the bow was coming around into the wind as the Midway prepared to launch aircraft. I wandered up to The Tower in CV-41’s island and stood respectfully behind the chair where The Air Boss ran the flight deck. He turned to me and said: “It’s going to be a freaking wonderful show. The Russians are in the landing pattern, the starboard catapult is down, and the weather is disintegrating.”
The Boss smiled his wolfish Fighter Pilot smile.
The Russian IL-38 MAYs- poor copies of our P-3 Orion ASW turboprop- appeared out of the haze and passed astern. We watched the four-engine representatives of the Global Communist Conspiracy disappear into the sand cloud. Somewhere up above our fighters patrolled on their wings.
The broken catapult had slowed the launch. We had twenty aircraft to get airborne, only some of them dealing with the morale issue, and there was a frantic burst of activity on the flight deck to accomplish the mission. Heavily armed aircraft trundled forward, launch bars attached, salutes exchanged between the Shooter and the Pilot, and then they were gone in clouds of oily steam and the roar of jet engines.
When the last aircraft was gone, the flight deck crew left their stations, removed their float-coats and helmets, and formed a long line down the port side of the ship to watch the show. The red and green and purple of their jerseys lets The Boss know instantly what their jobs are from his perch high above: Blue for aircraft handlers, white for the Landing Signals Officers, yellow for plane directors, green for the cats and arresting gear troops, red for Ordies and purple for the aviation fuels guys- “Grapes.”
I got in the Air Boss’s seat and the Mini Boss stood up to stretch his legs. Nice view, I thought, and started to read the introduction to the show from the script, and then looked up to see four A-6 Intruder medium bombers saunter past in a diamond formation, followed closely by the in-flight refueling demonstration. The light-attack and fighter diamonds were not far behind in stately formations.
“There it is!” I said into the microphone. My words reverberated across the flight deck “The entire first half of the airshow for your viewing pleasure!” The tanker was about four seconds in lag pursuit of the bombers, and the re-fueling basket was a stately thirty feet in front of electronic warfare aircraft, who was frantically trying to catch up. I didn’t have time to comment, though, as the fighters and the light bombers roared on by.
I threw a dozen pages of the script in the trash and relaxed. The show was so out of phase that the words didn’t matter, and besides, it was only for us and I had the best seat in the house.
The crew didn’t seem to mind. Snipes up from way below in the engineering spaces blinked in the unexpected sunlight, even though it was cloudy. The flight deck bubbas just wanted to see their airplanes, and just for a moment, play the carefree tourist. For a moment, they are free.
(Obsolete aircraft on a retired aircraft carrier, San Diego)
Suddenly a haze-grey F4-J Phantom II dropped out of the sand cloud astern, driving very low and slow, hook down, nose cocked up, flaps trailing, right on the edge of a stall. His high-speed partner is still lost in the haze, but suddenly breaks out, no drop tank, clean as a whistle and moving at about warp eight.
He grew from speck to real airplane, roaring toward us at 550 knots, then 650 and BOOM he leaves trans-sonic, shattering the sound barrier close aboard, dead abeam. He passed under the slow Phantom and pulled hard; almost a thump and then up he goes, speed of heat, opening the fuel dumps and spiraling straight up, leaving a delicate sugar-candy swirl as he vanishes vertically into the sand-colored sky.
I can still hear the cheers and shouts of delight even through the heavy glass of the Tower and across the years. It was a magic moment in an endless series of gray days, a little dispensation courtesy of Admiral Bob Kirksey, and the pilots of Carrier Airwing FIVE.
And then the Boss took his seat again. His voice boomed like the sound of God. “I need all hands in complete flight deck uniform! I need a ready deck! We’ve got airplanes to recover!”
I wondered what was for lunch in the dirty shirt wardroom. There really were only two things to do on Midway at sea: work and eat. Well, three if you counted being unconscious. The Intruder guys had a saying for how a JO was supposed to get through first nugget cruise: “Eat till you’re tired, sleep till you’re hungry.”
There was nothing like Midway humor. Well, that would be the fourth thing you could do. Laugh about it, and then get back to work.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com