11 October 2020<\/p>\n
Author\u2019s Note: The morning stream of messages got me agitated straight off. Not in an angry way. More a state of bemused confusion. Apparently a participant in a political rally was shot dead by a personal security guard, who naturally was carrying a loaded firearm to a big social gathering which was opposed by another group who termed the first group \u201cFascists\u201d and \u201cRacists.\u201d <\/p>\n
I used to be concerned that our good country was divided by deep partisan feelings, a chasm so dramatic that I had never observed it before. Then I realized the sides no longer even speak the same language. Disagreement means you are a \u201cracist,\u201d or a \u201cfascist.\u201d I remember people who claimed to one or the other, and our little neighborhood in Arlington, on the Virginia side of the Potomac, once hosted the national headquarters of something called the American Nazi Party, and a rental house that served as barracks for their \u201cStormtroopers.\u201d They drove a VW microbus that flew the usual offensive flag. They were despised by just about everyone, but their right to be crazy, so long as it was not violent, seemed to be protected by the 1st Amendment. <\/p>\n
An internal disagreement in the group led to the ambush shooting (and murder) of the local Fuhrer at a strip mall I used to drive by. Their storefront headquarters then became a progressive coffee shop (after a no-kidding exorcism), the barracks was torn down and turned into a park, and the whole issue faded into the memory hole of urban unpleasantness. <\/p>\n
In these days, apparently simple disagreement can get you labeled as a kindred spirit with the long-ago loonies. It is a very strange thing. Even stranger, with emotions running high, a series of explosions began last Friday down near the farm. It was insistent, loud, and it went on for two days of thudding and shuddering. Grace did some investigating and discovered that a group of pyrotechnical enthusiasts, professional and amateur, was holding the event. Crackerjacks is the name of the group, and they get together to blow things up without any discernable political motivation. The COVID panic caused cancellation of the usual seasonal detonation shows, and the good news is that they feel the lessened danger from one thing is worth the moderate danger of the other thing. There was quit a stockpile of explosives left from the cancelled shows, including the 4th of July, so the event went with some vigor right through the weekend. I have never been in an actual artillery barrage, but this was what I imagine is a pretty good introductory course of what it must be like. <\/p>\n
2020. What a year, and months to go for more excitement.<\/p>\n
I could go on with accounts of lunacy, but there will be time for that. In COVID seclusion, I was listening to detonations and looking for something I imagined was on the copied files from an old computer. I found much more than what I was looking for. Stand by.<\/p>\n
– Vic<\/p>\n
FIRST AT-SEA PERIOD ON USS FORRESTAL (CV-59)<\/p>\n
03-06 APRIL 1989<\/p>\n
It was a drunk and stormy night….<\/p>\n
Well, maybe not stormy. In fact, it was a lovely spring Florida
\nnight. I left Hearth and Home behind in the little black Beetle
\nconvertible and gunned it out of the long sloping driveway on the
\nroad to Mayport Naval Station.<\/p>\n
Behind I left my lovely wife and two handsome fair-haired sons.
\nThey were watching the Disney Channel, which featured one of
\nthose shows involving the Mouse and Uncle Walt, impossibly alive
\nagain, providing a weird common memory stream for the two
\ngenerations under our roof. As far as the kids were concerned,
\nDad was off for another in a series of business excursions of
\nmoderate duration.<\/p>\n
It was a little different for Mom. Her man was off a’yachting for
\nthe first time in her married life. She was making a brave show
\nof it. For that matter, I was too. My last underway time lay
\nnearly eight years and a continent or two away from the pleasant
\nwhite house at the end of the pleasant cul de sac. My hair had
\nsomehow turned grey in the meantime and I had acquired a mortgage
\nand the (previously) unimaginable appurtenances of adulthood.<\/p>\n
One conspicuous note of rebellion was still sounded by the
\nraucous four banger of the 1970 convertible I drove, the sound
\nbelching out the two rakish chrome exhaust pipes behind me. The
\ntires squealed as I yanked the wheel and ran up and down the
\ngears over to Blanding Boulevard, flying past the neon-lit tire
\nstores and burger palaces. I had to pick up The Moose en route the
\nship. <\/p>\n
I was happily lit up from the vodka I inhaled at the ritual \u201cFolks
\nAt The Railroad Track End of the Subdivision Happy Hour.\u201d Two of
\nus from the street were heading out to the Forrestal that night,
\nso the gaiety was slightly muted by the realization that the
\ncrushing schedule was beginning to roll over us and would soon
\nswamp these precious summer interludes as Cruise got closer and
\ncloser.<\/p>\n
Moose is one of our two Carrier Air Wing Landing Signals Officers, or \u201cCAG
\nLSOs,\u201d in our clipped parlance. He is a happy A-7 driver by trade
\nand a generally unhappy Administrative Officer by assignment.
\nLike all of us, he has at least three jobs on a good day. On a
\nbad day, the little jobs rise up in a tidal surge and wash over
\nus in a wave of screaming minutiae. Me, I’m the Air Wing
\nIntelligence Officer, Security Manager, Top Secret Control
\nOfficer, ADP Officer, Naval Warfare Publications and a couple
\nmore I can’t remember at the moment.<\/p>\n
Mostly, I’m the Spy.<\/p>\n
Moose was doing about the same things I had been doing twenty
\nminutes earlier when I rolled up into his driveway. His wife and
\nnew daughter were on the couch looking askance at the pile of
\nflight gear piled up by the door. I demanded a cold lager as toll
\nfor the road and with a flurry of thrown kit bags we piled into
\nthe Beetle and were roaring down the highway to the coast. It
\nbeing Sunday there was much traffic headed east toward the
\nbeaches. Having Moose and his gear in the car made the ride more
\nstable than normal as we rocked over the Buckman Bridge and flew
\ndown J. Turner Butler Boulevard toward Mayport. We were out of
\nbeer and good ideas long before we swept up to the sentry at the
\ngate to the Naval Air Station. Things were starting to look very
\nserious. <\/p>\n
The guard waved us through with a minimum of fuss and we preceded
\nsedately down the main drag toward the carrier piers. We passed
\nthe Destroyers and Cruisers rafted out in the basin to our right
\nand the silent rows of helicopters on the ramp to our left. The
\nBig Boats are parked all the way at the back of the base, past
\nthe runways and adjacent to the main shipping channel of the St.
\nJohn’s river.<\/p>\n
Forrestal was going to sea to accomplish a few pieces of basic
\nairplane business and would not be accompanied by the usual
\ncarnival that goes along with a full-blown Battle Group
\ndeployment. The Small Boys would rest in port this week, and I
\nimagined all the midwatches settling into the night, scribbling
\nin green logbooks, reading old fuck books and letting the babble
\nof the TV mask the low mechanical breathing of cold-iron ships.
\nOn Forrestal, they would be climbing down into the boilers to
\nlight then off in an hour or so to have pressure up to sail on
\nthe morning tide.<\/p>\n
My oversized pipes burbled as we rounded the turn onto the
\nCarrier Pier and Forrestal loomed before us. I was always impressed
\nevery time I see a Carrier up close. They are ugly and massive
\nand bristle with radar arrays, masts, antennas and mysterious
\nlights. They are huge and ominous and sometimes they are even
\nHome.<\/p>\n
Tonight I was going to move in the big grey house where I would
\nspend the bulk of the next nine months.<\/p>\n
We had to pass two more ID checks to get close and the last guard
\nwas kind enough to let me drive right up to the foot of the brow
\nthat lead to the Quarterdeck. There are two means of access to a
\nCarrier in port; the Quarterdeck is where the Officer of the Deck
\n(OOD) stands his watch and where the officers come and go. The
\nEnlisted Brow consists of two massive ramps that lead up to
\nElevator Three and there is an endless ant-like stream of
\nDungaree-clad troops humping supplies and duffel bags up into the
\nHangar Bay.<\/p>\n
Moose manhandled the bags out of the back seat and I got lucky
\nand found a parking space in the second row back from the
\nsecurity zone. Since we were going on our little jaunt without
\nour Carrier Group Staff and some of the Wing there was actually a
\nplace to park on the pier while we were gone. I hated to leave
\nthe car out in the salt breeze but there wasn’t a real good
\nalternative. I walked back to the foot of the brow, picked up my
\nbags, took a deep breath and started up the ladder.<\/p>\n
Moose was already at the Quarterdeck and saluting the OOD when I
\ngot there. I fumbled around with my duffel bag on my shoulder and
\nfound my ID card, showed it to him and managed a salute without
\nquite dropping the bag on his feet. <\/p>\n
“Sir!” I said crisply “I report my return aboard!”<\/p>\n
He waved us through with a smirk. He had seen dozens of us show
\nup in about the same condition that night and realized a certain
\naccommodation to the usual standards of good order would have to
\nbe tolerated. Twelve steps and a watertight hatch later and we
\nstood in Hangar Bay One. To my left the great empty cavern
\nstretched nearly eight hundred feet. We would not get our
\nairplanes until the fly-on tomorrow and the great void dwarfed
\nthe dungaree-clad humans who wandered back and forth.<\/p>\n
The great elevator door was closed to my left. Upon it was a huge
\nbrass plaque which held the names of the 137 men who died in the
\nFlight Deck inferno on that awful day in the Gulf of Tonkin. They
\nstill show the platform videotape of that horror in Shipboard
\nFire Fighting School. The sequence begins with a flight deck
\nfilled with aircraft fully armed for the morning Alpha Strike
\nover the North. Suddenly, a Zuni missile slung on a waiting
\nairplane accidentally fires into the densely packed mass of
\nmachinery. Seconds pass as a single Chief Petty Officer races
\nalone toward the mounting conflagration and then the sudden
\ndetonation of 500LB bombs that blossom like awful flowers on the
\nblack deck. Pieces of airplanes (and worse) emerge periodically
\nfrom the conflagration.<\/p>\n
That fire went on for a day. There were many heroes and long
\nrows of the canvas-shrouded dead on the hangar bay. These were
\nsobering images and not ones I wanted to entertain at the
\nmoment. Moose was already trundling off forward to the tunnel
\nthat leads through Air Intermediate Maintenance. I hurried and
\ncaught up to him at the portside ladder that snakes up to the 02
\nlevel where the Air Wing staterooms are located. Lugging my bags
\nup the narrow ladder brought back memories of the USS Midway and
\nthe humid seasonal weather of the Japanese summer when I carried a
\nhundred cases of soda from the pier to the ready room to slake
\nthe thirst of a fighter squadron about to deploy to the North
\nArabian Sea.<\/p>\n
The memories were intensified by the smell. Maybe the most
\npervasive of the senses when you think about it. The odors of the
\ncarrier rise like a wave around you. Hot Oil. Old cleaning
\nsolution. Liquid wax. Decaying insulation. Ozone from the zillion
\nmiles of cable in the races that hang like ganglia from the
\noverhead of every passageway. Through it all, underlying and
\nunifying is the ever-present kerosine perfume of Jet Propulsion
\nFuel Number Five, or Jay Pee Five5 we put in our airplanes, and,
\nthrough the maze of interconnected pipes and holding tanks, we
\nshower in it and drink it with our coffee.<\/p>\n
These ships are dimensions unto themselves. Steel islands of
\nAmerica. Small town-sized with bakeries, gas stations, hospitals,
\nvideo games and a TV station. No portholes; nearly all of us live
\nlike moles in the endless miles of tunnels. We get to the top of
\nthe ladder and I follow Moose down one of them to a little
\nconverted bunkroom called the Stateroom Assignments Office. <\/p>\n
The place was in cheerful disarray. In accordance with venerable
\ntradition the furniture was clearly scrounged from other offices
\nand some past budget year. The paint has been through several not
\naltogether harmonious iterations and the coffee pot is cooking
\nsome particularly vile black substance that might originally have
\nbeen coffee. The service counter is battered aluminum. The sailor
\non watch is disheveled and in wrinkled dungarees. He has been
\ndealing with the arriving throng of happy campers and produces a
\ngrimy variant of the universal Navy green log-book, this one
\nmarked with the words “Key Log” on the front. <\/p>\n
I identify myself and gain the key to compartment 02-33-1L.
\nHappily, this means I am already almost home. My stateroom is the
\nnext one down the passageway on the starboard side. I kick my
\nduffel down the tiled passageway and trace my finger over the
\nblue plastic plaque that identifies the place as the residence of
\nthe CAG Spy. I insert the key and the door swings open to
\ndarkness. I hit the light switch and the compartment is
\nilluminated by the pale florescent glow. <\/p>\n
Chop- short for the traditional \u2018Porkchop\u2019 sobriquet which
\nidentifies all Naval Supply Officers- peers owlishly from the
\nupper rack. He fumbles for his glasses and says “Spy! Welcome
\nHome!”<\/p>\n
I drop my bags on the deck. “I suppose it’s too late to expect
\nbar service in this place?”<\/p>\n
I crashed around for about an hour, ensuring that Chop’s sleep
\nwas destroyed, opening drawers and generally marvelling at the
\nsize of the compartment. When last I had ventured over the
\nbounding waves, I was a LTJG and entitled to a rack in a four man
\nstateroom, one drawer, half a hanging locker and shared use of a
\ndesk. There I passed an interesting though somewhat
\nclaustrophobic twenty-four months. Now, with my exalted rank I
\nwas entitled to a plush two-man room. I regarded the ancient
\ncarpet remnant with satisfaction and periodically bounced on the
\ncoffin-sized lower bunk, to which my seniority entitled me. I had
\nan entire hanging locker to myself and no less than four complete
\ndrawers. I banged my head on the medicine cabinet door and played
\nwith the TV set. <\/p>\n
It was two in the morning before I got my eyes closed and let the
\nsounds of the living ship lull me to sleep. The 1MC, or Voice of
\nGod, cut in at 0600 sharp.<\/p>\n
“Reveille, Reveille! All hands turn to and trice up!” I hear
\nboots moving along the passageway outside and the red glow of the
\nnight lighting which filters through the air vent changes to
\nwhite. Light leaks around the oval outline of the door. I have a
\nsmall hangover and the wool blanket which swaddles me is
\nenormously comforting. I’m not ready for this. I resolve to skip
\nbreakfast and roll over and get another twenty minutes sleep
\nbefore the insistent reminder of a full bladder forces the issue.
\nI find my khaki pants and venture out in search of the head. The
\npassageway outside the door turns out to be the mustering place
\nfor the S-5 division. A dozen sailors line the bulkheads, some
\ncutting up and some sprawled unconscious on the tile. I put on my
\ngrim and purposeful face and push my way through, going
\nthwartships like I know what I am doing. <\/p>\n
I get lucky. There is an Officer’s head only thirty feet down the
\npassage. It smells like they all do; a combination of urine,
\ndisinfectant, saltwater flush and ancient corruption. It works,
\nthough, and is as clean as you can expect a thirty-six year old
\nsteel men’s room to be.<\/p>\n
I am already a big winner. I have found nearly fifty percent of
\neverything I will really need on this ship: my bed and the head.
\nOnce I find the wardroom and my General Quarters station there
\nare really no further requirements. In fact, some of the Junior
\nOfficers on my first tour maintained GQ in their beds and had
\nreduced their needs to only the first three locations.<\/p>\n
Returning to my stateroom I had a powerful desire to return to my
\nrack and stay right there where it was safe. Regrettably, the
\nfirst order of business was to find at least three different ways
\nto get out of the compartment to fresh air and learn them well
\nenough that I had a fighting chance to find them in smokey
\ndarkness if that was required. Nothing for it but to do it. I
\nshot the shit with Chop and half listened to Connie Chung on the
\nCBS Morning News. I did forty pushups before I donned my wash
\nkhakis (cotton burns but does not melt) and put on my brown
\nleather shoes (ditto). Attired in the at-sea uniform of the day
\nI completed my ensemble with an Air Wing ballcap, since we were
\nstill in port and you have to be covered on the flight deck and
\nin the hangar bay. I couldn’t stall any longer. It was time to go
\nto work. <\/p>\n
For someone who so desperately hates starting new jobs I have
\nfound a career that makes a semi-annual practice of it. <\/p>\n
There is an awful feeling of disorientation when you first
\narrive in the rabbit’s warren that is the Carrier. Nothing makes
\nsense; ladders go up and down at random. Decades of ship
\nmodifications have created passageways that end sometimes in
\nblank welds. All turns appear the same and claustrophobia builds
\nas you wander in the looking glass world. <\/p>\n
Having been lost on six of these beasts, I had a working
\nknowledge on how to crack the code. I can read compartment
\nnumbers and there is a general method to the madness. I knew the
\nCarrier Intelligence Center (CVIC) was located vaguely amidships
\non the 03 level. Clutching my briefcase I wandered aft till I
\nfound a ladder and clambered up. I peered around and discovered I
\nwas well forward, up by frame 20, so I knew I had to work my way
\naft to about frame 199. I followed the passageway in that
\ndirection, stepping carefully over a knee-knocker rib every
\ntwenty feet. Walking past a fire-fighting station I saw an arrow
\nthat pointed to the left saying: “Flight Deck”. <\/p>\n
Last chance to forestall the inevitable. I followed the arrow and
\nstepped over some aviation fuel hoses and poked my head out of a
\nwater-tight door into the Florida dawn. I found myself in the
\nstarboard catwalk looking down at the pier. Two Yard Tugs were
\nvisible far below straining mightily to push our Leviathan away
\nfrom the land. The Carrier didn’t seem to want to go, but the
\nimpressive persistence of the tugs seemed to be winning the
\nissue. I could see by the widening gap between the hull and the
\nmooring camel that there was no longer a link to the shore, save
\nby air.<\/p>\n
It was starting to look real goddamn serious indeed. <\/p>\n
I turned around and looked across the black non-skid coated
\nflight deck. The catapults were energized for the Carrier
\nQualifications that would be starting that morning out in the
\nWarning Area east of Jacksonville. Hellish looking wisps of oily
\nwhite steam drifted from the cat tracks. I noticed every handrail
\non the ship was coated with a thin film of oil. Fifty feet from
\nmy room my hands already were grimy and sticky. My khaki pants
\nwere already getting the tell-tale black rings around the
\npockets. <\/p>\n
I watched the land move away another few grudging feet and bowed
\nto the inevitable. I retraced my steps to the main passageway
\nand continued my journey aft. I began to see familiar names on
\nthe hatches: Captain’s Country, Flag Country, Combat direction
\nCenter, Strike Operations. Sure enough, the OZ division (known
\nfrom this abbreviation as the Land of OZ, where nothing makes
\nsense) presently appeared on my right. I knew I should have found
\nthe Wardroom first, but it was too late. I turned the knob,
\nstepped over the kneeknocker and pressed the buzzer on the cipher
\nlock to the inner security door….<\/p>\n
To enter the demented land where there is no time but the eternal
\nNow. There is no Time in the work spaces of a carrier; or perhaps
\nput better there is nothing \u00eebut\u00ef Time. It comes in little and big
\nchunks, not synchronous, non-linear. It spurts and sputters with
\nno regard to the gentle rhythms of the tide and the dusk and the
\nsweet rays of dawn. The Navy has reorganized the universe into
\npeculiar elliptic constellations all its own. In the Carrier
\ngalaxy, the great grey ships hurtle in long orbits termed the
\nWork Up and Deployment cycle. Within this space-time continuum
\nthere are eccentric periods in which the Carrier is non-contiguous with the steady atomic clock of the earthly universe.<\/p>\n
In these periods, shipboard time is plastic and subject to
\ninfinite revision. It can be molded into queer bits termed
\n“cycles” and “events” which have no particular relationship to
\nbiologic cycles of beings optimized to hunt and gather in a
\ndiurnal world. There are no natural rhythms there, only the
\nroaring of great machines and lunatic chronometers that measure
\nthe passing of the day at Greenwich observatory, in the savage
\ntime zone known as Zulu.<\/p>\n
There is no sun below the decks of the carrier, only a crazy
\nquilt of bright and dimmed lights which have no particular
\nrelationship to whether work is in progress or not. For example,
\nan earthly twenty-four hour day might be sliced into a period
\ncalled a half-day\/half-night cycle. This is intended to allow
\npilots to land in the day to gain the requisite feel for the deck
\nand then transition through the dusk into the awesome feat of a
\ncontrolled crash into a tiny area of a pitching black deck
\npositioned in the vertiginous black velvet of a black-ass
\nmoonless night. In order to ready themselves for this mission,
\nbriefings are conducted two hours prior to each launch event.
\nTwo hours before the brief the Air Intelligence Officer (“AI”)
\nand Meteorologist (“Weather Guesser”) begin to screen the
\nmessages and gather the material to ensure the information is
\ncurrent and accurate. For a launch event scheduled at noon, preparations begin at 0800.
\nFor a a dawn launch, we rise at 0200.<\/p>\n
The carrier world operates on the principle of “Cyclic
\nOperations.” In view of the number of aircraft aboard and the
\ndifficulty in moving them up and down from the hangar bay to the
\nflight deck, there are normally airplanes parked in the landing
\nzone. In order to launch and recover, the Air Boss directs the
\nHandler to move them to an area of the deck which is not
\ncurrently in use. The elegant way to achieve this is to shoot
\nthem off the front end and thus empty the landing zone for others
\nto return. The day begins with airplanes massed aft in a pack and
\nafter a number of launch events, ends with the bow stacked. It
\nsounds easy, but it is an intricate ballet which pits the Boss
\nand the Handler against the Admiral’s daily list of requirements.
\nCAG is somewhere in the middle, trying to fly the airplanes
\nsafely, qualify the aircrews, and manage flight hours so that the
\nfiscal books balance at the end of the quarter. Sometimes even
\naend the jets roaring across the beach to deliver high explosives
\nin anger, though not today.<\/p>\n
The average fuel on board the aircraft of a traditional Air Wing
\nsuch as ours permits a launch and recovery cycle of about an hour
\nand forty-five minutes of flight time. This varies, naturally,
\nas the virile F-14 Tomcats launch and immediately look for more
\nairborne fuel and the E-2 Hawkeye can drone through the skies
\nunassisted for four or five hours. Within this arbitrary schedule
\nwe scramble around to update, plan and prepare for the next
\nevent. Nothing is ever for certain on the carrier, there being
\nso many variables; weather, broken machines, changed plans. A
\nschedule is nothing more than a point from which reality
\ndiverges. But the starting point is the daily Air Plan and the
\nAir Plan makes the dawn. <\/p>\n
When the Plan is published by Strike Ops in the wee hours of the
\nmorning we can get to work. Special briefings are laid on.
\nCritical liaison is made and a flurry of phone calls between the
\nDecision-making modules begins. Important Face-to-Face
\ndiscussions are held. Emerging New Requirements are confronted
\nresolutely and the consequences of unforeseen events dealt with by
\nsavage recriminations. Reclamas and mea culpas are made for sins
\ndone or acts undone. The beauty of the this self-contained
\nuniverse is that you are always at work and no one is ever more
\nthan a thousand feet away from his desk. Each hour brings the
\nopportunity for Bold New Initiatives (BNI’s), frantic revised
\nplanning, action items revisited and the oh-shit-what-abouts.
\nThese are known as “helmet fires” in the trade.<\/p>\n
The astonishing thing is that all this is carried out with an
\nindefinable aplomb and air of nonchalance that makes it appear
\neasy. Flexibility is the key and the correct answer to virtually
\nany conundrum is “Well, sure, we can do that.”<\/p>\n
So one may find oneself stoked out on powerful caffeine at a
\ntheoretical 0200; tired but still wired. The last of the fires of
\nthe day before have been put out but the plastic time has brought
\nthe new day to you beginning at 0300. You might try to catch a
\nnap, or toss for a stolen hour before returning to the blue
\nlinoleum of Mission Planning. Or you can simply resign yourself
\nto the inevitable and pour another cup of coffee and shoot the
\nshit with some other unfortunate about some other cruise or a
\nloco CO, or say “That reminds me of the time that…..”<\/p>\n
Which is how you can tell the difference between a fairy tale and
\na sea story. A fairy tale begins with “Once upon a time” and the
\nsea story begins with “Now this really happened, its a no-shitter…”<\/p>\n
As a consequence, our little five-day business trip off the
\nFlorida coast has no objective relationship to a normal sixty-hour working week. The very first day commences with the standard
\nround of briefings for General Intelligence Information; there is
\nan All-source brief restricted to the senior officers of which
\ngroup I am startled to find myself. That drones on for about a
\nhalf hour, locating the various Soviets and Cubans in our
\nvicinity and hitting the key geopolitical issues of the day.
\nOnce complete, I set out to find the Air Wing Administrative
\nOffice (“CAG Admin”) which is the heartbeat of our little band. <\/p>\n
It is a little broom closet-sized compartment located portside on
\nthe 03\u00a9level about frame 115. I enter and walk into several
\nhelmet fires of varying intensity. One is raging about the
\nimpending Change of Command and the organization of the formal
\nmilitary ceremony, the guest list, gifts and farewell dinners.
\nScooter, the Operations Officer, is attempting to finalize
\narrangements for our desert deployment to Naval Air Station
\nFallon, Nevada, in two weeks. This is a good trick because we now
\ncan communicate with the shore only through the arcane method of
\nthe Navy Message. People are screaming for information to
\ndetermine the number of people, bombs, parts and planes to move.
\nThis fire has been smoldering for a month or more, but since it
\nis still at least ten days in the future and a half-continent
\naway there is a certain air of unreality to it all.<\/p>\n
The Deputy Carrier Air Group Commander (“DCAG”) has identified a
\nmajor cranial conflagration. In order to get ready for the Change
\nof Command, which we must do before we go to the desert, we must
\ncomplete a total revision of the Air Wing Tactical Notes. These
\nare about thirty documents of tremendous detail which provide the
\nbasic guidance for all things integral to our mission; staying
\nalive around the Boat, aerial refueling, precision bombing,
\nsearch and rescue and the correct procedure for emanation of J-band electrons. Scooter and I look at each other across the desk
\nas Moose and Wee Wee, the CAG LSO’s conduct a ninety-decibel
\ndiscussion of the landing tendencies of an unfortunate squadron
\npilot. Next to them Gunner is trying to talk to the Maintenance
\nOfficer (“CAGMO”) about the parts onload and problems with the
\nAir Intermediate Maintenance Depot (“AIMD”) on the ship. The
\nyeoman is feeding the XEROX machine next to me with copies of the
\nflight schedule and the Flight Surgeon (“Quack”) is asking
\neveryone to pipe down so he can find the missing Physiologist.
\nAbove, on deck, a helicopter is turning up. The 1MC suddenly
\ncrackles to life with a Man Overboard Drill, people start to run
\nout of the room and brownshirts on deck drag lengths of tie\u2122down chains across our heads. Forward, the Boss has directed the
\nCatapult Officer (“Shooter”) to test fire number one and two
\ncats. The ship booms and shudders as the shuttle strikes the
\nwater brake. <\/p>\n
“There is no way we can get the TacNotes published out here” I
\ncomment helpfully over the din.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, but we gotta get it done” responds Scooter. Time is
\nflexible and will expand to suit the requirement. “I’ll get some
\nof the bubbas together that know what the fuck they are talking
\nabout and we’ll start meeting right away. Get one of your guys to
\nXEROX nine copies of everything and we’ll get going.”<\/p>\n
“Well, sure, we can do that” I respond. It is nice to know how we
\nwill be spending the next hundred hours or so.<\/p>\n
The airplanes start landing about twenty minutes later and the
\nfun meter began to approach the peg at the high end of the
\nscale. Sound comes in waves and crashes. Tomcats crash into the
\nlanding zone, go to burner and either catch a wire or drag the
\nhook down the deck and roar away. If they have recovered safely
\nthey taxi forward onto the cats, go into tension and bang off the
\nfront end again to repeat the cycle as quickly as possible. The
\nNavy insists that all pilots accomplish a set number of daytime
\narrested landings (“traps”) before they can attempt it at night.
\nOn the 03 level below the Sound is:<\/p>\n
CRASH! Then ROAR! as the jet goes into afterburner, accompanied
\nby WHINE! as the arresting gear engines play out cable. THUMP! as
\nthe tailhook drops the wire to the deck; more ROAR! as the jet
\ntaxis out of the gear and SLITHER! as the wire is dragged back to
\nre-set. BANG! as cat two hurtles 54,000 pounds of airplane to
\nflying speed off the pointy end swiftly followed by THUD! as the
\nshuttle hits the water brake. Repeat Sounds day and night as
\nnecessary to qualify a hundred pilots.<\/p>\n
That night I sneak away from the XEROX and the word processor and
\njoin Moose on the LSO platform. There is no moon tonight and the
\nlights of the jets are strung like pearls up the glide slope on
\nthe straight-in approach to the ship. The LSO’s are peering into\u2039f
\nthe gloom and making calls on the radio to the pilots. “Power”
\nsays Moose, then “Power!” and finally “POWER!!!” His finger is
\ntwitching toward the pickle to light the wave-off lights when the
\nnavigation lights on the descending jet rise and suddenly out of
\nthe blackness, not flying but falling impossibly fast, comes a
\ngrey thundering shape that impacts the deck with a visceral
\nthump, tailhook showering the landing zone with a rooster tail of
\nsparks and a blast of jet exhaust that threatens to rip off my
\nfloat coat. Moose is already focused again on the next airplane,
\nfifty seconds out.<\/p>\n
When the last plane is recovered we find the dirty shirt Wardroom
\nand eat hot dogs. There are hours more to work; first overhead
\ntime tomorrow isn’t until 1000. We talk about the schedule for
\nthe rest of the summer. Back home on Friday; Fallon, Nevada, the week after
\nnext, back to the ship for REFTRA, then Advanced Phase and
\nFLEETEX in August. A month stand-down and then the six month
\ndeployment to the Med in September. We are going to be munching a
\nlot of hot dogs for the next year. I reach across the table for
\nthe mustard. In a perverse sort of way, it is great to be home
\nagain.<\/p>\n
Copyright 1989 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
11 October 2020 Author\u2019s Note: The morning stream of messages got me agitated straight off. Not in an angry way. More a state of bemused confusion. Apparently a participant in a political rally was shot dead by a personal security guard, who naturally was carrying a loaded firearm to a big social gathering which was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20266,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20265\/revisions\/20266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}