HAIFA, ISRAEL: INTIFADA FOLLIES
\n\u0153\u0153 11 \u00a9 17 MAR 90<\/p>\n
11 MAR:<\/p>\n
Among the Believers. We dropped the hook at 0730 in the
\nroadstead off Haifa. I was up, bright as a penny, for the Ops
\nMeeting in CVIC. I was already resigned to the inevitable delays
\nin getting off the ship; what with the exercises coming up I knew
\nthat my potential playmates from the Operational side of the
\nhouse were going to be buried at least neck deep in draft
\n\u00ab\u00b1\u00aa\u00abmessages all day.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, the hairs only stood up a moderate distance on the
\nback of my neck when I heard the boatswain’s whistle and the
\nelectrifying words: “Liberty Call, Liberty Call for Officers and
\nChief Petty Officers.” That went down about 0830, a remarkably
\nprogressive event after the sequential buffoonery of the boating
\nin Alexandria. Still, the meetings unfolded with the inexorable
\nforce of inertia. There is a ton of stuff to do, almost
\nsurpassing comprehension. The Med portion of the deployment will
\nend with a rising crescendo of pandemonium. Mark and Lutt\u00a9man
\nare snowed in, and we have to build the concept brief for CAG to
\npitch to the Admiral tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, I can’t get
\nstarted on graphics production until the grownups decide what
\nthey want to say, so there is nothing for me to do until late
\nafternoon at the earliest.<\/p>\n
I stroll back over to Planning and alert the duty section to the
\nfact that Tasking will be inbound at some point. Between that and
\nlunch there isn’t any more I can do for a while, so I am in bed
\nfor a nap by 1300. I sleep hard until 1430, when Doc Feeks raps
\non the door demanding a playmate and wingie to hit the Beach
\nwith. I look up for a moment and decide that an Intelligence Duty
\nOfficer and two duty Intelligence specialists are probably
\nadequate to the task of typing up five graphics. I call Mark and
\nLutt and inform them that the sirens of the Holy Land have
\novercome me and that I will be ashore until further notice.<\/p>\n
Ten minutes later we are walking down the hangar bay and notice
\nthat the liberty line snakes all the way back amidships. This
\ndoes not bode well; by the time we exercise our Officer
\nPrerogative and reach the fantail we see why things are balled
\nup. One of the contract ferry boats is an enormous ungainly ship
\nwith a flat bottom and two towering decks. He is parallel to the
\nfantail camel and is swinging through about fifteen degrees of
\nroll in nearly calm seas. They cannot disembark the ten
\npassengers they have on board. We watch with increasing
\nskepticism for a half hour until the watershed occurs and a first
\nclass Petty Officer slips while trying to leap to the camel and
\ndisappears between the barge and the wildly rocking ferry.<\/p>\n
I turn away because I know I am about to see one of those
\nhorrible industrial accidents in which a frail human body is\u2039j\u2039\u00ab\u00ba\u00ba\u00abcrushed to jelly between two huge and utterly unyielding plates
\nof steel. Against all hope, the boat is leaning out against its
\nlines and does not crash against the camel on this cycle and the
\nsailor is pulled out unscathed. This is the second incident in
\nattempting to board the boat (dislocated ankle, earlier in the
\nday) and that is enough for the Officer of the Deck and the large
\nferry is summarily banished. After an hour of boating follies we
\nare finally embarked on a little ferry, equally ungainly but with
\na ‘vee’ hull which does not swing so wildly.<\/p>\n
We head in toward the harbor and the City which crawls up the
\nsteep slopes of MT Carmel. It is overcast and the wind is brisk.
\nI am chilly in my sweater. The old arab town is clustered below,
\nlow and straggling along the coast. On the crest thrust the
\nskyscrapers of Israel and the Dan Panorama and the Dan Carmel
\nHotels. We round the new breakwall and pass the ships of commerce
\nand the low silhouettes of the missile boats. Turrets crown the
\nquays facing the sea.<\/p>\n
Fleet Landing is in the dockyard district. The first impression
\nis of a quiet industrial backwater, and nothing changes that.<\/p>\n
Beers at Gil’s place.<\/p>\n
Dan Panorama at the top of the hill. What a view! The Gang’s all
\nhere…at least the Fighter Guys are…Brownie, what a piece of
\nwork!<\/p>\n
Cab to shopping mall to look for toys. We can’t find an open bar
\nlater. The only places are near the Fleet landing, so Doc Feeks
\nand myself wind up sampling the local pleasures. The bartender is
\na hefty Moroccan with blue eyes, 48, and she lifts her shirt to
\nshow us her grandmother breasts. Turns out she was a French Colon
\nwho got the boot when decolonization brought the Muslims to
\npower. Everybody here has got a story. She has two sons in the
\nIDF now. Everyone in this place has got a story. We disengage as
\nswiftly as possible and wander down the street to an open air
\ncart where we buy lamb kebabs on a stick which he throws into
\npita bread with salad and sour yoghurt dressing. They taste
\nwonderful. We have a final beer with the Gamblers in the place
\nnext door and head back to the ship.<\/p>\n
12 Mar:<\/p>\n
Up early and full of virtue. Doc Feeks has a crushing hangover
\nand stays in bed. Mark and I are the only alert action officers.
\nWe need output from the 0900 meeting, general guidance on the
\nMissilex we have to plan for National Week in two weeks;
\nnaturally, this is a major pain in the ass, because the messages
\ncan’t be generated until we know whether the Admiral likes our
\nsurveillance plan and concept of operations. This has all the
\npotential to be a major goat\u00a9rope, since among other minor\u2039f\u2039problems the area is in the middle of major shipping routes in
\nthe central Med.<\/p>\n
When the meeting is over, a bunch of tasking is issued. Nothing
\nfor me, yet, since I can’t distill the messages for briefing
\nuntil they are written. Mark and Lutt\u00a9man are going to be snowed
\nunder, but there is no particular reason for me to stick around.
\nChop has been delegated to open up the Admin at the Tel Aviv
\nHilton, so he will be leaving in a car about noon. I attach
\nmyself to the raiding party, which will feature Toad, Doc Flynn,
\nCAGMO, Chop and myself. We are waiting on the fantail when Hof
\nLewis and the Staff guys arrive to take the Admiral’s Barge into
\ntown. Hof waves us on; I am glad I am wearing my sportcoat.
\nBoating has not improved much; the camel is still two feet too
\nhigh and the boat is rocking and rolling in the swell. We make it
\naboard safely, though, and are deposited on the beach in cracker\u2122jack fashion. We are trying to find DCAG’s car when the Senior
\nShore Patrol rounds the corner and tells Doc his professional
\nservices are required. One of the kids who run the Admirals barge
\ngot thrown off the boat and has perhaps crushed a couple ribs.<\/p>\n
Doc gets involved in his primary mission while we wait outside.
\nIn the lobby of one of the harbor buildings, watching the young
\nblack sailor writhing in agony on a Stoke’s Litter. This does not
\nbode well. We have to wait for Toad to arrive on the next boat,
\nso we go out the gate and have a Maccabi beer in the now\u2122brilliant sunshine and watch the passing spectacle on the street.
\nEvery race on the globe is represented in the passing throng.
\nDark Yemeni’s walk and gesture with blonde Germans. There is a
\ntale in every face.<\/p>\n
After a beer we walk back. Doc has to escort the injured sailor
\nto the hospital because the corpsman can’t be located. Toad has
\narrived; we bundle into the Deputy’s car and blast up the beach
\nroad toward Tel Aviv with Mr. Toad at the wheel.<\/p>\n
I feel my head starting to nod, and the next thing I know I am
\nhearing the through my doze an intensely strange BBC program
\nabout the topography of a woman’s body. It is related by males in
\nthe most salacious terms. I come to consciousness as the
\ncommentators are plodding up the mons venus. We are slightly lost
\nin Tel Aviv, looking for the beach and the Hilton. We are turned
\naround several times before we find the place. Checking into
\nCAG’s executive suite is a breeze. The lobby show is
\nextraordinary, well heeled men and women swirling through the
\nvast cavern, a piano tinkling softly in the background.<\/p>\n
The view is magnificent from room 1009. Tall smokestack and
\nairfield to the north with strange military aircraft buzzing in
\nand out. An Israeli gunboat sits sentinel just beyond the line
\nof surfers at the wave break.
\n\u2039f\u2039\u00e5We sortie immediately to stock the bar with frosty cold ones.<\/p>\n
We enjoy a couple of these in the room while waiting for the
\nnext car to arrive with our leadership. We go down to the lobby
\nto have a beer and see who shows up and sit with the Fighter guys
\nfor a half hour and watch them make zone\u00a9five passes at two
\npretty Canadians who are enjoying tea. I might have mentioned
\nthis, but everyone has a story here. These stories\u00a9 Yona and
\nSharon, as it develops\u00a9 are that big sister lived here for her
\nfirst eleven years and Baby Sharon has lived all her 22 years in
\nCanada. Their Father got them out of the country after the ’67
\nwar. The family is still in Tel Aviv, and Yona has arrived to
\nattend a wedding the next day. Sharon is attending Hebrew
\nUniversity for a year to get familiar with the country. We drift
\nback to the room as the fighters are cuing up for additional
\nattack runs.<\/p>\n
As the clock swings inexorably to 1900 and no one else in sight
\nwe decide to get our on the street and take a look at the city.
\nIt is raining gently as we walk down the beach toward town.
\nNothing is happening. We have a falafal in pita to keep our
\nstrength up and bounce around aimlessly. There are many bars and
\nrestaurants, but no one is in them. Someone comes up with the
\nintelligence that Israel’s version of Halloween has just gone a
\nfew days before and consequently everyone is a bit partied out.
\nAs the rain intensifies we are driven into a pleasant white
\nbistro with a student crowd where we enjoy tall draft Maccabis
\nand dine on a huge plate of french fries. There was a stunning
\nblonde waitress with whom Chop immediately fell in love. I am
\nconfident she had a story but I didn’t hear it.<\/p>\n
Later, in the lounge of the Hilton, Yona and Sharon have returned
\nand laugh through about 60 Air Wing Six target run\u00a9ins. Toad and
\nI cash it in about midnight with the lounge still rolling with
\nthe echoes of the Thunder’s Squadron Song. CAGMO is on the phone
\nto the U.S. and has his wife call Jane to give her the number so
\nshe can call the room. I talk to the her and the boys for about
\ntwenty minutes. They sound great. I is almost over. After we
\nfinish I walk back out on the balcony and smoke a cigarette with
\nDoc Feeks. The surf crashes into the seawall below and the sky
\nhas cleared. I am so far away. Last call before I come home.<\/p>\n
13 Mar:<\/p>\n
We arise early and start to clear the cobwebs. I treat Doc Feeks
\nto a prophylactic Alka\u00a9Seltzer and read the Jerusalem Post. The
\nleadership crisis is percolating nicely; there may be a
\nGovernment later in the day and there may not. The issue is
\nnegotiations with the PLO over the fate of the West Bank. This is
\nof some interest, as we are bound for the Capital that morning.<\/p>\n
Our guide is Svi Ginzberg, a Polish\u00a9German\u00a9Sabra of 67 seasons.\u2039f\u2039He is a veteran of the anti\u00a9British Jewish underground during
\nWWII; a commissioned officer in the fighting in Jerusalem during
\nthe 47\u00a948 fighting. He wears a nine millimeter automatic
\nunobtrusively in his belt and drives a Mercedes Cab. He whisks us
\nout of the Hilton Parking Lot at precisely 1030. We hit the four\u2122lane Rout One to Jerusalem and speed along as he regales us of
\ntales of the country to which he came in 1934. Every tree was
\nplanted, he says, and the Jews have remade much of this place in
\ntheir own blood. We pass scenes of heavy fighting in ’47, and he
\npoints them out with the authority that only a veteran can give.
\nWe pass one of the British Police Forts which were turned over
\nto the Arab Legion and he describes the action around the place.<\/p>\n
As we roll up the hills toward the City we pass the burned\u00a9out
\nhulks of Jewish convoys shelled by the Arab Legion. The twisted
\nmetal has been painted with rustoleum and stones raised to
\ncommemorate the dates of the destruction. We cross areas where
\nthe old border ran and he speaks of the desperation of ’47 and
\nthe triumph of ’67 when they were eliminated.<\/p>\n
Fog at the Knesset Building; we can’t see a thing. When we get to
\nthe walls of the Old City the fog has lifted. We are dropped at
\nthe Jaffa Gate while he parks the car and we wander down through
\nthe Arab quarter and the bazaar. Then into the Jewish quarter.
\nThe Intifada; the PLO edict that all shops must close at 1300 to
\nspite the Israelis. They are, of course, cutting their own noses
\nto spite their conquerors. Some shopowners hiss from behind
\nclosed doors. Toad and I buy camel whips from a turbaned arab.<\/p>\n
We pass the excavations in the Jewish quarter. To the West wall
\nof the Temple Precinct. Into the newly excavated section of the
\nWest Wall, where Svi is reprimanded by a young man for explaining
\nwhile Hasidim are swaying in prayer. As we leave, hands clapped
\nover the cardboard Yarmulkes, he says that normally Jewish prayer
\nis so loud that nobody would notice, except for the particular
\nprayer that these strangely clad devotees. He discusses the
\npeculiar laws that govern the life of what he calls the Religious
\nmen. A good Jew, he says, cannot walk into the Temple Grounds on
\nthe mount above us because they are prohibited from walking on
\nthe Holy Soil of the Temple. Since no stone has been left
\nstanding on another from the Second Temple, no man may know where
\nthe sacred soil begins. The past here has an immediacy that
\nlives tangible around us. We peer into the Dome of the Rock. Svi
\nushers us quickly past, although we could have removed our shoes
\nand gone in to see what may be the alter upon which Abraham had
\nlaid his son for sacrifice.<\/p>\n
I find out later why Svi, so even handed in his treatment of the
\nreligions, has little interest in the places of the Moslem faith.
\nI ask him how many children he has, since he has spoken of his
\ngrand daughter who is serving in the IDF now for her National
\nService. \u2039f\u2039\u00e5
\n“I have a daughter who is 42” he says. “My son was killed at
\neight o’clock in the evening of the sixth of June 1983 in a tank
\nengagement with the Syrians. He lived for ten hours but never
\nroused from his coma.”<\/p>\n
Like I say, everyone here has a story.<\/p>\n
We walk down from the Temple Mount and to the Via Della Rosa. We
\nwalk the stations of the cross from Station Three, where the
\nancient Roman paving has been excavated and brought to the
\nsurface. I kneel on the large uneven stones where Christ walked.
\nWe follow the path slowly uphill to the Church of the Holy
\nSepulcher. This slightly shabby church was damaged in the last of
\ndozens of earthquakes and workmen bustle about with tools. A
\ncassocked priest talks animatedly on the telephone inside the
\ndoor. A crazy hodgepodge of Constantine and Crusader stones
\noutside. Inside, one of the sites of the True Cross, where I go
\nto my knees to touch the spot. We enter the Sepulcher itself,
\nwhere the accident of the line has me with the tomb of the Living
\nGod with four Attack bubbas from VA\u00a9176. A greybeard Greek
\nOrthodox priest lights candles for us in exchange for Skipper
\nRocco Montesano’s five dollar bill. I try hard for a devout feel
\nbut it doesn’t come. It feels like Tijuana. The surreal is
\nincreased by the Coptic Priest whose niche abuts the rear of the
\nSepulcher. He hisses out of the darkness for alms.<\/p>\n
Then out of the walled city, Arabs entreating us to visit the
\nshuttered shops. We buy a bagel from a street cart and wait for
\nSvi to pick us up. We are moderately surprised when he rushes up
\non foot gesturing wildly. “The Intifada has hit me” he says. “I
\nam sorry, but they have broken my window with stones.”<\/p>\n
I have the rock in question now, a piece of the old city wall,
\nominous in its weight, heavy and three cornered. It has exploded
\nthe glass all over the front of the car and lies silently next to
\nthe gearshift amid the wreckage. Nothing is stolen; this is a
\npolitical stoning. Some youthful Arabs have targeted the cab
\nbecause of its Israeli license plates.<\/p>\n
Svi drives off to make a police report and drops us to wait at
\nthe King David Hotel. We enjoy a cold Maccabi beer in the elegant
\nlobby just this side of where the building collapsed from the
\nexplosion of the bomb planted by young Menachim Begin.<\/p>\n
We are just finishing when Svi returns and we pile into the car
\nfor the trip to what may be the real Golgotha and what the Church
\nof England considers to be the real site of the Crucifixion and
\nREsurrection. It is a place of quiet beauty and peace. An Arab
\ncemetery now occupies the summit of Skull Rock, but we gaze from
\nthe viewing place over the bus depot. We have our pictures taken
\nin front of the Tomb of the Living God.\u2039f\u2039\u00e5
\nThen rapidly through the Arab section outside the wall, real West
\nBank touring, to the Garden of Gesthemene where the Lord was
\ndenied and sweated Blood on the night the Romans came for him.
\nThe olive trees here are nearly two thousand years old, and may
\nbe the same that in their youth bore silent witness to the
\nrejection of Jesus. We enter the Basilica and I fall to my knees
\nat the rail and say the prayer that sustained me through the long
\ndays of Eric’s illness said as a mantra of acceptance and hope.
\n“Thank You, God. Thy Will be Done.”<\/p>\n
The hour is growing late, and there is perhaps 45 minutes of
\ndaylight left. Although it is illegal and off limits to
\nAmericans, Svi offers to drive us quickly to Bethlehem to visit
\nthe Church of the Nativity. We think for perhaps a split second
\nbefore saying yes. As fast as thought we are on our way, crossing
\nquickly through the old border and into the West Bank again. We
\nare the last car in Manger Square and the Arab kids swarm over us
\nas we walk across the Square and into another crazy\u00a9quilt of a
\nchurch. The door is impossibly small, blocks placed within an
\nancient arch to prevent the over\u00a9enthusiastic from riding their
\nhorses into the church. Wooden covers in the flagstones are open
\nto reveal the intricate mosaics of the Church built by
\nConstantine.<\/p>\n
We are nearly the last of the day into the Grotto of the
\nNativity. We kneel again to the touch the spot where Mary Labored
\namid the beasts of the field and where the Child was born. We are
\noff limits on the West Bank and we do not linger overlong. We
\nmake a speedy exit across the Manger Square to get away from the
\nArab children who grab at our jackets.<\/p>\n
We speed away from the West Bank, back toward the coast and Tel
\nAviv and the images of this day rolls through my head and I
\nfutilely try to reconcile my awe and reverence and distaste and
\ndisbelief. I cannot. As CAG says later, “If you ever figure it
\nout, James Robin, there are a couple million of us that would be
\nreal interested.”<\/p>\n
2000, 13 Mar. We pay off Svi, and arrive back at the Admin. The
\nBoys are here; Lutt\u00a9man and Mark and Moose. We start to party and
\nshow our trinkets and breath our tales. We drink beer on the
\nbalcony. We are near to giving up hope when CAG and DCAG arrive.
\nAnother couple beers while they unwind and then CAG organizes the
\nstrike on a restaurant that has treated him well before. The sign
\nover the door reads “Mandy’s Candy Store” but it seems to be
\nnamed The Little Ole Tel Aviv. I enjoy a Greek salad and the
\nMaccabi’s are tall and cold. The food is delicious; Lutt\u00a9man and
\nChop violate any number of dietary laws with cheeseburgers and
\nspareribs.<\/p>\n
I chat with the Deputy on the walk back to the Hotel. He is\u2039f\u2039excited because the orders are back on for EA to USCINCLANT. He
\nis leaving at the end of the week. He has been taking a fearful
\nribbing all night, notably at the hands of the Lutt\u00a9man who
\npersists in reenacting the scene from TOPGUN when Maverick sings
\n“You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” to Kelly McGinnis. After this,
\nthings begin to accelerate.<\/p>\n
We visit the room and then pay a call on the VF\u00a931 Admin where
\nLink Collier and Neck Sisterhen are playing bluegrass on the
\nguitar and fiddle. We sing along for an hour or so and enjoy a
\ncouple free Fighter Drinks. As midnight comes on, it seems a good
\nidea for CAG, Chop, Doc and myself to walk up the street and show
\nCAG the new love of Chop’s life. We have coffee and beer and CAG
\nconfirms Chop’s excellent taste in Israelis.<\/p>\n
Then a stop at a strange New Wave Israeli bar under the Hotel
\nCaravel, where the tunes are a bizarre collision of disco and
\nMiddle Eastern Wailing. There is a lot of stuff going on here,
\nnot all of it readily ascertainable without a scorecard. We
\nlisten to two endless wailing songs with an excellent beat and
\nreturn to the Hotel, where the Helicopter guys insist on buying
\nus cognac from the Bar. Later, Ouzo comes in and invites us to
\nthe Thunder Admin for a nightcap, where Doc Feeks attempts to
\ndefy the laws of physics and tosses an apple and an orange from
\nthe balcony in a bid to outdistance the olympic\u00a9sized pool ten
\nstories below. As we leave, the late shift of the Thunders rolls
\nin and jumps on top of those unfortunates who had the temerity to
\ntry to go to sleep early. We close the door on a scene worthy of
\nthe Inferno, with partially clad bodies writhing in the darkness.<\/p>\n
Upon our arrival at our own Admin, we discover to our horror that
\nthere is no available floor space. There are bodies everywhere,
\nthe top mattress pulled off the double bed and unidentified Staff
\nOfficers slumped in the two chairs and across the couch. Doc
\nsuggests we go to breakfast, which isn’t being served yet, and
\nafter a long talk with two young Israeli security guards winds us
\nup back downtown drinking red wine and dark sweet coffee in
\nglasses and eating what appears to be a cheese filled bagel and
\nsoft boiled eggs and talking to some wonderful Yemenis. Not a
\ntourist trap; more beatnik Israeli. Student place, poetry, late
\npartiers. When we rise and return to the street is broad
\ndaylight. We talk to our cabby\u00a9 he has a story, too\u00a9 about the
\ninfluence the United States is pressing on the current talks. We
\nare at poolside at 0800, where a couchette seems an excellent
\nplace for a quick nap.<\/p>\n
14 Mar:<\/p>\n
By 1030 it is clear that what we need is a road trip to clear the
\nevil humors. Chop and CAGMO are going to look for diamonds, so
\neight of us set off for Masada with CAG in the lead and Deputy on
\nthe Wing. After some minor confusion in getting out of town we\u2039f\u2039find the four lane and blast off toward Jerusalem. I m
\nnavigating and the maps we have do not have route numbers on
\nthem, being more of the National Geographic persuasion than the
\nusual filling station map. I have plenty of information on the
\nmap about the Dead Sea Scrolls but am hurting for the correct
\nturns. We detour around the capital and head for Jericho.<\/p>\n
We roar through blasted nothingness. Bedouins living in tents.
\nSheep grazing on thorns on the ridge lines. Badlands. Then off
\nthe tabletop and we roll downhill, down through sea level, down
\nto the lowest spot on earth. Where some enterprising Israeli has
\nalso pulled in a trailer, erected an awning. placed some chairs
\nand opened the Lowest Bar in the World.<\/p>\n
Lutt\u00a9man cracks we should open a place with a basement and call
\nit The Scroll Lounge and really have the lowest place ever.<\/p>\n
We stop at the marker and have our pictures taken. Then a right
\nturn on route one and we hug the shore of the Dead Sea, the water
\nbrilliant blue, the barbed wire unweathered on the security
\nfence. Raw, wild, blasted country with an unearthly beauty. After
\n55 Kilometers we see an immense flat\u00a9topped mesa in the distance.
\nWe are approaching Masada.<\/p>\n
Up the cable car; from the summit the Roman siege lines and
\nCastra are as well marked as it the last 1900 years had never
\nhappened. The ramp that they build to storm the city is there, as
\nis the spoil from which they worked. It is eerie and real and
\ntremendously moving. As we gaze down at the assault route I
\nconfess to CAG that I find myself drawn more to the solders of
\nthe 10TH Legion who invested the place than to the Zealots who
\ndefended it. CAG smiles and says softly “I was \u00f9IN\u00fa the 10TH
\nLegion.”<\/p>\n
The sun is brilliant and the breeze refreshing. Among other
\nwonders in a day filled with the extraordinary, I walk into the
\noldest extant Synagogue, one that served this garrison in the
\ndays of the Second Temple.<\/p>\n
The tee\u00a9shirts say: “Masada shall not fall again.” F\u00a916s roar by
\non low\u00a9level training flights. This is a special and holy place.<\/p>\n
DCAG has a flat on the highway haded back north; after some minor
\nexcitement in trying to find our where the spare is hidden we
\nblast on. The ride back to Tel Aviv is long and I doze. When I
\nawake, I provide erroneous directions to the hotel but we make
\nit. We pack our bags on the run, as much has transpired in the
\nbusiness world since we have been away. Mark’s wife Trish was
\nhospitalized with an emergency gall bladder operation; Scooter is
\npanicked about five new action items that the Staff has dreamed
\nup. We have to get back to work. The ride back up north to Haifa
\ntakes an hour and fifteen minutes. We wheel into the port complex\u2039f\u2039and get the car parked.<\/p>\n
The Senior Shore Patrol immediately buttonholes CAG, and begins
\nthe litany of woe from the night before. CAG changes from Dad to
\nCommander. Boating is easy for a change and in the wink of an eye
\nwe are Naval Officers again. Up in the office we discover no mail
\nand Deputy discovers his on\u00a9again orders are off again.<\/p>\n
He is as low as I have seen him, and he wouldn’t have looked out
\nof place on a stool at the Scroll Lounge.<\/p>\n
The events of the day have been catastrophic. The Conference on
\nthe 16th is back to being on the 15th. There are eighty things to
\ndo. This doesn’t look good. Maybe I will get off the ship again
\nand maybe I won’t. One thing is clear, however, this has been a
\npower tour for the ages. The other thing is that when the ship
\npulls out of here, the next land on which I walk will be NAS
\nCecil Field, Jacksonville Florida.<\/p>\n
15 Mar:<\/p>\n
A lost day. Up at 0630 to begin preparations for the Final
\nPlanning Conference (I rather like the sound of that). We power
\nthrough a variety of issues dealing with our next exercise and
\nhost a group of thirty\u00a9odd IDF officers. That goes on till 1300,
\nwhereupon we lurch uncertainly into our next crisis. This one
\ndeals with the dual carrier Battle group operations coming up
\nnext week. Can’t wait, everything is changed, crash action.<\/p>\n
I have my guys make up new charts and stand by for tasking. We
\nare still on the ship at 1600, nothing seems to be getting any
\nbetter, so I take a nap. I set the alarm for 1800 and when that
\nhappens I blow it off and sleep until 2100. More action items,
\nHof is out of his mind, the usual. I am down at Midrats where I
\nsee Robert Pittman who has some major league bandaids across his
\nnose. I ask him how he got those and he replies casually that one
\nof his squadron mates tried to bite it off. I can see that this
\nhas truly been a memorable inport period for everyone.<\/p>\n
I secure about 0014. Israeli Air Field tour at 0730 tomorrow.
\nGreat deal except the operations order specifies CNT Khakis,
\nribbons and no flight jackets. It was freezing today; I don’t
\nknow what we are supposed to do without coats. This is what you
\nget when the Naval Attache is a fucking Black Shoe.<\/p>\n
16 MAR:<\/p>\n
The day of the great Jacket flail begins early. Everyone is
\nnattily attired in CNTs and helmet bags, the bags containing
\nflight jackets. We stumble down to the Fantail precisely at 0730.
\nThe group is a motley assortment of outergarments. VF\u00a931 is
\ndefiantly attired in green nylon jackets. A few guys who didn’t\u2039f\u2039get the word are wearing brown leather jackets. Those who have
\ncomplete sea\u00a9bags are sporting the geekish khaki windbreaker. The
\nDeputy, ever conscious of the letter and spirit of the
\nregulations is attired in a long black raincoat. The rest of us,
\nwalking the fine line, wear no jacket at all but carry
\nsuspiciously lumpy gymbags.<\/p>\n
Thus was it ever, I suppose, but the intent of the instruction
\nto standardize resulted in no less than five variations of the
\nuniform.<\/p>\n
Thankfully the day is balmy and the issue never gets to the front
\nburner. Still, we start the tour with bile rising in the back of
\nthe throat. Boating is inexplicably delayed for a half hour;
\nthere appears to be no known connection between the people who
\nmake the announcements over the 1MC and the very same individuals
\nwho could look over the end of the ship and notice that there
\nisn’t any boat there.<\/p>\n
I could go on for a couple hours of ranting about the boating.
\nLack of etiquette and decorum. Anarchy in the lines. The drunks,
\nthe mismanagement, the horrible condition of the ship’s boats. It
\nis enough to drive you berserk each time you essay the journey
\nashore. Here, with the swells high and the wind blowing,
\nvirtually everyone has been arriving soaked because the canvas
\ncovers have been ripped away. It looks like hell. I don’t know
\nwhat our guests think about all this.<\/p>\n
Anyhow, we wound up on a Eurobus making the northward trip to
\nRamat\u00a9David Air Field. We followed the signs to Nazareth, passing
\nthe industrial suburbs of Haifa and passing into the rich green
\ncountry of he Kibbutzes. In between we saw pleasant homes perched
\non the hills that could have been in California. We get to within
\n16KM of Nazareth. The hills in the distance under the beautiful
\nblue sky must be the Golan Heights. The turn to the base is not
\nmarked. We follow a two lane for perhaps three kilometers and
\narrive at the Security Checkpoint. We wait while things are
\nexplained to the gate guards. I look out the window and watch a
\ncluster of national service kids trying to hitch rides home. The
\nbus in particularly entranced with a girl with a leonine mane of
\nblonde hair and an UZI sub machine gun. Apparently the troops are
\nbilleted at home in order to keep costs down.<\/p>\n
We pick up LT Danna, who is typical of PAO officers around the
\nworld. She is pretty and her hair falls down over one eye. She is
\naccompanied by a young man whose purpose is undetermined, but I
\npresume it is security. DCAG mentions that no one is in charge
\nand Danna looks at him and says deadpan “I could tell that.” The
\nbus erupts with hoots.<\/p>\n
We drive to the Club where we are served sweetened black coffee
\nand a lavish spread of breakfast pastries. This is followed by a\u2039f\u2039briefing from one of the XO’s of a F\u00a916C squadron. He gives us a
\nhistory of the base. Built by the Brits in 1937. Supported Mid\u2122East operations during the war. Evacuated by the Brits in 1947.
\nFirst Israeli Meteor jets in 1955. Combat ops in 67, 73 and 1983.
\nThere is another war in there somewhere that I do not recall. The
\nMajor recounts the kill numbers from all engagements and mentions
\nthat the base was hit by Syrian SCUD missiles in 1973.<\/p>\n
He mentions that this is a small place several times. Flight time
\nfor him in his F\u00a916C to overhead Amman, Jordan, is 3.5 minutes. 5
\nminutes to Damascus. He is less than forthcoming during the
\nquestion\u00a9and\u00a9answer session. DCAG asks him how many aircraft are
\nin his squadron. The XO clears his throat and looks to the back
\nof the room for guidance. Someone says something and the XO says
\n“Not enough.”<\/p>\n
I turn around. The classification expert is the bus driver, who I
\nmust presume is the Mossad representative. DCAG follows up his
\nquestion by asking the umber of pilots in the squadrons but the
\nXO says “About as many as the airplanes” and smiles.<\/p>\n
This is clearly going nowhere, so I refrain from asking whether
\nU.S.\u00a9supplied satellite imagery is used by the strike planners
\nand how is the RF\u00a94 photo\u00a9reconnaissance imagery processed and
\ncan we meet with their Air Intelligence people?<\/p>\n
They then show us some fantastic gun\u00a9camera footage of MIG kills
\nfrom 1983 which plays to rapt attention and then we are off to
\nthe maintenance hangars. We look at some F\u00a916C’s in SLDM and
\nsome venerable F\u00a94’s and note the engine canisters stored
\noutside that still say “property of USAF” on the side. Then we
\npile back on the bus to the flight line and watch some routine
\nflight operations. We get to see a take off and landing by the F\u212216’s, a low fly\u00a9by and a section of Phantoms in the break. It is
\nclear as a bell, warm and a perfect delight to be outside. Danna
\nhands out some zappers, which we exchange for squadron and Air
\nWing Six stickers and DCAG manages to get the fact that they have
\n13 pilots in the squadron out of the XO. They also fly about 15
\nhours a month.<\/p>\n
Then the tour is over and we are back on the bus and rolling
\nthrough the pastoral valleys of northern Israel. The kibbutz
\nworkers are in the fields and it is quite lovely, almost like
\nthere were not SCUD missiles lurking on the next set of ridges
\nwaiting to crash into the earth.<\/p>\n
We arrive back at Fleet Landing at noon and are back on the ship
\nto change clothes and hit the beach and enjoy the gorgeous day.
\nWe are no more than aboard when the 1MCV crackles to life and we
\nhear that Boating will be Secured until further notice due to
\nspraypainting on the Stern. Trapped! Major Bummer! What perverse
\nson of a bitch runs the boats around here?\u2039f\u2039\u00e5
\nWe cannot get off the ship again until nearly 1600. Cast of
\ncharacters includes Toad, Doc Feeks, Mark Sickert, me and
\nScooter. We have DCAG’s car\u00a9 we are supposed to try to take the
\nflat tire back to the Hertz People, but we are pushing the
\nclosing times of the Sabbath and decide to blow that off. I have
\nto find the little shop that sells military insignia so I can
\noutfit the Boys with some trinkets; Toad wants to find a jewelers
\nshop and Scooter has actually decided to come ashore for the
\nfirst time in the inport period. We wind up on top of the
\nmountain at the Hotel Dan Panorama, which is one of the only two
\nopen bars in town as the sun lowers on the horizon. We buy
\nnewspapers and read with interest of the events of the day.<\/p>\n
The Libyans are claiming that the Pharmaceutical plant at Rabta
\nhas burned to the ground. The NCAA playoffs are starting. The
\nIsraeli\u00a9PLO talks are continuing to wreak havoc with the
\nGovernment.<\/p>\n
Drinking with Emil. Mom an DAD are no\u00a9shows. Pizza and wine; this
\nis not the Sabbath we had heard so much about. In fact, this is
\nwild!<\/p>\n
Back home by 0050.<\/p>\n
17 MAR:<\/p>\n
Up at 0640 for the 5KM run.<\/p>\n
Ashore by 0930….more fun with boating!. Another great day.
\nSigns ups and t\u00a9shirts. The poor organizer is going to take a
\nbath. She ordered about two thousand shirts and there are only
\nabout forty of us running. The race is dedicated to a young
\nIsraeli Commando who contracted cancer and died in a month and a
\nhalf and the organizer’s daughter who “died on the way to the
\nU.S.” four months ago. This is one of those stories I try to find
\nout more of but it is not going to happen.<\/p>\n
Scooter, Toad and I are the Staff reps. We ride south on a bus
\nwith the FID runners to the cable car restaurant complex. A bunch
\nof expatriate Americans are helping to organize the race. They
\nare nice and try hard. The sun is brilliant but the wind today is
\nchilly and gusting. It will be in our faces on the return leg of
\nthe race. At precisely 1000 they send us off and we puff through
\nthe thing. I do not hear my time, but I am pleased I can still go
\nall the way. I is nice to do something with the body other than
\nto use it as a caffeine and food filter.<\/p>\n
Later, after the awards ceremony, we wander around the downtown
\narea killing time until it is late enough in the morning back
\nhome for a final phone call before we go back to the ship. We
\nhave an icy\u00a9cold Goldstar beer at one of two open outdoor cafes.\u2039f\u2039Two kids amble by with packages in their arms and we ask what
\nstore is open in this closed up Sabbath town. They report there
\nis a grocery store open a few blocks away and we go over there
\nout of idle curiosity. It is a wonderful place, dark and high\u2122ceiling, shelves stacked to the rafters and great open burlap
\nbags of lentils and dried beans and red peppers on the floor. I
\nshop earnestly for a while before finding my treasure. In the
\nback is the dried soup section, and there I find a Hebrew\/English
\nlabel Chicken Soup mix with directions for preparing 140 servings
\nat a time. This I must have! It couldn’t hurt, right? I comment
\nto the owner about how nice it is to interact with real people
\nwhile you shop. She rolls her eyes and says this won’t last long.
\nThe country is changing fast and soon it will be just like soul\u2122less LA.<\/p>\n
As we walk back to the landing I realize it is finally coming to
\nan end. We pass through the perimeter gate and stop at the Phone
\ncenter. Inside are twenty phones which connect direct to Israeli
\noperators who will place collect calls to the States. I almost
\ndon’t call, because in the middle of the entrance stands a tall
\nrumbled kid who looks like a bos’ns mate. It looks like he has
\nbeen drinking for a long time and every other word out of his
\nmouth is fucking\u00a9this and fucking\u00a9that at about 102db. His issue
\nseems to be providing $1600 dollars to someone back home. He is
\ndoing so loudly that the other 19 callers in the room get to
\nparticipate along with him. Scooter and Toad already have calls
\nin progress, so I wait. Finally, the TED finishes his call and I
\nplace a quick one to Jane. She is awakened by the operator and
\nthe boys are not yet up. I tell her to start the meter running, I
\nam almost on the way home.<\/p>\n
I am glad I called and the warm glow lasts all the way back to
\nthe pier. We all enjoys the anarchy at the boat. This is the last
\nliberty boat ride of the cruise and it is a memorable one. We
\nride the small ferry, top heavy and wallowing in the heavy
\nswells. The view of Haifa is magnificent. We sit up top and I try
\nto record all the sights in my memory. Finally we arrive astern
\nthe ship, where we are stuck bobbing around for about twenty
\nminutes.<\/p>\n
It just wouldn’t have been FID boating if it had gone smoothly. I
\nreport my return aboard to the JOOD and that is that. Home again.<\/p>\n
Later, after a nap and a shower, we get the work day rolling
\nabout 1600. Chop arrives from the ADMIN where he has spent the
\nlast five days. He had a magnificent inport period, no duty,
\nfoot loose and fancy free. He has been following the German
\nwaitress around Tel Aviv for the last four days but doesn’t get
\nanywhere. He reports that the HS\u00a915 guys who bought us the cognac
\nwere thoughtful enough to put it on VF\u00a931’s bar tab. That Sabbath
\nin Tel Aviv was a rock and roll affair and the bars were jammed.
\n\u2039f\u2039\u00e5\u00ab\u2026\u00ab\u00abAt dinner the Admin stories were flying. Some outfits\u00a9 VF\u00a911,
\nnotably, had problems with the Hilton billing department. VS\u212228’s bill came in about a thousand more than expected. Our sedate
\nlittle sojourn will come to around $50 apiece for the staff,
\nquite a bargain, really. VA\u00a9176 had a biting incident as well,
\nbut the cloak of silence was coming down fast on the sordid
\ndetails. CAG and DCAG returned from Jerusalem with tales of
\nwonder.<\/p>\n
Then back to work. Air Wing training at 2000; Intel update on the
\naspirin factory, draft a five page message for the Staff. Someone
\nsteals a SECRET chart of Juniper Hawk and I have to decide
\nwhether to call in the NIS. Ugh. This is not going to be fun. Bed
\nat 0200. IKE inchops in two days.<\/p>\n
09 August 2022<\/p>\n
End of the Cold War<\/p>\n
I will not tire you with details of the medical adventure that has consumed the last month. This was in the background to all that. It is an actual cruise diary of what was the Last Cold War Cruise. Mr. Gorbachev came out to the Sea Sick Summit at Malta to formalize the moment, and so did President Bush.<\/p>\n
Screen Shot 2022-07-05 at 10.46.58 AM.png<\/p>\n
Now, this deployment is when it happened but of course it was only a part of it. It was a fun experiment that turned into something else on a winter deployment to the Med on USS Forrestal in 1989-1990. The notes were an attempt to capture the real nature of what it is like to get 70 or 80 jets worked up well enough to deploy to the world ocean, crossing the Atlantic and conducting operations in the West, Central and Eastern areas of what the Romans called the “Mare Nostrum.” If you have not seen it from the water, it is pretty neat. I never expected to find myself as an Amalfi coast kind of guy, but it is interesting to find these things out.<\/p>\n
This chunk of narrative is of preparing for the voyage home, the Cold War over but still going on. It is relevant now, because for the next thirty 33 years we continue to stumble forward as the Russian machine turned itself inside out. It seems like we are embarked on something similar. Here is some of what it ws like, with a publication date coming up shortly…<\/p>\n
– Vic<\/p>\n
WESTWARD HO:
\nJUNIPER HAWK, NATIONAL WEEK AND TURNOVER<\/p>\n
18 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
Got up with the Chop energy show at 0750.He has the upper bunk
\nin our compartment, and it was too early but
\nthat was the way things were going to be. Last-pulling-out-of
\nport day. I luxuriated in lying there looking up for about a half
\nhour, thinking about the things that had to be done. When I was
\nsufficiently depressed I got up and took a semi-refreshing shower
\nand turned on the TV. I couldn’t quite bring myself to actually
\nstart on the things I have to do, so I cleaned up. Made the bed,
\nhung up civilian clothes and generally tried to get the idea of
\ndry land and brilliant sunshine out of my mind.<\/p>\n
By the time I got down to Mission Planning I was thinking about
\nthe asshole that had stolen our SECRET Chart of the exercise and
\nmy mood descended. I was in a foul humor through the morning and
\na general pain in the ass to be around. I snapped at John Scali
\nwhen he came down to have me look at the message I had written
\nlate last night. It was hard to get focused, so I concentrated on
\ncleaning things up, throwing out old traffic and actually made
\nsome pretty good progress. By lunch I was actually enjoying my
\nbad mood until Lutt\u00a9man told me he wasn’t going to drink any more
\nfamous CVIC coffee until I got funny again.<\/p>\n
That shook me enough to put my usual sardonic grin on and after a
\nwhile it worked. I happened to stroll through CAG Admin at one
\npoint and encountered an irate Moose, who was vehement in his
\ncondemnation of the administrative nightmare it takes to close
\nout a Cruise. He was particularly incensed by a package of
\nawards that had come back out of the Deputy’s office with a lot
\nof happy-to-glad red ink changes and the number of pieces of
\npaper that would have to be re-run through the word-processors.
\nHis rage was so impressive and so towering that I felt pretty
\ngood by comparison. I got a haircut and felt almost chipper by
\nthe end of dinner.<\/p>\n
Today the Air Wing looked pretty good behind the boat, except for
\nthe last recovery. Toad was waving and so he was happy. The day
\nwas beautiful from what I heard and we survived the whole thing
\nwith near\u00a9perfect equanimity. Scooter had some problems with the
\nair ops summary input Josh had put together at the conclusion of
\nflight ops but there was no yelling or screaming. I suppose we
\nwill be able to save that for the next few days. The schedule of
\nevents worked in our favor today; it was mostly Carrier
\nQualifications for the aircrews (Cuz from VA-37 got six traps
\ntoday!) and services for the ships in company. Regrettably, they
\ngot all involved in chasing a Russian Tango-class submarine and
\nweren’t interested in the kind of training we could provide.<\/p>\n
I spent a good solid fifteen hours in the space and got the End of Cruise Intel input finished.<\/p>\n
One by one the milestones are starting fall.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow will have a lot of bilateral interest. We have ship
\nguests coming and things are going to get confusing, complicated
\nand emotional. But that is tomorrow. I have a chance to get a
\nhalf decent night’s sleep and that means we are another day
\ncloser to the turnover in Augusta Bay. We fly a long\u00a9range TARPS
\nmission on the IKE tomorrow, who is still located west of the
\napproaches to Gibraltar. If the Kitty’s can pull it off it will
\nbe a real triumph of the art. No one seems to mind the amount of
\nfuel we are going to burn to send a Tomcat from the East Med to
\nthe Atlantic and frankly I’m glad. This could be kind of fun.<\/p>\n
19 Mar 1990:<\/p>\n
A day that had its diamonds and its turds. Since I can’t talk
\nspecifically about the exercise in this somewhat constricted
\nforum, suffice it to say that a level eight goat\u00a9rope was the
\norder of the day. After a promising start on the third event, we
\nhad a fairly close brush with a dreaded Border Violation.<\/p>\n
Now, you must realize in this business that we rely on the pilots
\nto come back to the ship and essentially turn themselves in for
\nsins committed while aloft and out of view.<\/p>\n
Figure the odds. Bottom line is that the guys normally have a
\nhalf hour or so to figure out the right cover story and get it
\nstraight before they come in and debrief. The other part of the
\nissue is that we are \u00f9not\u00fa agents of the Inquisition and it is in
\nthe best interests of everyone here to ensure that the most
\nfavorable light is cast on any potentially unpleasant event. So
\nas I conceptualize my job, the only one who really needs the
\ntruth is myself and only so that I can best arm the Boss with the
\nammunition to defend himself and his Air Wing from the real
\nEnemy, who is situational. Sometimes it is the FAA and sometimes
\nit is Sixth Fleet. In this case it is some Government or another.<\/p>\n
I got a good refresher in the Aviation code early in this tour
\nwhen I was flying with VC\u00a95 down in Puerto Rico. I was in the
\nbackseat of a TA-4 with an old squadron buddy from VF-151. After
\nlaunching a BQR-34 drone for a Missilex, we were touring the
\nWindward Islands in international airspace. We were having a ball
\nwhen I noticed a Turkey from one of our squadrons arcing into
\nsomebody else’s airspace and violating the briefed rules of the
\nroad for the area. My pal (who, as a local, has to live with
\nthese people all the time) was irate. When I returned to Hangar
\n100 after the hop I was bubbling with residual adrenaline and
\nstories to tell. I started in on the offending Tomcat and Scooter
\nquickly drew me out in the passageway. He leaned in close.<\/p>\n
“If you ever expect to fly with anybody in this Wing you had
\nbetter learn to keep your mouth shut. Nobody is going to give a
\nhop to a blabbermouth.”<\/p>\n
So, with the exception of the Boss, Mum’s the word. I remember
\nthe first time I wrote a response to criticism from the
\nGovernment of Hong Kong, which went something like; “We couldn’t
\npossibly have violated your airspace because we weren’t flying
\nthat day, and even if we were flying we were under positive
\ncontrol.”<\/p>\n
So anyway, today’s story was that it was pretty close but nothing
\nbad happened and our guy pulled away in time and his wingman
\nagrees and what are you guys so upset about anyway?<\/p>\n
I even believe it.<\/p>\n
Well, unfortunately somebody else higher on the food chain didn’t
\nand we had one of those international snits where somebody comes
\nup on the radio and tells us to stop what we’re doing without
\nexplanation and we do, except we have a whole event airborne and
\nwe waste that one and then launch right into one of the most
\nfrustrating episodes of the cruise, which is a bit funny but more
\non the pathetic side.<\/p>\n
After some high\u00a9level radio chit chat the exercise was on again
\nonly by the time they got the decision Air Ops called me and told
\nme to tell the aircrew, except I pointed out that the aircrew had
\nalready manned up their jets and started their engines and that
\nit was going to be real hard for me to yell through the steel
\ndeck over all that noise and why didn’t they talk to them on the
\nradio? I called the TAO and told him, too, and Ops and figured I
\nwas about out of the loop.<\/p>\n
Two hours later the sixth event players trooped in and said they
\nhad spent the dark\u00a9assed evening drilling around looking for
\nsurface shipping and nobody had told them that the exercise was
\nback on. The point to this is that the guy who was controlling
\nthem on their fruitless mission sits exactly four feet away from
\nthe TAO.<\/p>\n
It makes you want to scream. I know who is responsible. I may
\nhave him shot.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, we did have our diamonds. The great public
\nrelations coop of the decade started out at 0730 this morning
\nwhen Skipper Denk and Crash launched in their trusty Tomcat and
\nflew out to get TARPS pictures of the IKE Battle Group. Ike is
\napproaching the Straits right now, or at launch time exactly
\n2,179NM to the west. Three tanking evolutions later (and about
\n30,000LBS of jet fuel) they rolled into the groove and caught IKE
\nwith her flight deck clobbered, minding her own business.
\nThat’s right: a ten hour mission, round trip of 4,300NM using
\n56,000LBS of JP-5 gas and we caught them asleep at the switch.
\nFantastic! Welcome to the MED, Eisenhower. They will pass
\nGibraltar tomorrow. Looks very much like we will get relieved on
\ntime, unless we wind up at war with that idiot Mohammar Qadaffy.<\/p>\n
It is 0130. They just called away a Medical Emergency in
\ncompartment 3-79-1L, forward CPO berthing. Heart attack?
\nIndigestion? Doc Feeks has volunteered to act as the Senior CVW-6
\nMilitary Customs Officer. Maybe a Chief has a Customs question…<\/p>\n
20 Mar 1990:<\/p>\n
I keep telling myself that all I have to do is get through the
\nnext few days and it will all be OK.<\/p>\n
I was expecting some guests from the Beach this morning, so I
\npropped my eyelids open when the Chop got up and laid there with
\nthe lights on. I got the telephone propped up on my chest and
\ncalled Conway who had the duty. “As soon as the Guests arrive,
\ngive me a call. I want to be there.”<\/p>\n
I heard the mighty thrashing of an HH-53 land on the deck above
\nbut no call came from Conway. Looks like the schedule was already
\nfalling to pieces. I got up anyway and started into another
\ntwilight day.<\/p>\n
First briefs went at 1015, I got the boards done and looked
\nsideways at the pile of classified material control records that
\nhad been laying on my desk since we pulled out. I had discovered
\nthat there was some considerable variance between my definitive
\nset of books and that being maintained by the YN1 over in Admin.
\nMy task was to put the books back together, annotate records of
\ndestruction and ensure that my records agreed with Admin’s.<\/p>\n
That involved comparing a few hundred pieces of serialized paper
\nthat had once been triplicate. So I stayed at my desk, activity
\nswirling around me, juggling books and memory and spot checking
\ndocuments to ensure that what my records said existed really did.
\nIn the meantime, I entertained Doc Feeks and Lutt\u00a9man and Mark,
\nwho periodically needed to get away from the hurly burly in their
\nspaces. DCAG came back from his meeting with the Friends and
\nallowed as how we had probably had a minor incident the day
\nbefore and remarked on the impressive credentials of the
\nindividual who had walked him through the affair. I answered the
\nphone and passed briefing notes to Rev Al through the afternoon
\nwhile making notations in triplicate.<\/p>\n
Flight ops concluded about ten and we got our last ragged summary
\nout of the way about 1030. The team is puffy and not working
\nwell. Josh is trying to quite smoking and is flaky. Murf got turned down
\nfor a sure-thing augmentation to regular Navy because
\nhe has less than a year on active duty. Or so the queer
\naccounting of the Bureau reckons, because Murf has been here
\nalmost two and a half years. Problem was his status as an “OSAM”
\nup until last fall, but that is too complicated (or surreal) to
\ntry to go into now. Everybody has got get-home-itis, including me,
\nand tempers are short and no one is having fun.<\/p>\n
At lunch today I listened to a chorus of agony from the entire
\ntable. Moose was moaning about DCAG, who wasn’t letting him go
\nhome early from Rota and organize the return. Mark is almost
\ndriven to distraction by the fact that he is supposed to detach
\nand go to a West Cost Squadron in three weeks and he is still in
\nEast Med with no orders. Lutt-man just hates his life as Hof’s
\nwhipping boy since Scooter has elected to take the high road and
\nstep back from the fray. I was actually feeling pretty good, or
\nat least the caffeine from the CVIC java had me artificially
\nalert at that time of the day.<\/p>\n
Which dragged on and on. We got kudos from the Friends on our
\nflight performance today, which I relayed to CAG. That reads no
\nincidents, to the uninitiated. When I finally got done with the
\npaper drill I just kept finding more paper. There is something
\nvery liberating about trashing all sort of formerly important
\npapers. I cleaned out two big file drawers and got all the SECRET
\ndocuments stuck in binders for easy accounting. I stripped out my
\ndesk drawer of all messages older than two years. I ruthlessly
\npurged two huge stacks of TACNOTES which have been superceded
\nwithout ever getting distributed; I confess to a certain
\nnostalgia, remembering the sweltering night back in the Caribbean
\nduring Advanced Phase when I had Cookie slaving over a searing
\nhot bulk copier trying to beat the CARGRU 4 deadline to produce
\nfifty copies each of the thirty-two separate documents. We go
\ninto the editing phase of the next edition this week. That is one
\nreason why Lutt-man is hating his life, as he is the new TACNOTE
\nOfficer.<\/p>\n
Now we have to get through the last two days of this exercise,
\nshadow the Soviet task group south of Crete, transit to the next
\none and turn over. I have to start the SPECAT inventory tomorrow
\nto get prepared to dump all this on the IKE.<\/p>\n
I must say that seeing their Card of the Day Message and lack of
\nresponse to the TARPS mission yesterday made me feel pretty good
\nabout our capabilities, despite the day-to-day agony. They must
\nbe feeling very much the way we did five months ago. Early day
\ntomorrow. Time for rest.<\/p>\n
21 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
It started too early and didn’t get much better. I am on the rag,
\nshort tempered and irritable. Haven’t had much sleep the last few
\ndays and the tempo of things is increasing. \u2039f\u2039\u00e5
\nStruggles today started with the Guests who showed up to have a
\nmeeting in my space about 0830. Had to roust the aircrews who
\ngrumbled at the early hour but it turned out to be a valuable
\ninterchange. Then we rolled right into flight ops. First couple
\nevents involved SSC and DACT training, but the DACT got cancelled
\nand TARPS missions were laid on and laid off with alarming
\nregularity. Situation is fluid.<\/p>\n
Scooter got upset with my guys\u00a9 he claimed only 2 of three tasks
\nhe laid on got passed\u00a9 and I found myself suspended in disbelief,
\nas he is in his workout clothes saying this shit and I know for a
\nfact he also took a nap this afternoon. He clearly has a better
\nprogram than I do. I told him if he had any problems he should
\njust talk to me, as I am around just about all the time. It
\ndidn’t register, I don’t think.<\/p>\n
Hard to believe. Everyone is ragging. Tempers are short. Things
\nare starting to disappear. Joining the Exercise Chart in the
\nGreat Unknown is my yellow ashtray. It may have gone into a burn
\nbag with the 150lbs of classified we shredded last night. Cleaned
\nout a few more files, drafted two long SPECAT messages for the
\nmirror-image strikes we will conduct on the 25th. I am starting
\nto drag again. I need some uninterrupted sleep to stop being so
\nsurly.<\/p>\n
It is hard, though. SIXTHFLT is making IKE jump through some
\nbodacious hoops and we are getting dragged along for the ride.
\nThe CONOPS drill has forced me to pull all the imagery out again
\nand blow the cobwebs off the mission folders and put up the
\nexclusion signs. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets
\nany better. The only positive note is that the star of the show
\nis the Starship Eisenhower and we are the horse-holders. I say
\nthe words “six days left” like a mantra but it doesn’t seem to do
\nmuch good.<\/p>\n
I wrote a personal back-channel to Rocky Wilkenson and told him
\nthat unless I heard differently, I was going to go ahead and
\ndestroy most of the classified stuff I have got. The turnover
\nfrom America was more of a pain in the ass than a help and I
\ndon’t want to do the same thing to these guys. We’ll see what he
\nwants to do.<\/p>\n
I understand it was a pretty nice day outside, but I couldn’t
\nvouch for it from here. Got a letter from Jane with two more
\npictures of the Boys. They are so huge now I can’t believe it. I
\nlook at Nick’s face and see the one that stared back at me in the
\nmirror for the first decade of my life. And Eric is so tall. He
\nmust have grown a foot. He has an impish grin and tosses his head
\nat a rakish angle. I had better get home and administer some
\nfatherhood to those lads.
\n\u2039Jane’s letter referenced the big shoot-out three blocks away. I
\nwonder what she meant by that?<\/p>\n
22 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
What a wild roller coaster of a day this was. I have burned
\nthrough whatever mild hostility I had to this line period and
\nentered an entirely new and somewhat surreal phase.<\/p>\n
I got to my stateroom fairly early last night, but was too wired
\nout to go to sleep. I wound up watching a movie until 0100, and
\nthen tossed and turned in my rack for a long time. When the phone
\nwent off, grenade\u00a9like, at 0745 I knew from the way my eyes were
\nstuck together that this was going to be an unusual day.<\/p>\n
It started like yesterday, waiting for the Guests. The giant
\nhelo landed shortly after 0800 and disgorged the briefing team.
\nThe space was filled with aircrew waiting to see how they did;
\nthat proceeded with a good deal of animation right into the first
\nevent brief. Which possibly caused some of the confusion we
\nexperienced a few hours later.<\/p>\n
The TARPS guys were flying a short-notice mission to go look at
\none of the Soviet anchorages. We had some information that
\nindicated the warships were not present, but out and motoring
\naround smartly north of there. Now, COMSIXTHFLT maintains rigid
\ncontrol over exactly what TACAIR can go do what missions in
\nproximity to the anchorages, with the commendable goal of
\nkeeping tensions low and preventing untoward interactions.
\nRegrettably, this adds a significant lead time into planning
\nthese little picture taking evolutions and we were trapped in a
\nbit of a time warp on this one. The Staff had sent the message
\nrequesting permission to go do the mission, but as of brief time
\nwe had not heard a yea or nay from the Mandarins.<\/p>\n
Naturally, the nay came in after the aircrew had manned up,
\nengines turning, the radio transmission cancelling the mission
\nwas garbled and not received and we merrily drove over the
\nanchorage without the requisite permission. We had a little
\ninquisition over that one; aircrew, CO’s, Deputy, Briefer and me
\nin a little search-for-the-guilty. Deputy was real mellow and the
\npictures turned out well, so that flap whimpered to a slow death
\nlater.<\/p>\n
We transitioned into flail about the CONOPS mirror image strike,
\nof which there is a slight chain of command problem (since CRUD-12
\nhas the lead on this, do we wait to hear from them what they
\nwant us to do? What will their pre-exercise message say? what
\ntime and what direction will we run the simulated strike?) Our
\ndirections are mixed, and we essentially are told to sit down and
\nrelax until we hear what they have to say….until the afternoon,
\nwhen we get Spanky McClusky radio-derived Intelligence (‘SpankInt,’ for short)
\nwhen he overhears the Red Rotator telling his fellow
\nwizard that our Concept message is already on the wire and that
\nhe ought to speed things up.<\/p>\n
Which sort of pokes things in the ass from our end and so we
\ncrashed through the message, got a quick chop on it and I worked
\nsome of my magic and got a bogus date\u00a9time\u00a9group assigned so it
\nlooked like we had actually sent the thing about eight hours
\nbefore we actually did. Then we got a tasker from the Intel
\nMandarins to review all the Essential Elements of Information
\n(EEI’s) for the entire target process and, by the way guys, could
\nyou possibly have that to us by the 26th?<\/p>\n
So I flailed at that one for a while and walked down to chow with
\nCAG and the boys when Dayne Denning from the Fightin’ Bitin’
\nSchnauzers braced me and said there had been another border
\nviolation and I took swift and immediate action to get all the
\ninformation. I jumped on the wardroom phone and had Perky break
\nthe mission code the offending bird had been squawking and found
\nout it had been a Thunder jet. I grabbed a plate of some oddly green
\nlooking curry and walked back to the CAG Staff table and leaned
\nover and told CAG it had been 500-series airplane. He didn’t seem
\nthat interested so I sat down and ate and then wandered back to
\nwork.<\/p>\n
Where I discovered why he wasn’t that interested in the facts of
\nthe matter because he already knew them pretty well. He had been the
\npilot.<\/p>\n
So, now it won’t be Deputy going in to the Exercise debrief in
\nthe morning, it will be CAG. I talked to him later, at midrats,
\nand he was exceedingly unhappy with his B\/N. I know the man and
\nit is all too bad. We will see how this plays out. That asshole,
\nthe Naval Attache, is reportedly drafting a message from the
\nAmbassador to VADM Williams. Great interlude.<\/p>\n
Then later, we lurch into the long message strike plan for CONOPS
\nand the clocks change from ‘bravo’ to ‘alpha’ time (gain an hour)
\nand work through to 0100, when I call Scooter to pimp him about
\nthe graphics for CAG’s presentation in the morning (he has to
\nboard the COD at 0500) and he says he hasn’t quite got to that
\nyet because Murf’s reconstructed bomb\u00a9hits memorandum is all
\nfucked up. Since that is my bowl of rice I storm over to find
\nthe Deputy and Lutt\u00a9man in the office and the memo covered in red
\nink. I am tired and pissed and afraid that the numbers are all
\nfucked up and we will wind up at 0230 with all the aircrews and
\noperations officers in the Wing standing around bitching about
\nwhat weapon went where and who the guilty bastard is.<\/p>\n
As it turns out, the only thing wrong with the memo is that one
\nbomb got brought back to the carrier rather than being dropped at
\nsea, which wasn’t the point, but rather that the percentage of\u2039f\u2039duds was unacceptable.<\/p>\n
Taking the low road, I was relieved that the data was correct and
\nthat this was an ordnance issue vice an Intelligence one.<\/p>\n
Which brings me back to my trusty word processor and helping
\nBerger to de-crypt Scooter’s writing. And maybe some sleep in a
\nwhile. This will be painful because I have to get up early and
\nget the draft strike message to the Deputy early so that he can
\nchop on it before transmitting it by 1000L.<\/p>\n
One thing is for sure. It is now the 23rd and we are lurching
\nsteadily on toward Augusta Bay. I can only marvel at the
\nopportunities we have to flirt with the extraordinary.<\/p>\n
23 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
Today was a day of triumph and frustration, of low comedy and
\nprofessional vindication for the CV-59\/CVW-6 Fighting Team. It
\nstarted with the wake-up call. This was so painful that I laid in
\nmy bed for nearly a half hour looking up before I could get the
\nenergy to move. I got to Planning about 0750; CAG was long gone
\non the COD to the Juniper Hawk Debrief. I immediately started to
\nwork with XO Carrol White on the CONOPS contingency plan; he was
\nwaiting by the safe ready to go.<\/p>\n
Phones started ringing and the coffee was flowing and the day
\nunfolded with astonishing rapidity. The launch and constructive
\ntarget positions changed about three times by the time they laid
\nout the fried shrimp for lunch. We ate with the Deputy; we were
\nin the grip of a Staff spasm which put us on hold until the
\nAdmiral made some fundamental decisions about where submarines
\nwere going to be placed and where we could stir the waters with
\nconcrete-filled iron bombs.<\/p>\n
It was sort of cool, and the action was fast paced. IKE was
\nsupposed to raid us between 1300-1800, so the thrust of the day
\nwas to avoid being discovered. There was a formidable capability
\narrayed against us, but Rookie Word came up with a traditional
\nCV-41 WESTPAC gambit. We were not going to drive peacefully down
\nthe published Point of Intended Movement. Instead, we broke to
\nthe northwest and laid on some of the 3,000BBL of fuel CAPT
\nThomassy managed to squirrel away for this very contingency.
\nMeanwhile, the ship went into strict EMCON and allowed the FOTC
\nbroadcast to put out bad locating data that kept us right where
\nthe simulated bad-guys were supposed to think we were.<\/p>\n
OK, so the ship is in EMCON, which means all the launches and
\nrecoveries are happening with the benefit of the radio, which is
\na sort of eerie situation. Can you imagine it? All those huge
\nhunks of aluminum hurtling around, not talking, getting themselves
\nsorted out and landing without once breaking silence?
\nIt is a wild thing, and thankfully the day was nice enough to
\nsupport it.<\/p>\n
So we had two basic plans. The defense was arranged to keep two
\nairborne fighters at max conserve down the threat axis with
\ntankers shuttling gas out to station. Four more fighters were for
\nDLI (deck launched alert). Two E\u00a92’s and two EA\u00a96B’s were way
\ndown the threat axis to keep their ESM gear trained for inbound
\nraiders.<\/p>\n
So the defense was first oriented toward fooling them and second
\nto constructively blowing them away before they got within range
\nto do anything about it.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, our offense was cleverly crafted. We had requested
\nlow\u00a9level times over Sardinia a couple weeks ago and the tanker
\nsupport for Sigonella to support the flight there. Our raid
\nchecked in on the eastern side of the island; IKE was operating
\njust to the south. When the guys popped off the low\u00a9level they
\ncontinued the run\u00a9in and caught the Battle Group in the straits.
\nWe blew them away! Round two to the ancient FID with our antique
\nairwing! Ha! Welcome to National Week, IKE.<\/p>\n
One of the low comic moments came when XO Gershon flew out in a
\nGambler S\u00a93A and dialed up the IKE Mode II codes and joined up on
\nsome of IKE’s own Vikings. XO operated around the IKE for about
\ntwenty minutes, practiced some dry plugs on the S-3 tanker and
\ngenerally had fun. They wouldn’t give him any gas, though, so he
\nthen joined up on the Air Force tanker and got 2,500LBs. When he
\nchecked off the basket he passed his billing identity as Long
\nHorn 707. So long, and thanks for all the Fish! He never got
\nintercepted.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, we had Lizzie Borden and a wingie check back from the
\nS\u00a93 det at Sigonella. Lizzie was the det OIC there for a few
\nweeks, and finally had to return to the ship. In their defense,
\none has to admit that the situation was not exactly normal; FID
\nwas off course and not talking. Lizzie thought we would be
\ndriving along on the published track, whereas we were actually a
\nhundred and seventy miles off to the north. Consequently, when he
\nchecked in with the airborne E\u00a92, he got vectors which took him
\nNNE. The Hawkeye was a busy buckeroo up there all day, trying to
\ncover the Early Warning Mission, keep Yorktown informed (the
\nblackshoe motormouths breaking EMCON jeopardized the entire plan)
\nand be air traffic control and Land\/launch for silent FID was
\nprobably too much. In any event, Lizzie heard that he was
\n“cleared direct” to the boat. Regrettably, the island of Crete
\nwas in the way and he just flew over it. So I got to spend the
\nhalf of the afternoon I didn’t spend on the CONOPS plan writing
\nthe Unit SITREP to a host of Med commands. Don’t know if the
\nGreeks will pout or not.<\/p>\n
But the best low comedy of the day was provided by a young
\nParachute Rigger Airman Apprentice, who flew in to NAS Sigonella
\nfor further transportation to his ultimate duty station. Filled
\nwith trepidation about his first carrier airplane flight on the
\nCOD the young man screwed up his courage and marched across the
\ntarmac and climbed up the ramp into the COD. He strapped in,
\nbackwards, and shivered. The large ugly airplane lurched into the
\nair and lumbered toward the ship. After fifteen minutes in
\nstarboard delta, the COD swooped down the glide slope. Looking
\nout the tiny porthole the airman could only see water rushing
\nbehind and then suddenly the flash of black deck and the whole
\ncontraption was snatched out of the air and ground to an
\nimprobable halt. The C-2 taxied out of the wires and folded the
\nwings as the handlers got it situation abeam the island. The ramp
\nfolded down and the PAX rushed out and were ushered across the
\ncommotion of the flight deck, down into the island to the ATO
\nshack.<\/p>\n
Where he discovered to his consternation that he was on the wrong
\ncarrier.<\/p>\n
As our first Prisoner of War, he was treated to cookies on the
\nbridge with CAPT Thomassy and a sheepish picture of the young
\nman with a placard reading “POW” around his neck hangs outside
\nof Strike OPS.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow, we feature medium range strikes, and will probably get
\nthe tasking for our second (and last) CONOPS strike.<\/p>\n
24 MAR, 1990:<\/p>\n
The National Week experience continues today. FID continues to do
\nwell against the new guys.<\/p>\n
I got my wake\u00a9up call at 0545, or so they tell me, because the
\nfirst thing I really remember is Charlie calling just before 0800
\nto say that they were launching the alert fighters because an IKE
\nraid was inbound. I cursed and tried to move but had some minor
\nlocomotion problems. I managed to get to work in about twenty
\nminutes to find the second event brief breaking up. I started out
\nbummed because someone ripped off the picture of the Clueless
\nBlue Blasters that I had annotated the night before. Things are
\ncontinuing to disappear as the souvenir hunters start to hoard
\nthings for their end\u00a9of\u00a9cruise stashes.<\/p>\n
XO White was looking for me so he could get into the safe and
\nstart back to work. So we did CONOPS for a while and I drafted
\nand sent a back channel to Strike U lobbying for Josh and Thorn
\nTurner to get a couple of the new jobs that are opening up there
\n(if it all happens and the roof doesn’t fall in on the Defense
\nBudget). It is nice to get something out of the way early, sort of
\nvalidates the day.<\/p>\n
According to the sacred SOE, this day was to be broken into two
\ndistinct parts. During the morning, from 0800\u00a91300, IKE would be
\nthe aggressor and send raids against us. During the afternoon it
\nwould be our turn to go after them. It was an exercise
\nartificiality to which I was not partial, favoring the Battle of
\nMidway approach, massed raids flying by one another. But of
\ncourse they didn’t ask me.<\/p>\n
IKE still didn’t have a good feel for where we were and their
\naircraft acted as missile sumps for our cruisers and fighters.
\nAbout 1130 some guy (who had been constructively shot down three
\ntimes) finally blundered in close enough for the ship to simulate
\na Nato Sea Sparrow shot on him and the jig was up. Presumably
\nwith the locational data in hand we would get a stiff war at sea
\nstrike before their offensive war was over. There was a nearly
\nimpenetrable haze where we were operating west of Crete, though,
\nand the CAPT kept the ship under a low cloud bank and I don’t
\nthink IKE ever really got the big picture.<\/p>\n
The notion of force regeneration is makes all these endeavors a
\nbit surreal. We “constructively” shoot a guy three times but he
\ncontinues to come inbound and pass locating data back to his
\nship. So we can’t measure empirically how well we really did.
\nNow, the CAPT was up on the 1MC giving all hands an update on how
\nwell we were doing in splashing the raiders and smashing the
\nships. I think, after looking at the debriefs, that they never
\nlaid a glove on us and we probably put between 2-4 Harpoons into
\nIKE.<\/p>\n
That closed out the Blue\/Orange war today. Now we move on to the
\njoint CONOPS strikes tomorrow, the Missilex the day after, one
\nmore CONOPS flail and then into Augusta Bay for the turnover.<\/p>\n
In between all the rest of the day’s fun and games we tried to
\nfigure out why the ship claimed that Biff Ethington flew 9 miles
\ninto the Tripoli FIR (I don’t think he did) and how well the
\nTARPS guys did against the Gulf of Sollum on their run (all the
\nSoviets were home except the Foxtrot, who is doubtless up to no
\ngood) and draft more responses to more crazy tasking.<\/p>\n
After dinner I saw an opportunity to sneak away for a one hour
\nsiesta so I could plow through the night, if required. I had no
\nmore than begun the long plunge into the cool darkness when
\nsomebody began rapping on my door. I tried to ignore it, as I
\nknew that my guys would simply have called on the phone. The
\nrapping went on and finally I had to drag myself out of bed to
\nanswer it. An unidentified enlisted guy stood there and told me
\nhe was here for a TV accountability check.<\/p>\n
I blinked and said “what the fuck?” cleverly. “Go away and come back later.”
\nI fell back and was in heavy REM sleep in a couple minutes. I had a
\nparticularly vivid dream which made me sit bolt upright just
\nafter 1900. I dreamed we had been extended on station.<\/p>\n
25 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
So today was the day we really plunged into the long delirious
\ntunnel of National Week. Mirror Image CONOPS was the first event
\nof the day; brief at 0700 for a 0900 launch. Complicated effort,
\n27 airplanes on the launch and a major postex message to write
\nonce we found out what it was that they wanted, the whole
\nenchilada, voice reports too.<\/p>\n
Off we went. Now, in keeping with the way we do these things
\nthere were two or three other parallel events which began this
\nmorning. We began the planning process for the CONOPS strike the
\nday after tomorrow, which is essentially where we were on
\ntoday’s strike two days ago. The Missilex began to intrude on our
\ncollective consciousness for tomorrow, and naturally the turnover
\nand EEI message for COMSIXTHFLT all had to get done.<\/p>\n
So in approximate order: launched the strike on time, best
\nperformance by the Flight Deck this cruise, launched everybody in
\nabout 19 minutes. Strike worked like a charm, nobody went down on
\ndeck, great radio discipline, all bombs on target and nobody
\nboltered when they recovered.<\/p>\n
The reconstruction took about the next four hours, and I got the
\nsmooth rough to Deputy by 1500. Cyclic ops and the ASW exercise
\nwere going on and Gene Smith and Rocco Montesano had flown over
\nto IKE in an A-6 to do face-to-face planning with the CVW-7 guys.
\nI finished drafting the EEI’s message for the good CDR Lewis and
\nfound myself collapsing into the word processor. Nothing seemed
\nto be happening, and waiting around didn’t seem to make much
\nsense.<\/p>\n
It being 1600, I ducked down to the compartment and grabbed a
\nquick hour-and-fifteen minutes of unconsciousness. I dreamed
\nsomething, not sure what, and awoke on my own just before 1800.
\nAmbled back up to mission planning. XO Smith was back from IKE
\nand ready to get rolling, the tasking message came in and we were
\nready to get going on the next round of CONOPS planning. Deputy
\nhad hacked the postex to pieces, it was a Flash message (which is
\nthe only way things are getting off the ship these days) so I got
\nthe materials out for the XO and got to work on a near complete
\nrewrite. That wasn’t quite complete when the Good Commander Lewis
\ncame in with the modifications to the EEI’s message, so then we
\ndid that and got CAG to sign off on the postex and I split for
\nMain COMM.<\/p>\n
When I got back we had our best show of the day. The evil CDR
\nLewis stormed into the room, brandishing the tasking message and
\nfoaming at the mouth. “Goddamn it, Gene! What the fuck!” he
\ngrabbed the XO and strode direct to the map board. “Don’t you
\nidiots know you can’t launch airplanes from a carrier in the
\nmiddle of the land?!?”<\/p>\n
Naturally, those of us not being yelled at had quite a ball with
\nthis one, particularly the guys who used to work for HOF. The
\nissue was that the ASW exercise featured synthetic geography
\nwhich imposed land on the middle of the MED. The CONOPs planners
\nhad the gall to imagine that they could pick a launch point for
\ntheir drill while the carrier was located, constructively,
\nhundreds of miles away in a narrow bay.<\/p>\n
To which we said “Who the hell cares?” but nobody asked us. HOF
\ndragged Gene down to the Flag spaces and got on the radio and
\nchewed the IKE guys a couple of new places to bleed. It was clear
\nthat we were not going to get any new launch posits to plan our
\nroute from, so the strike is on hold. In the meantime, we brief
\nthe range surveillance S-3’s at 0330 and the Missilex shooters at
\n0530, and host Mr. Workman, distinguished Naval Intelligence
\nCivilian at 0800. We will get the CONOPS message either in the
\nmiddle of the night, or first thing in the morning.<\/p>\n
The Missilex fades back into the ASWEX which then lurches into
\nthe CONOPS strike with all its ancillary paperwork and back into
\nASW, 36 hours of flight ops and then finally it is Augusta Bay.
\nHave to organize the turnover materials at some point, too. Could
\nbe busy. Of all things, though, I am sort of enjoying myself.
\nThere are other folks around here who are threatening to slit
\ntheir wrists. After the stories I have heard about the
\npandemonium over on the IKE, I am very pleased to be right here
\nin our own snug Mission Planning.<\/p>\n
26 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
It should have been OK today but somehow it wasn’t. Didn’t get up
\nuntil 0710; missed the first two briefs but got about five hours
\nof sleep. The first two launches were godawful early. The
\nGamblers briefed about 0330 for a 0630 launch. The Fighters (who
\nwere going to be the first shooters on the Missilex) briefed at
\n0530 for the 0800 launch. The Admiral flew over to Yorktown to
\nwatch the festivities on the large screen display of the Aegis
\nstar\u00a9cruiser. Good for us because he was gone; bad for CAG
\nbecause he had to sit in one of the tall chairs in Combat and
\ntalk on the radio to the Red Rotator who had all sorts of
\ninformation CAG didn’t. It was going to be that kind of day for
\nCAG.<\/p>\n
They were booming off the catapult as I was choking down my first
\nmug of coffee. Meanwhile, we had the ASW players from that
\nportion of the exercise landing and XO Smith was struggling through
\nthe confused strike message from the CRUD-12 trying to
\nretrieve coherence from what was looking increasingly like
\nmulti-colored spaghetti on the chart.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t working too well.<\/p>\n
I was surveying the increasing pile of junk on my desk….card
\npacks, top secret folders, bootleg copies of SPECAT messages with
\ndismay. People were coming and going and sanitizing the space
\nevery thirty minutes was making critical pieces of paper submerge
\ninto the bond paper morass. I was looking at a random pile of
\ndiskettes, wondering which one of the fifteen had the right
\nmission on it. It was that kind of day.<\/p>\n
The issue with Missilex’s trying to do what you have got to do
\nwithout either shooting the civilians or dumping an aluminum
\nrainstorm on them. Thus, the S-3’s spent a good couple hours
\ndriving around the exercise zone (which we had appropriately
\nNOTAM’ed, it being about one-third into the Libyan FIR) warning
\nfreighters out of the way. Meanwhile, the spendthrift Fighters
\nwere hanging on the impeller blades trying to conserve fuel and
\nwe kept launching alert tankers out to keep the thirsty fellows
\nhappy.<\/p>\n
About four hours into the flight schedule we had a green range,
\nand the drone carrier and the fighters were cleared to move into
\nposition. Everything was go, adrenaline was rising, and the drone
\nwas launched….only to turn into a saltwater seeking missile.
\nTwice. Which involved another half hour delay while they launched
\nanother airplane and another drone. At long last they were able
\nto get all the players right over a green range, the drone
\nworked, and they shot it out of the sky.<\/p>\n
Which made the fighters ecstatic, but bummed out the surface
\nships, who were to be the backup shooters in case they missed.
\nSo our guys got to come home. The exercise wasn’t over, though.
\nThe Shoes had to have their chance, too. So things dragged on for
\nanother couple hours, during which CAG got increasingly
\nexasperated.<\/p>\n
Flight ops continued, morale and motivation was at a low ebb. In
\nmy effort to cross train the AI’s, I had allowed some to go down
\nto SUPPLOT to learn some of the all-source tricks of the trade I
\nlost one who decided he wasn’t going to do anything else.
\nConsequently, we were short handed and pissed off. I was groggy
\nand couldn’t get started on the inventory or the other projects
\nso I went for a nap.<\/p>\n
Wrong move. I slept fitfully for an hour or so and awoke
\nunrefreshed, disoriented and cranky. I walked into Planning and
\nPerkie hit me with some project Scooter had kicked back and I
\nsaid “Well fuck him!” Only to discover that Scooter was standing right behind him.<\/p>\n
So we had an emotional minute or two. Then Berto Schnable and
\nGentle John Kurowski almost came to blows over something
\ninconsequential. It was that kind of day.<\/p>\n
We got XO Smith set up for his brief. The Admiral changed the
\nlaunch points, but aside from changing things (again) it went
\nfine. We had aircrew planning the nits and grits through about
\n0200 when the last of them gave up and surrendered to sleep. I
\nstarted the night shift on sorting the three hundred\u00a9odd imagery
\nflats for the final inventory and turn\u00a9over and began to clean
\nout my desk. I had skipped dinner and felt generally burned out.
\nThe coffee of the day had given me a low grade headache. I was
\npouring over the pink sheet when I discovered the near\u00a9final
\nkicker in the National Week total harassment package.<\/p>\n
We will start thirty\u00a9two hours of continuous flight ops at 0330
\nthis morning. We will fly through the day tomorrow, then start
\nuploading real ordnance in the afternoon for the simulated
\nstrike. The we download same, upload the fake stuff and run the
\nsimulated strike. My job starts when they get back around 2200,
\nas we construct the post exercise report. We will wrap that up
\naround 0200 or so, whereupon we switch time zones again. To the
\neast. Which means we lose an hour of sleep without actually going
\nanywhere. Some rocket scientist has had the two carriers on
\ndifferent time zones! They figure it would be too complicated
\nwith us lying beside each other in the anchorage, which is
\nundoubtedly correct.<\/p>\n
Turnover starts at 0800, so I expect we will be as shiny as new
\npennies. They are saying that bad weather is rolling in from the
\nwest, so who knows what will happen. One has to hope for the
\nbest.<\/p>\n
27 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
I was in the office until 0300 this morning; hung up on some
\ndetails and daunted by the amount of stuff we had to do today.
\nWandered down to bed after tasking Charlie to place a telephone
\ngrenade next to my pillow not later than 0745.<\/p>\n
It went off approximately as scheduled. I shaved and wandered
\ngroggily past the CAG office where I found the first flail of the
\nday already in progress. Deputy was hunched over the message
\nboard underlining a message. He turned around and asked why we
\nwere not operating in accordance with the Force AAWC Intentions
\nmessage.<\/p>\n
I was at a bit of a loss for a real swift answer, and responded
\nwith something like “Well, er, I have a message that says to use
\nthe old codes….” while thinking to myself “who the fuck is the
\nFAWC?” So I had my first little project even before I got into
\nthe office. I found my second one when I found a note on my desk
\nreminding me of the FIROPS message for COMSIXTHFLT that was
\nprobably due yesterday. We naturally launched an immediate
\ninvestigation and came up with the guilty party, who was all of
\nus, which meant me for not thinking hard enough about today.<\/p>\n
Excuses were easy, like we didn’t get the message and we had
\nconflicting guidance from the Staff but that is considered
\nwhimpering or whining so we did what we could to fix the
\nsituation and move on from there. The fix was to make new cards,
\nget them out to the ready rooms, change the brief, coordinate
\nwith Air Ops and assign Murf to quickly research about forty
\nsorties from yesterday and start drafting a message for chop.<\/p>\n
Gene Smith’s crew was all up planning tonight’s CONOPS thing nd
\nso there was SPECAT all over. Despite the number of people coming
\nand going, planning and whatnot going on, there were not that
\nmany sorties being generated. I took a bold step and started
\ngetting the Turn Over package together. It was about time.<\/p>\n
The rest of the day was spent putting the package together,
\nholding a destruction party for the tons of stuff we temporarily
\nown and inventorying same. We made great progress and I was
\nburned out but happy with the way things were going. We had some
\npanic from Gene’s planners, one of whom has a great capacity for
\nbringing all the sweat pumps on line at once, and the Deputy
\nhacked up the FIROPS message pretty well so we redid that and I
\ngot the FITREPS on the guys back. They turned out well; Deputy
\nwas pleased and they once they go smooth they will be ready for
\nCAG. Quite a good feeling because the last thing I want to do is
\nget into that paperwork drill this late.<\/p>\n
By that then it was brief time for the CONOPS drill. The Ordies
\nhad been building and wire\u00a9checking and loading all day. There
\nwas kind of a festive air around the place. Aircrew were coming
\nin, clamming the helmets down and announcing that they were
\npleased to call it a cruise; they had flown their last hop. The
\nguys got out and took pictures of flight ops and reported that it
\nwas a pretty day. I will go look at it tomorrow.<\/p>\n
I got a thirty-second commercial about closing out the SPECAT
\nprogram in the brief and then HOF called and tasked me to build a
\nlittle orientation booklet for our French pals who are going to
\nRoosie Roads\u00a9 you know, target photos, bus schedules, that kind
\nof thing\u00a9 then had some dinner with CAG and the Deputy. I snuck
\naway for a quick nap before the launch so I could get through
\nwhat promised to be a long night and was only awakened twice with
\nfrantic phone calls. The level of caffeine in my system wouldn’t
\nreally let me get down anyway, so I succumbed to the inevitable
\nand went back to work.<\/p>\n
Every time I leave the place something else is going wrong. This
\ntime the back-channel message I sent to FOSIF Rota demanding an
\nopportunity to get ashore on April 1st turned into a bombshell.
\nWe got a call from SESS (Ship’s Signals & Exploitation Space)
\nasking about it and the Staff called down and asked for a copy of my
\nmessage and there were dark rumblings
\nthat Dru had turned the thing around front-channel, referencing
\nmy irreverent message and asking for me to Debrief the Entire
\nDeployment as CTF-60!<\/p>\n
Yike! There was about forty-five minutes of trying to figure out
\nwhat was going on. I was convinced for a while that I would soon
\nbe dancing in front of the Admiral and be ritually disemboweled.
\nThankfully, the real story was that FOSIF sent it back channel,
\nnobody got it but the Staff Intel officer and me. I got a mild
\nreprimand and then I invited him along for brunch and the crisis
\npassed.<\/p>\n
Then the strike recovered and it turned out that it went very
\nwell indeed. Our guys can do what they are tasked to do, however
\nobtuse the mission. I spent a few frantic hours until the great
\ntime change putting the post exercise summary together and it is
\nnow 0400. The turnover bunch will show up here in four hours. I
\nsuppose it is time to get some sleep. After the ritual is
\ncomplete, I intend to sleep for a week.<\/p>\n
TURNOVER: AUGUSTA BAY<\/p>\n
28 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
Got out of Planning about 0400. Sleep was not a priority issue. I
\ntasked Charlie with three key elements for the morning. I wanted
\na wake\u00a9up call at 0715 without fail to ensure I was on station to
\ngreet the team from the IKE. The Deputy, in keeping with his
\nprogram to ensure that everything went First Crass, wanted some
\nof the world famous FID bake shop breakfast pastries ( the ones
\nwith the specific gravity of a dwarf star set out. Lastly, I
\nwanted a fresh cauldron of CVIC java available to help jolt
\neveryone’s systems into some semblance of activity.<\/p>\n
Charlie came through. My wakeup call penetrated my consciousness
\nand the usual amnesia of short term sleep was penetrated.
\nNaturally it hurt a bit, but there were important issues to be
\ncovered. I shaved and put on CNT khakis with ribbons. With ten
\nminutes to kill, I stopped in Wardroom One and enjoyed two eggs
\nsunny side up and some half toasted bread. Fortified, I was ready
\nas I was likely to be for turn-over. I arrived in Planning at
\nexactly the right time, only to discover to my amazement an
\nutterly transformed space. The deck gleamed. Crisp blue
\ntablecloths covered the battered folding debriefing tables.
\nChairs were arranged in neat discussion group areas. At the far
\nend of the space, near the map boards, a buffet had been set up.
\nHeavy silverware was laid in perfect order next to an astonishing
\nassortment of fat\u00a9pill pastries. At the far end of the table was
\na large silver salver filled with bacon and sausage. Tall
\npitchers of orange juice. The IS’s and Charlie stood off to the
\nside with broad grins.<\/p>\n
They had worked a miracle. When I had left the space but hours
\nbefore it was cluttered with half-filled cruise boxes. CAG and
\nDCAG came in and were suitably impressed. Although we were ready,
\nthe transportation folks let us down and there was no indication
\nof when (or if) the CVW-7 guys would arrive. After about forty-five minutes
\nof jaunty camaraderie, the grownups gave up and went
\nback to their officers. I had used the opportunity to have Deputy
\nre-chop the CONOPS message from the night before; as is so often
\nthe case, it was a major re-write although we had simply followed
\nthe format we have developed only two nights before. C’est la
\nvie.<\/p>\n
Once complete, I got CAG to look at it and with a minor flourish
\nof the green pen I was free to tweak the thing on disc and get it
\ndown to Main Comm. Second to last outgoing; now all we have to do
\nis send the message closing out the program and we are done with
\nthat for the next eighteen months.<\/p>\n
At length, the Guests showed up via H\u00a946 from IKE. By that time
\nthe bulk of the food had been devoured by the troops, but it was
\na class act and Charlie and the Boys did proud. A troop of
\nAir Wing Seven staffies arrived about nine-thirty. All concerned
\nwere pretty well burned out and were chug-a-lugging coffee to
\nstay awake. My counterpart, Rocky Wilkinson, showed up in the
\nfirst increment. Since his guys didn’t make the first flight, I
\npulled out this running log and covered some of the main issues
\nthat confronted us and offered them up for discussion.<\/p>\n
Turnover after you arrive in the MED is not the greatest program
\nin the world. IKE deployed with a full bag of support materials,
\nand if any is more cramped for space than we are. Rocky is a
\nveteran of FOSIF Rota, so there isn’t much about operating here
\nthat he hasn’t supported from the beach. He also made a good
\nchunk of the last cruise on IKE, so the MED is really his old
\nstomping ground. We hit some of the ports and procedures he
\nhadn’t seen yet and I didn’t really have much to add. He has got
\na strong program and good AI’s working for him, so I’m sure they
\nwill work things out just fine. Consequently, the package we had
\nput together the day before was largely a burden he didn’t want
\nto deal with.<\/p>\n
We went through the materials and he took mostly unclassified
\nstuff, our card packs and a few maps and charts. Most of the
\nmaterial we wound up throwing back into a box for later
\ndestruction. We talked about life in the CONOPS planning process
\nand how much better things were gong to be during the summer, at
\nleast from the liberty standpoint.<\/p>\n
My main lament was the lack of operating time, and the consequent
\nviolence of every minute we had available underway. There was
\nlittle opportunity to wok into the cyclic operations gradually, a
\nfew cycles on the first day out to get comfortable. Instead, it
\nseems we are flying into exercises from the instant the hook is
\npulled and we keep hitting it hard until the very moment the
\nhook goes down again. The in port visits are too long and too expensive
\nand they give everyone entirely too much time to think about
\nother places and things they would prefer to be doing. I treated
\nRocky to a FID lunch of fried chicken and we talked about
\ncomparative working hours and conditions.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t seem much different over there. Rocky has logged about
\nfour 26HRS plus days on the Translant and the first round of MED
\nops. They all look tired and pale and mirror image the way we
\nlooked. I asked what it was like to work for a CRUD staff (mostly
\nBlackshoes) and he said it was actually a little easier than
\nworking for an aviator. RADM Lynch basically takes what the
\nStrike planners says on faith, trying not to betray his
\nignorance. So not altogether too hard. He had some questions
\nabout the new CAG they would be getting in the fall, a guy named
\nJim Sherlock.<\/p>\n
Lutt-man was having discussions with his opposite number across the room.
\nHe heard the name Sherlock mentioned and summed it up
\nnicely. “That guy is the anti-Christ” he said, and left it at
\nthat.<\/p>\n
We got the things Rocky wanted packed up and I escorted the party
\nup to the flight deck. I blinked at the light even under the
\nleaden Sicilian skies. It was my first time outside since Israel.
\nMT. Etna was snow covered and vast in the distance.<\/p>\n
Most of the SIXTHFLT was at anchor around us. IKE was massive about three
\nmiles away. Tico and Yorktown rode easily astern and the
\ndestroyers and logistics ships were scattered in all directions.
\nHelo’s flew non\u00a9stop from all points of the compass in graceful
\naerial ballet. Rocky, his two AI’s and our turnover package
\nlifted off in an HH-53, en route his Mission Planning and the
\nbeginning of his cruise.<\/p>\n
A giant weight lifted from my shoulders with the helo and I felt
\npositively at loose ends. I walked up forward and contemplated
\nthe dancing helos for a while. The wind was damp and the deck
\nslippery from liquid FOD. I swung back down to the Flag Intel
\nspaces and chatted with Jim Everett, Jim Hoey and Regan Chambers
\nfor a while. They were busy and pumped up and I was finished and
\nexhausted. I went down to my compartment and laid down in the
\ncool darkness and slept. I awoke after an hour and looked around.
\nThere was, for the first time, nothing in particular I had to do.
\nI rolled over and slept another three hours.<\/p>\n
Later, with my energy levels refreshed, I returned to the office
\nand lead another destruction party. We had just finished
\ndestroying the charts and TOP SECRET documents when I got a call
\nfrom Scooter, who said be sure to save them for the Post
\nDeployment Report.<\/p>\n
Oh well. Turnover is done. We are underway at 0300, westbound
\nagain. I feel curiously empty. Perhaps more sleep will cure that.
\nIt is hard to believe but I will be home in twelve days. The ache
\nto see Jane and the Boys is almost beyond bearing.<\/p>\n
29 MAR:<\/p>\n
A dog day. A post deployment day. A day of loose ends and wire
\nabraded nerve ends. I was up in the spaces doing destruction, a
\nspecial project for the XO of the fightin’ bitin’ Silver
\nSchnauzers, and trying to burn the caffeine out of my system. I
\ngot to sleep about 0430 and was awakened briefly to the dulcet
\ntones of CAG, who had a penetrating question about a message
\nsecurity bust from the Red Lions. From my REM sleep I was able to
\noffer a cogent analysis of the problem and recommended
\ncancelling the errant message and reissuing it at a higher
\nclassification. I lay there looking up for a moment and then
\nyawned and the next thing I new it was 1330 and about time to get
\nwith the program.<\/p>\n
Things started slowly because the grown-ups had gotten off ship
\nlast night for the big CO’s dinner to conclude the turn-over. I
\nheard some great tales this morning. Someone looking at the
\nCAPT’s gig and reporting all the glass gone from the forward
\ncompartment windows. Someone hitting the Admiral smack in the
\nforehead with a water-soaked roll, and later the Flag and his
\nstaff racing down the NATO fuel pier to leap into the Barge to
\ndrag race the other Flag staff to the carriers. It sounded like
\nfun and none of them regained their focus until late in the
\nafternoon.<\/p>\n
I confronted just a few short fuzed problems resting on my desk.
\nOne was the task of photographing the charts for the end-of-cruise briefing….
\nyou know, the ones we had finished shredding
\nthe night before. We scrambled around for a while and came up
\nwith a representative sample from the squadrons and arranged for
\nthe ship’s Photomate to make them into slides. There will be a
\nlot of work to do to get it out of the way, but at least it will
\nbe something to keep us busy across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n
Then got into a conversation with John Kurowski that got me upset
\nabout the message controversy we had the other night. It turned
\nout that the Staff had never been an addressee on the damned
\nthing and therefore they didn’t have any business reading the
\nmessage in the first place. Which got me really hacked off at the
\nself righteous little shit who was down here talking about
\nloyalty to the staff and some other pithy issues. I’m glad I
\nnever got involved because I would have offered him a new set of
\nlumps out in the parking lot. And that worm Scott Sinclair, who
\nmanaged to get my messages to everyone except the one to whom it
\nwas addressed….<\/p>\n
So I was in a fine fettle when it became 1600 and I realized that
\nit was time for the meeting I had called to make the awards
\npresentation for the cruise. I called the meeting to order and
\nsummarized the accomplishments of the deployment, which was most
\nnotable for representing the long line of carriers that had
\nfinally broken the will of the Soviet Union and finally won the
\nSecond World War. As long as they lived, I said, they would be
\nable to point back at this moment in time and know that they and
\nall our comrades who had gone before had made a difference in the
\nworld.<\/p>\n
Then on to presenting letters of Appreciation from CAG and
\nfinally the presentation of the Navy Achievement Medal to Petty
\nOfficer Berger. I was very moved by the whole thing; it being the
\nfirst time I had ever done something so significant. It was a
\nreal thrill to see Berger and how proud he was and quite frankly
\nquite a charge for myself. It was really neat to be able to do
\nsomething so inexpensive and yet so meaningful for the
\nindividual. Really a charge.<\/p>\n
Then we launched into a couple other ad hoc projects. Lutt-man
\nand I filled out the FEDERAL Express vouchers to get us on the
\nhelo to Rota on the 1st, so we could have brunch with the FOSIF
\ncrowd. I couldn’t bear not having at least a morning ashore
\nbefore the TRANSLANT, and there is some actual work to be done.
\nHopefully over Bloody Mary’s.<\/p>\n
Then we schemed a way not to answer a message from SIXTHFLT by
\nbumping it over to the new guys (“REFS A and B provide CVW-6
\ninput for final report specified REF C”) and Berger’s CO stopped
\nby to yell at me for awarding a medal to one of his people
\nwithout telling him. Sometimes you can’t win. The Schnauzers had
\ntold me months ago Berger wouldn’t get a medal unless I got one
\nfor him, so I did all the paperwork and got the CAG to give one
\nup, and CAG told me to give it to him. I swear, there isn’t
\nanything these last couple week you can’t turn into some kind of
\ncrisis. Then the toner ran out on our only printer and I drafted
\nand sent a priority message begging for more out of Rota. Then I
\nwrote this and my computer crashed and I had to write it all over
\nagain and that is exactly the kind of day this has been.<\/p>\n
It is nearly 0200 and it is time to go to bed. Two days to
\nGibraltar and outchop. Twelve days to NAS Cecil Field.<\/p>\n
30 MAR:<\/p>\n
It was a peaceful night, few announcements on the 5MC on the
\nflight deck and with the catapults shut down, the compartment was
\ncool and peaceful. I dozed until 0900….I heard the “ding, ding”
\nthat signified two half hour periods had passed since the change
\nof the watch at 0800. I was contemplating what to do about waking
\nup; whether I should turn over and try for more or get up and get
\nabout my affairs. I began to run through the list of things to do
\nwhile I lay there, cozy, when the phone went off and the day
\ncrashed into me ready or not.<\/p>\n
It was Flash from the Rippers who wanted to know if he could use
\nthe laser printer; in view of the fact that the Rippers had
\nprovided most of the charts for the end of cruise brief, I was
\nhard pressed not to acquiesce. The toner crisis reached critical
\nproportions. There must have been four squadrons down to try to
\nget on our machine; the opnote response I got from Rota was real
\nsnotty and said essentially “FO&D, we ain’t got none.” So we
\nflailed around trying to figure out if we could get someone CMSA
\nin Norfolk to get a toner cartridge out to the C-141 that is
\ncoming to Rota to pick up the early birds.<\/p>\n
John Hedlund chimed in with an OPNOTE asking for our schedule on
\nthe 1st, but regrettably we can’t give him one. Don’t know when
\nwe can get on the helo.<\/p>\n
Then Scooter wanted to view the slides we had taken the day
\nbefore; so we had a special screening and he seemed pleased. We
\nare forging ahead on that and the turn around training cycle.
\nThis drifted into lunch with CAG and the Deputy, and thence on
\ninto a lazy sort of afternoon cleaning out files, organizing the
\nrest of the photo shoot and preparing to close out the special
\ncategory CONOPS program. The earliest of the early bird returnees
\nare headed off today. IS2 Alexander from ship’s company is headed
\noff on emergency leave because his mother died yesterday.<\/p>\n
Got a letter from Jane; the afternoon drifted away sorting
\nthrough the piles of crap on my desk and shooting more chart
\ngraphics. At dinnertime I elected to jog instead of feed. I ran
\non the flight deck for about twenty minutes; it was drizzling and
\nthe deck was slippery as hell and being alert was rather pleasant. The
\nhighlight of he activity was an announcement from the tower that
\na KC-10 was cleared in for a fly by. We could see the landing
\nlights way astern and it looked like the pilot was lining up for
\nan approach. Finally he pulled off down the port side, landing
\ngear down and floated by. An impressive sight. Then he cleaned up
\nand disappeared into the low clouds.<\/p>\n
I took a shower and pressed my way through the crowd of troops
\nwho always muster directly in front of my door. I laid down on my
\nrack and watched a segment of Ask the Chief, one of the strangest
\nshows in the world. Among other tid-bits, it was revealed that
\nthe Mayport Club system is going to the same nonsense as Rota,
\nwith an “all hands” sports bar where the EM Club used to be,
\nelimination of the Chief’s and Officer’s Clubs. This is all
\nbullshit and it depresses me. I imagine the rest of the changes we
\nare liable to see are going to be even more extraordinary.<\/p>\n
I dozed off for a moment and Wally woke me up to go get new CMS
\nmaterial….for the last time of the cruise.<\/p>\n
Then down to Fo’csle Follies, a wild and raucous hour of
\nscatological funnies during which the top nuggets and top
\nsquadron for landing grades were recognized. The clothing was
\noutre; Fighters in Beach garb, helo guys in sports coats and ties
\nand shorts. Duke was clad in a raincoat with an enormous water
\ncannon on the back. It was a wet evening and the globs of crazy
\nstring were flying all over the Capt and the Admiral.<\/p>\n
The H-53 crew was their, including a female pilot who could
\ncredibly compete for the title of “World’s Plainest Naval
\nAviator.” I wonder what she thought? Maybe having got as far as
\nshe has it rolls off. Still, I would think it would be a little
\nirritating. Things are definitely going to change when women come
\naboard in force.<\/p>\n
Best song was unquestionably a rendition of Billy Joel’s song “We
\ndidn’t start the Fire” by VA-37, followed by JQ who did “Dear Admiral, Dear Admiral.”<\/p>\n
At the conclusion, the Admiral waxed pretty emotional. It is his
\nlast cruise. Somebody observed it was the Winter Cruise from
\nHell, but I think it was just another cruise in the long line. No
\nbetter, a little worse in some regards, but basically, just
\nCruise. Tomorrow ends our longest month.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotora
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n
09 August 2022<\/p>\n
End of the Cold War<\/p>\n
HAIFA, ISRAEL: INTIFADA FOLLIES
\n\u0153\u0153 11 \u00a9 17 MAR 90<\/p>\n
11 MAR:<\/p>\n
Among the Believers. We dropped the hook at 0730 in the
\nroadstead off Haifa. I was up, bright as a penny, for the Ops
\nMeeting in CVIC. I was already resigned to the inevitable delays
\nin getting off the ship; what with the exercises coming up I knew
\nthat my potential playmates from the Operational side of the
\nhouse were going to be buried at least neck deep in draft
\n\u00ab\u00b1\u00aa\u00abmessages all day.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, the hairs only stood up a moderate distance on the
\nback of my neck when I heard the boatswain’s whistle and the
\nelectrifying words: “Liberty Call, Liberty Call for Officers and
\nChief Petty Officers.” That went down about 0830, a remarkably
\nprogressive event after the sequential buffoonery of the boating
\nin Alexandria. Still, the meetings unfolded with the inexorable
\nforce of inertia. There is a ton of stuff to do, almost
\nsurpassing comprehension. The Med portion of the deployment will
\nend with a rising crescendo of pandemonium. Mark and Lutt\u00a9man
\nare snowed in, and we have to build the concept brief for CAG to
\npitch to the Admiral tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, I can’t get
\nstarted on graphics production until the grownups decide what
\nthey want to say, so there is nothing for me to do until late
\nafternoon at the earliest.<\/p>\n
I stroll back over to Planning and alert the duty section to the
\nfact that Tasking will be inbound at some point. Between that and
\nlunch there isn’t any more I can do for a while, so I am in bed
\nfor a nap by 1300. I sleep hard until 1430, when Doc Feeks raps
\non the door demanding a playmate and wingie to hit the Beach
\nwith. I look up for a moment and decide that an Intelligence Duty
\nOfficer and two duty Intelligence specialists are probably
\nadequate to the task of typing up five graphics. I call Mark and
\nLutt and inform them that the sirens of the Holy Land have
\novercome me and that I will be ashore until further notice.<\/p>\n
Ten minutes later we are walking down the hangar bay and notice
\nthat the liberty line snakes all the way back amidships. This
\ndoes not bode well; by the time we exercise our Officer
\nPrerogative and reach the fantail we see why things are balled
\nup. One of the contract ferry boats is an enormous ungainly ship
\nwith a flat bottom and two towering decks. He is parallel to the
\nfantail camel and is swinging through about fifteen degrees of
\nroll in nearly calm seas. They cannot disembark the ten
\npassengers they have on board. We watch with increasing
\nskepticism for a half hour until the watershed occurs and a first
\nclass Petty Officer slips while trying to leap to the camel and
\ndisappears between the barge and the wildly rocking ferry.<\/p>\n
I turn away because I know I am about to see one of those
\nhorrible industrial accidents in which a frail human body is\u2039j\u2039\u00ab\u00ba\u00ba\u00abcrushed to jelly between two huge and utterly unyielding plates
\nof steel. Against all hope, the boat is leaning out against its
\nlines and does not crash against the camel on this cycle and the
\nsailor is pulled out unscathed. This is the second incident in
\nattempting to board the boat (dislocated ankle, earlier in the
\nday) and that is enough for the Officer of the Deck and the large
\nferry is summarily banished. After an hour of boating follies we
\nare finally embarked on a little ferry, equally ungainly but with
\na ‘vee’ hull which does not swing so wildly.<\/p>\n
We head in toward the harbor and the City which crawls up the
\nsteep slopes of MT Carmel. It is overcast and the wind is brisk.
\nI am chilly in my sweater. The old arab town is clustered below,
\nlow and straggling along the coast. On the crest thrust the
\nskyscrapers of Israel and the Dan Panorama and the Dan Carmel
\nHotels. We round the new breakwall and pass the ships of commerce
\nand the low silhouettes of the missile boats. Turrets crown the
\nquays facing the sea.<\/p>\n
Fleet Landing is in the dockyard district. The first impression
\nis of a quiet industrial backwater, and nothing changes that.<\/p>\n
Beers at Gil’s place.<\/p>\n
Dan Panorama at the top of the hill. What a view! The Gang’s all
\nhere…at least the Fighter Guys are…Brownie, what a piece of
\nwork!<\/p>\n
Cab to shopping mall to look for toys. We can’t find an open bar
\nlater. The only places are near the Fleet landing, so Doc Feeks
\nand myself wind up sampling the local pleasures. The bartender is
\na hefty Moroccan with blue eyes, 48, and she lifts her shirt to
\nshow us her grandmother breasts. Turns out she was a French Colon
\nwho got the boot when decolonization brought the Muslims to
\npower. Everybody here has got a story. She has two sons in the
\nIDF now. Everyone in this place has got a story. We disengage as
\nswiftly as possible and wander down the street to an open air
\ncart where we buy lamb kebabs on a stick which he throws into
\npita bread with salad and sour yoghurt dressing. They taste
\nwonderful. We have a final beer with the Gamblers in the place
\nnext door and head back to the ship.<\/p>\n
12 Mar:<\/p>\n
Up early and full of virtue. Doc Feeks has a crushing hangover
\nand stays in bed. Mark and I are the only alert action officers.
\nWe need output from the 0900 meeting, general guidance on the
\nMissilex we have to plan for National Week in two weeks;
\nnaturally, this is a major pain in the ass, because the messages
\ncan’t be generated until we know whether the Admiral likes our
\nsurveillance plan and concept of operations. This has all the
\npotential to be a major goat\u00a9rope, since among other minor\u2039f\u2039problems the area is in the middle of major shipping routes in
\nthe central Med.<\/p>\n
When the meeting is over, a bunch of tasking is issued. Nothing
\nfor me, yet, since I can’t distill the messages for briefing
\nuntil they are written. Mark and Lutt\u00a9man are going to be snowed
\nunder, but there is no particular reason for me to stick around.
\nChop has been delegated to open up the Admin at the Tel Aviv
\nHilton, so he will be leaving in a car about noon. I attach
\nmyself to the raiding party, which will feature Toad, Doc Flynn,
\nCAGMO, Chop and myself. We are waiting on the fantail when Hof
\nLewis and the Staff guys arrive to take the Admiral’s Barge into
\ntown. Hof waves us on; I am glad I am wearing my sportcoat.
\nBoating has not improved much; the camel is still two feet too
\nhigh and the boat is rocking and rolling in the swell. We make it
\naboard safely, though, and are deposited on the beach in cracker\u2122jack fashion. We are trying to find DCAG’s car when the Senior
\nShore Patrol rounds the corner and tells Doc his professional
\nservices are required. One of the kids who run the Admirals barge
\ngot thrown off the boat and has perhaps crushed a couple ribs.<\/p>\n
Doc gets involved in his primary mission while we wait outside.
\nIn the lobby of one of the harbor buildings, watching the young
\nblack sailor writhing in agony on a Stoke’s Litter. This does not
\nbode well. We have to wait for Toad to arrive on the next boat,
\nso we go out the gate and have a Maccabi beer in the now\u2122brilliant sunshine and watch the passing spectacle on the street.
\nEvery race on the globe is represented in the passing throng.
\nDark Yemeni’s walk and gesture with blonde Germans. There is a
\ntale in every face.<\/p>\n
After a beer we walk back. Doc has to escort the injured sailor
\nto the hospital because the corpsman can’t be located. Toad has
\narrived; we bundle into the Deputy’s car and blast up the beach
\nroad toward Tel Aviv with Mr. Toad at the wheel.<\/p>\n
I feel my head starting to nod, and the next thing I know I am
\nhearing the through my doze an intensely strange BBC program
\nabout the topography of a woman’s body. It is related by males in
\nthe most salacious terms. I come to consciousness as the
\ncommentators are plodding up the mons venus. We are slightly lost
\nin Tel Aviv, looking for the beach and the Hilton. We are turned
\naround several times before we find the place. Checking into
\nCAG’s executive suite is a breeze. The lobby show is
\nextraordinary, well heeled men and women swirling through the
\nvast cavern, a piano tinkling softly in the background.<\/p>\n
The view is magnificent from room 1009. Tall smokestack and
\nairfield to the north with strange military aircraft buzzing in
\nand out. An Israeli gunboat sits sentinel just beyond the line
\nof surfers at the wave break.
\n\u2039f\u2039\u00e5We sortie immediately to stock the bar with frosty cold ones.<\/p>\n
We enjoy a couple of these in the room while waiting for the
\nnext car to arrive with our leadership. We go down to the lobby
\nto have a beer and see who shows up and sit with the Fighter guys
\nfor a half hour and watch them make zone\u00a9five passes at two
\npretty Canadians who are enjoying tea. I might have mentioned
\nthis, but everyone has a story here. These stories\u00a9 Yona and
\nSharon, as it develops\u00a9 are that big sister lived here for her
\nfirst eleven years and Baby Sharon has lived all her 22 years in
\nCanada. Their Father got them out of the country after the ’67
\nwar. The family is still in Tel Aviv, and Yona has arrived to
\nattend a wedding the next day. Sharon is attending Hebrew
\nUniversity for a year to get familiar with the country. We drift
\nback to the room as the fighters are cuing up for additional
\nattack runs.<\/p>\n
As the clock swings inexorably to 1900 and no one else in sight
\nwe decide to get our on the street and take a look at the city.
\nIt is raining gently as we walk down the beach toward town.
\nNothing is happening. We have a falafal in pita to keep our
\nstrength up and bounce around aimlessly. There are many bars and
\nrestaurants, but no one is in them. Someone comes up with the
\nintelligence that Israel’s version of Halloween has just gone a
\nfew days before and consequently everyone is a bit partied out.
\nAs the rain intensifies we are driven into a pleasant white
\nbistro with a student crowd where we enjoy tall draft Maccabis
\nand dine on a huge plate of french fries. There was a stunning
\nblonde waitress with whom Chop immediately fell in love. I am
\nconfident she had a story but I didn’t hear it.<\/p>\n
Later, in the lounge of the Hilton, Yona and Sharon have returned
\nand laugh through about 60 Air Wing Six target run\u00a9ins. Toad and
\nI cash it in about midnight with the lounge still rolling with
\nthe echoes of the Thunder’s Squadron Song. CAGMO is on the phone
\nto the U.S. and has his wife call Jane to give her the number so
\nshe can call the room. I talk to the her and the boys for about
\ntwenty minutes. They sound great. I is almost over. After we
\nfinish I walk back out on the balcony and smoke a cigarette with
\nDoc Feeks. The surf crashes into the seawall below and the sky
\nhas cleared. I am so far away. Last call before I come home.<\/p>\n
13 Mar:<\/p>\n
We arise early and start to clear the cobwebs. I treat Doc Feeks
\nto a prophylactic Alka\u00a9Seltzer and read the Jerusalem Post. The
\nleadership crisis is percolating nicely; there may be a
\nGovernment later in the day and there may not. The issue is
\nnegotiations with the PLO over the fate of the West Bank. This is
\nof some interest, as we are bound for the Capital that morning.<\/p>\n
Our guide is Svi Ginzberg, a Polish\u00a9German\u00a9Sabra of 67 seasons.\u2039f\u2039He is a veteran of the anti\u00a9British Jewish underground during
\nWWII; a commissioned officer in the fighting in Jerusalem during
\nthe 47\u00a948 fighting. He wears a nine millimeter automatic
\nunobtrusively in his belt and drives a Mercedes Cab. He whisks us
\nout of the Hilton Parking Lot at precisely 1030. We hit the four\u2122lane Rout One to Jerusalem and speed along as he regales us of
\ntales of the country to which he came in 1934. Every tree was
\nplanted, he says, and the Jews have remade much of this place in
\ntheir own blood. We pass scenes of heavy fighting in ’47, and he
\npoints them out with the authority that only a veteran can give.
\nWe pass one of the British Police Forts which were turned over
\nto the Arab Legion and he describes the action around the place.<\/p>\n
As we roll up the hills toward the City we pass the burned\u00a9out
\nhulks of Jewish convoys shelled by the Arab Legion. The twisted
\nmetal has been painted with rustoleum and stones raised to
\ncommemorate the dates of the destruction. We cross areas where
\nthe old border ran and he speaks of the desperation of ’47 and
\nthe triumph of ’67 when they were eliminated.<\/p>\n
Fog at the Knesset Building; we can’t see a thing. When we get to
\nthe walls of the Old City the fog has lifted. We are dropped at
\nthe Jaffa Gate while he parks the car and we wander down through
\nthe Arab quarter and the bazaar. Then into the Jewish quarter.
\nThe Intifada; the PLO edict that all shops must close at 1300 to
\nspite the Israelis. They are, of course, cutting their own noses
\nto spite their conquerors. Some shopowners hiss from behind
\nclosed doors. Toad and I buy camel whips from a turbaned arab.<\/p>\n
We pass the excavations in the Jewish quarter. To the West wall
\nof the Temple Precinct. Into the newly excavated section of the
\nWest Wall, where Svi is reprimanded by a young man for explaining
\nwhile Hasidim are swaying in prayer. As we leave, hands clapped
\nover the cardboard Yarmulkes, he says that normally Jewish prayer
\nis so loud that nobody would notice, except for the particular
\nprayer that these strangely clad devotees. He discusses the
\npeculiar laws that govern the life of what he calls the Religious
\nmen. A good Jew, he says, cannot walk into the Temple Grounds on
\nthe mount above us because they are prohibited from walking on
\nthe Holy Soil of the Temple. Since no stone has been left
\nstanding on another from the Second Temple, no man may know where
\nthe sacred soil begins. The past here has an immediacy that
\nlives tangible around us. We peer into the Dome of the Rock. Svi
\nushers us quickly past, although we could have removed our shoes
\nand gone in to see what may be the alter upon which Abraham had
\nlaid his son for sacrifice.<\/p>\n
I find out later why Svi, so even handed in his treatment of the
\nreligions, has little interest in the places of the Moslem faith.
\nI ask him how many children he has, since he has spoken of his
\ngrand daughter who is serving in the IDF now for her National
\nService. \u2039f\u2039\u00e5
\n“I have a daughter who is 42” he says. “My son was killed at
\neight o’clock in the evening of the sixth of June 1983 in a tank
\nengagement with the Syrians. He lived for ten hours but never
\nroused from his coma.”<\/p>\n
Like I say, everyone here has a story.<\/p>\n
We walk down from the Temple Mount and to the Via Della Rosa. We
\nwalk the stations of the cross from Station Three, where the
\nancient Roman paving has been excavated and brought to the
\nsurface. I kneel on the large uneven stones where Christ walked.
\nWe follow the path slowly uphill to the Church of the Holy
\nSepulcher. This slightly shabby church was damaged in the last of
\ndozens of earthquakes and workmen bustle about with tools. A
\ncassocked priest talks animatedly on the telephone inside the
\ndoor. A crazy hodgepodge of Constantine and Crusader stones
\noutside. Inside, one of the sites of the True Cross, where I go
\nto my knees to touch the spot. We enter the Sepulcher itself,
\nwhere the accident of the line has me with the tomb of the Living
\nGod with four Attack bubbas from VA\u00a9176. A greybeard Greek
\nOrthodox priest lights candles for us in exchange for Skipper
\nRocco Montesano’s five dollar bill. I try hard for a devout feel
\nbut it doesn’t come. It feels like Tijuana. The surreal is
\nincreased by the Coptic Priest whose niche abuts the rear of the
\nSepulcher. He hisses out of the darkness for alms.<\/p>\n
Then out of the walled city, Arabs entreating us to visit the
\nshuttered shops. We buy a bagel from a street cart and wait for
\nSvi to pick us up. We are moderately surprised when he rushes up
\non foot gesturing wildly. “The Intifada has hit me” he says. “I
\nam sorry, but they have broken my window with stones.”<\/p>\n
I have the rock in question now, a piece of the old city wall,
\nominous in its weight, heavy and three cornered. It has exploded
\nthe glass all over the front of the car and lies silently next to
\nthe gearshift amid the wreckage. Nothing is stolen; this is a
\npolitical stoning. Some youthful Arabs have targeted the cab
\nbecause of its Israeli license plates.<\/p>\n
Svi drives off to make a police report and drops us to wait at
\nthe King David Hotel. We enjoy a cold Maccabi beer in the elegant
\nlobby just this side of where the building collapsed from the
\nexplosion of the bomb planted by young Menachim Begin.<\/p>\n
We are just finishing when Svi returns and we pile into the car
\nfor the trip to what may be the real Golgotha and what the Church
\nof England considers to be the real site of the Crucifixion and
\nREsurrection. It is a place of quiet beauty and peace. An Arab
\ncemetery now occupies the summit of Skull Rock, but we gaze from
\nthe viewing place over the bus depot. We have our pictures taken
\nin front of the Tomb of the Living God.\u2039f\u2039\u00e5
\nThen rapidly through the Arab section outside the wall, real West
\nBank touring, to the Garden of Gesthemene where the Lord was
\ndenied and sweated Blood on the night the Romans came for him.
\nThe olive trees here are nearly two thousand years old, and may
\nbe the same that in their youth bore silent witness to the
\nrejection of Jesus. We enter the Basilica and I fall to my knees
\nat the rail and say the prayer that sustained me through the long
\ndays of Eric’s illness said as a mantra of acceptance and hope.
\n“Thank You, God. Thy Will be Done.”<\/p>\n
The hour is growing late, and there is perhaps 45 minutes of
\ndaylight left. Although it is illegal and off limits to
\nAmericans, Svi offers to drive us quickly to Bethlehem to visit
\nthe Church of the Nativity. We think for perhaps a split second
\nbefore saying yes. As fast as thought we are on our way, crossing
\nquickly through the old border and into the West Bank again. We
\nare the last car in Manger Square and the Arab kids swarm over us
\nas we walk across the Square and into another crazy\u00a9quilt of a
\nchurch. The door is impossibly small, blocks placed within an
\nancient arch to prevent the over\u00a9enthusiastic from riding their
\nhorses into the church. Wooden covers in the flagstones are open
\nto reveal the intricate mosaics of the Church built by
\nConstantine.<\/p>\n
We are nearly the last of the day into the Grotto of the
\nNativity. We kneel again to the touch the spot where Mary Labored
\namid the beasts of the field and where the Child was born. We are
\noff limits on the West Bank and we do not linger overlong. We
\nmake a speedy exit across the Manger Square to get away from the
\nArab children who grab at our jackets.<\/p>\n
We speed away from the West Bank, back toward the coast and Tel
\nAviv and the images of this day rolls through my head and I
\nfutilely try to reconcile my awe and reverence and distaste and
\ndisbelief. I cannot. As CAG says later, “If you ever figure it
\nout, James Robin, there are a couple million of us that would be
\nreal interested.”<\/p>\n
2000, 13 Mar. We pay off Svi, and arrive back at the Admin. The
\nBoys are here; Lutt\u00a9man and Mark and Moose. We start to party and
\nshow our trinkets and breath our tales. We drink beer on the
\nbalcony. We are near to giving up hope when CAG and DCAG arrive.
\nAnother couple beers while they unwind and then CAG organizes the
\nstrike on a restaurant that has treated him well before. The sign
\nover the door reads “Mandy’s Candy Store” but it seems to be
\nnamed The Little Ole Tel Aviv. I enjoy a Greek salad and the
\nMaccabi’s are tall and cold. The food is delicious; Lutt\u00a9man and
\nChop violate any number of dietary laws with cheeseburgers and
\nspareribs.<\/p>\n
I chat with the Deputy on the walk back to the Hotel. He is\u2039f\u2039excited because the orders are back on for EA to USCINCLANT. He
\nis leaving at the end of the week. He has been taking a fearful
\nribbing all night, notably at the hands of the Lutt\u00a9man who
\npersists in reenacting the scene from TOPGUN when Maverick sings
\n“You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” to Kelly McGinnis. After this,
\nthings begin to accelerate.<\/p>\n
We visit the room and then pay a call on the VF\u00a931 Admin where
\nLink Collier and Neck Sisterhen are playing bluegrass on the
\nguitar and fiddle. We sing along for an hour or so and enjoy a
\ncouple free Fighter Drinks. As midnight comes on, it seems a good
\nidea for CAG, Chop, Doc and myself to walk up the street and show
\nCAG the new love of Chop’s life. We have coffee and beer and CAG
\nconfirms Chop’s excellent taste in Israelis.<\/p>\n
Then a stop at a strange New Wave Israeli bar under the Hotel
\nCaravel, where the tunes are a bizarre collision of disco and
\nMiddle Eastern Wailing. There is a lot of stuff going on here,
\nnot all of it readily ascertainable without a scorecard. We
\nlisten to two endless wailing songs with an excellent beat and
\nreturn to the Hotel, where the Helicopter guys insist on buying
\nus cognac from the Bar. Later, Ouzo comes in and invites us to
\nthe Thunder Admin for a nightcap, where Doc Feeks attempts to
\ndefy the laws of physics and tosses an apple and an orange from
\nthe balcony in a bid to outdistance the olympic\u00a9sized pool ten
\nstories below. As we leave, the late shift of the Thunders rolls
\nin and jumps on top of those unfortunates who had the temerity to
\ntry to go to sleep early. We close the door on a scene worthy of
\nthe Inferno, with partially clad bodies writhing in the darkness.<\/p>\n
Upon our arrival at our own Admin, we discover to our horror that
\nthere is no available floor space. There are bodies everywhere,
\nthe top mattress pulled off the double bed and unidentified Staff
\nOfficers slumped in the two chairs and across the couch. Doc
\nsuggests we go to breakfast, which isn’t being served yet, and
\nafter a long talk with two young Israeli security guards winds us
\nup back downtown drinking red wine and dark sweet coffee in
\nglasses and eating what appears to be a cheese filled bagel and
\nsoft boiled eggs and talking to some wonderful Yemenis. Not a
\ntourist trap; more beatnik Israeli. Student place, poetry, late
\npartiers. When we rise and return to the street is broad
\ndaylight. We talk to our cabby\u00a9 he has a story, too\u00a9 about the
\ninfluence the United States is pressing on the current talks. We
\nare at poolside at 0800, where a couchette seems an excellent
\nplace for a quick nap.<\/p>\n
14 Mar:<\/p>\n
By 1030 it is clear that what we need is a road trip to clear the
\nevil humors. Chop and CAGMO are going to look for diamonds, so
\neight of us set off for Masada with CAG in the lead and Deputy on
\nthe Wing. After some minor confusion in getting out of town we\u2039f\u2039find the four lane and blast off toward Jerusalem. I m
\nnavigating and the maps we have do not have route numbers on
\nthem, being more of the National Geographic persuasion than the
\nusual filling station map. I have plenty of information on the
\nmap about the Dead Sea Scrolls but am hurting for the correct
\nturns. We detour around the capital and head for Jericho.<\/p>\n
We roar through blasted nothingness. Bedouins living in tents.
\nSheep grazing on thorns on the ridge lines. Badlands. Then off
\nthe tabletop and we roll downhill, down through sea level, down
\nto the lowest spot on earth. Where some enterprising Israeli has
\nalso pulled in a trailer, erected an awning. placed some chairs
\nand opened the Lowest Bar in the World.<\/p>\n
Lutt\u00a9man cracks we should open a place with a basement and call
\nit The Scroll Lounge and really have the lowest place ever.<\/p>\n
We stop at the marker and have our pictures taken. Then a right
\nturn on route one and we hug the shore of the Dead Sea, the water
\nbrilliant blue, the barbed wire unweathered on the security
\nfence. Raw, wild, blasted country with an unearthly beauty. After
\n55 Kilometers we see an immense flat\u00a9topped mesa in the distance.
\nWe are approaching Masada.<\/p>\n
Up the cable car; from the summit the Roman siege lines and
\nCastra are as well marked as it the last 1900 years had never
\nhappened. The ramp that they build to storm the city is there, as
\nis the spoil from which they worked. It is eerie and real and
\ntremendously moving. As we gaze down at the assault route I
\nconfess to CAG that I find myself drawn more to the solders of
\nthe 10TH Legion who invested the place than to the Zealots who
\ndefended it. CAG smiles and says softly “I was \u00f9IN\u00fa the 10TH
\nLegion.”<\/p>\n
The sun is brilliant and the breeze refreshing. Among other
\nwonders in a day filled with the extraordinary, I walk into the
\noldest extant Synagogue, one that served this garrison in the
\ndays of the Second Temple.<\/p>\n
The tee\u00a9shirts say: “Masada shall not fall again.” F\u00a916s roar by
\non low\u00a9level training flights. This is a special and holy place.<\/p>\n
DCAG has a flat on the highway haded back north; after some minor
\nexcitement in trying to find our where the spare is hidden we
\nblast on. The ride back to Tel Aviv is long and I doze. When I
\nawake, I provide erroneous directions to the hotel but we make
\nit. We pack our bags on the run, as much has transpired in the
\nbusiness world since we have been away. Mark’s wife Trish was
\nhospitalized with an emergency gall bladder operation; Scooter is
\npanicked about five new action items that the Staff has dreamed
\nup. We have to get back to work. The ride back up north to Haifa
\ntakes an hour and fifteen minutes. We wheel into the port complex\u2039f\u2039and get the car parked.<\/p>\n
The Senior Shore Patrol immediately buttonholes CAG, and begins
\nthe litany of woe from the night before. CAG changes from Dad to
\nCommander. Boating is easy for a change and in the wink of an eye
\nwe are Naval Officers again. Up in the office we discover no mail
\nand Deputy discovers his on\u00a9again orders are off again.<\/p>\n
He is as low as I have seen him, and he wouldn’t have looked out
\nof place on a stool at the Scroll Lounge.<\/p>\n
The events of the day have been catastrophic. The Conference on
\nthe 16th is back to being on the 15th. There are eighty things to
\ndo. This doesn’t look good. Maybe I will get off the ship again
\nand maybe I won’t. One thing is clear, however, this has been a
\npower tour for the ages. The other thing is that when the ship
\npulls out of here, the next land on which I walk will be NAS
\nCecil Field, Jacksonville Florida.<\/p>\n
15 Mar:<\/p>\n
A lost day. Up at 0630 to begin preparations for the Final
\nPlanning Conference (I rather like the sound of that). We power
\nthrough a variety of issues dealing with our next exercise and
\nhost a group of thirty\u00a9odd IDF officers. That goes on till 1300,
\nwhereupon we lurch uncertainly into our next crisis. This one
\ndeals with the dual carrier Battle group operations coming up
\nnext week. Can’t wait, everything is changed, crash action.<\/p>\n
I have my guys make up new charts and stand by for tasking. We
\nare still on the ship at 1600, nothing seems to be getting any
\nbetter, so I take a nap. I set the alarm for 1800 and when that
\nhappens I blow it off and sleep until 2100. More action items,
\nHof is out of his mind, the usual. I am down at Midrats where I
\nsee Robert Pittman who has some major league bandaids across his
\nnose. I ask him how he got those and he replies casually that one
\nof his squadron mates tried to bite it off. I can see that this
\nhas truly been a memorable inport period for everyone.<\/p>\n
I secure about 0014. Israeli Air Field tour at 0730 tomorrow.
\nGreat deal except the operations order specifies CNT Khakis,
\nribbons and no flight jackets. It was freezing today; I don’t
\nknow what we are supposed to do without coats. This is what you
\nget when the Naval Attache is a fucking Black Shoe.<\/p>\n
16 MAR:<\/p>\n
The day of the great Jacket flail begins early. Everyone is
\nnattily attired in CNTs and helmet bags, the bags containing
\nflight jackets. We stumble down to the Fantail precisely at 0730.
\nThe group is a motley assortment of outergarments. VF\u00a931 is
\ndefiantly attired in green nylon jackets. A few guys who didn’t\u2039f\u2039get the word are wearing brown leather jackets. Those who have
\ncomplete sea\u00a9bags are sporting the geekish khaki windbreaker. The
\nDeputy, ever conscious of the letter and spirit of the
\nregulations is attired in a long black raincoat. The rest of us,
\nwalking the fine line, wear no jacket at all but carry
\nsuspiciously lumpy gymbags.<\/p>\n
Thus was it ever, I suppose, but the intent of the instruction
\nto standardize resulted in no less than five variations of the
\nuniform.<\/p>\n
Thankfully the day is balmy and the issue never gets to the front
\nburner. Still, we start the tour with bile rising in the back of
\nthe throat. Boating is inexplicably delayed for a half hour;
\nthere appears to be no known connection between the people who
\nmake the announcements over the 1MC and the very same individuals
\nwho could look over the end of the ship and notice that there
\nisn’t any boat there.<\/p>\n
I could go on for a couple hours of ranting about the boating.
\nLack of etiquette and decorum. Anarchy in the lines. The drunks,
\nthe mismanagement, the horrible condition of the ship’s boats. It
\nis enough to drive you berserk each time you essay the journey
\nashore. Here, with the swells high and the wind blowing,
\nvirtually everyone has been arriving soaked because the canvas
\ncovers have been ripped away. It looks like hell. I don’t know
\nwhat our guests think about all this.<\/p>\n
Anyhow, we wound up on a Eurobus making the northward trip to
\nRamat\u00a9David Air Field. We followed the signs to Nazareth, passing
\nthe industrial suburbs of Haifa and passing into the rich green
\ncountry of he Kibbutzes. In between we saw pleasant homes perched
\non the hills that could have been in California. We get to within
\n16KM of Nazareth. The hills in the distance under the beautiful
\nblue sky must be the Golan Heights. The turn to the base is not
\nmarked. We follow a two lane for perhaps three kilometers and
\narrive at the Security Checkpoint. We wait while things are
\nexplained to the gate guards. I look out the window and watch a
\ncluster of national service kids trying to hitch rides home. The
\nbus in particularly entranced with a girl with a leonine mane of
\nblonde hair and an UZI sub machine gun. Apparently the troops are
\nbilleted at home in order to keep costs down.<\/p>\n
We pick up LT Danna, who is typical of PAO officers around the
\nworld. She is pretty and her hair falls down over one eye. She is
\naccompanied by a young man whose purpose is undetermined, but I
\npresume it is security. DCAG mentions that no one is in charge
\nand Danna looks at him and says deadpan “I could tell that.” The
\nbus erupts with hoots.<\/p>\n
We drive to the Club where we are served sweetened black coffee
\nand a lavish spread of breakfast pastries. This is followed by a\u2039f\u2039briefing from one of the XO’s of a F\u00a916C squadron. He gives us a
\nhistory of the base. Built by the Brits in 1937. Supported Mid\u2122East operations during the war. Evacuated by the Brits in 1947.
\nFirst Israeli Meteor jets in 1955. Combat ops in 67, 73 and 1983.
\nThere is another war in there somewhere that I do not recall. The
\nMajor recounts the kill numbers from all engagements and mentions
\nthat the base was hit by Syrian SCUD missiles in 1973.<\/p>\n
He mentions that this is a small place several times. Flight time
\nfor him in his F\u00a916C to overhead Amman, Jordan, is 3.5 minutes. 5
\nminutes to Damascus. He is less than forthcoming during the
\nquestion\u00a9and\u00a9answer session. DCAG asks him how many aircraft are
\nin his squadron. The XO clears his throat and looks to the back
\nof the room for guidance. Someone says something and the XO says
\n“Not enough.”<\/p>\n
I turn around. The classification expert is the bus driver, who I
\nmust presume is the Mossad representative. DCAG follows up his
\nquestion by asking the umber of pilots in the squadrons but the
\nXO says “About as many as the airplanes” and smiles.<\/p>\n
This is clearly going nowhere, so I refrain from asking whether
\nU.S.\u00a9supplied satellite imagery is used by the strike planners
\nand how is the RF\u00a94 photo\u00a9reconnaissance imagery processed and
\ncan we meet with their Air Intelligence people?<\/p>\n
They then show us some fantastic gun\u00a9camera footage of MIG kills
\nfrom 1983 which plays to rapt attention and then we are off to
\nthe maintenance hangars. We look at some F\u00a916C’s in SLDM and
\nsome venerable F\u00a94’s and note the engine canisters stored
\noutside that still say “property of USAF” on the side. Then we
\npile back on the bus to the flight line and watch some routine
\nflight operations. We get to see a take off and landing by the F\u212216’s, a low fly\u00a9by and a section of Phantoms in the break. It is
\nclear as a bell, warm and a perfect delight to be outside. Danna
\nhands out some zappers, which we exchange for squadron and Air
\nWing Six stickers and DCAG manages to get the fact that they have
\n13 pilots in the squadron out of the XO. They also fly about 15
\nhours a month.<\/p>\n
Then the tour is over and we are back on the bus and rolling
\nthrough the pastoral valleys of northern Israel. The kibbutz
\nworkers are in the fields and it is quite lovely, almost like
\nthere were not SCUD missiles lurking on the next set of ridges
\nwaiting to crash into the earth.<\/p>\n
We arrive back at Fleet Landing at noon and are back on the ship
\nto change clothes and hit the beach and enjoy the gorgeous day.
\nWe are no more than aboard when the 1MCV crackles to life and we
\nhear that Boating will be Secured until further notice due to
\nspraypainting on the Stern. Trapped! Major Bummer! What perverse
\nson of a bitch runs the boats around here?\u2039f\u2039\u00e5
\nWe cannot get off the ship again until nearly 1600. Cast of
\ncharacters includes Toad, Doc Feeks, Mark Sickert, me and
\nScooter. We have DCAG’s car\u00a9 we are supposed to try to take the
\nflat tire back to the Hertz People, but we are pushing the
\nclosing times of the Sabbath and decide to blow that off. I have
\nto find the little shop that sells military insignia so I can
\noutfit the Boys with some trinkets; Toad wants to find a jewelers
\nshop and Scooter has actually decided to come ashore for the
\nfirst time in the inport period. We wind up on top of the
\nmountain at the Hotel Dan Panorama, which is one of the only two
\nopen bars in town as the sun lowers on the horizon. We buy
\nnewspapers and read with interest of the events of the day.<\/p>\n
The Libyans are claiming that the Pharmaceutical plant at Rabta
\nhas burned to the ground. The NCAA playoffs are starting. The
\nIsraeli\u00a9PLO talks are continuing to wreak havoc with the
\nGovernment.<\/p>\n
Drinking with Emil. Mom an DAD are no\u00a9shows. Pizza and wine; this
\nis not the Sabbath we had heard so much about. In fact, this is
\nwild!<\/p>\n
Back home by 0050.<\/p>\n
17 MAR:<\/p>\n
Up at 0640 for the 5KM run.<\/p>\n
Ashore by 0930….more fun with boating!. Another great day.
\nSigns ups and t\u00a9shirts. The poor organizer is going to take a
\nbath. She ordered about two thousand shirts and there are only
\nabout forty of us running. The race is dedicated to a young
\nIsraeli Commando who contracted cancer and died in a month and a
\nhalf and the organizer’s daughter who “died on the way to the
\nU.S.” four months ago. This is one of those stories I try to find
\nout more of but it is not going to happen.<\/p>\n
Scooter, Toad and I are the Staff reps. We ride south on a bus
\nwith the FID runners to the cable car restaurant complex. A bunch
\nof expatriate Americans are helping to organize the race. They
\nare nice and try hard. The sun is brilliant but the wind today is
\nchilly and gusting. It will be in our faces on the return leg of
\nthe race. At precisely 1000 they send us off and we puff through
\nthe thing. I do not hear my time, but I am pleased I can still go
\nall the way. I is nice to do something with the body other than
\nto use it as a caffeine and food filter.<\/p>\n
Later, after the awards ceremony, we wander around the downtown
\narea killing time until it is late enough in the morning back
\nhome for a final phone call before we go back to the ship. We
\nhave an icy\u00a9cold Goldstar beer at one of two open outdoor cafes.\u2039f\u2039Two kids amble by with packages in their arms and we ask what
\nstore is open in this closed up Sabbath town. They report there
\nis a grocery store open a few blocks away and we go over there
\nout of idle curiosity. It is a wonderful place, dark and high\u2122ceiling, shelves stacked to the rafters and great open burlap
\nbags of lentils and dried beans and red peppers on the floor. I
\nshop earnestly for a while before finding my treasure. In the
\nback is the dried soup section, and there I find a Hebrew\/English
\nlabel Chicken Soup mix with directions for preparing 140 servings
\nat a time. This I must have! It couldn’t hurt, right? I comment
\nto the owner about how nice it is to interact with real people
\nwhile you shop. She rolls her eyes and says this won’t last long.
\nThe country is changing fast and soon it will be just like soul\u2122less LA.<\/p>\n
As we walk back to the landing I realize it is finally coming to
\nan end. We pass through the perimeter gate and stop at the Phone
\ncenter. Inside are twenty phones which connect direct to Israeli
\noperators who will place collect calls to the States. I almost
\ndon’t call, because in the middle of the entrance stands a tall
\nrumbled kid who looks like a bos’ns mate. It looks like he has
\nbeen drinking for a long time and every other word out of his
\nmouth is fucking\u00a9this and fucking\u00a9that at about 102db. His issue
\nseems to be providing $1600 dollars to someone back home. He is
\ndoing so loudly that the other 19 callers in the room get to
\nparticipate along with him. Scooter and Toad already have calls
\nin progress, so I wait. Finally, the TED finishes his call and I
\nplace a quick one to Jane. She is awakened by the operator and
\nthe boys are not yet up. I tell her to start the meter running, I
\nam almost on the way home.<\/p>\n
I am glad I called and the warm glow lasts all the way back to
\nthe pier. We all enjoys the anarchy at the boat. This is the last
\nliberty boat ride of the cruise and it is a memorable one. We
\nride the small ferry, top heavy and wallowing in the heavy
\nswells. The view of Haifa is magnificent. We sit up top and I try
\nto record all the sights in my memory. Finally we arrive astern
\nthe ship, where we are stuck bobbing around for about twenty
\nminutes.<\/p>\n
It just wouldn’t have been FID boating if it had gone smoothly. I
\nreport my return aboard to the JOOD and that is that. Home again.<\/p>\n
Later, after a nap and a shower, we get the work day rolling
\nabout 1600. Chop arrives from the ADMIN where he has spent the
\nlast five days. He had a magnificent inport period, no duty,
\nfoot loose and fancy free. He has been following the German
\nwaitress around Tel Aviv for the last four days but doesn’t get
\nanywhere. He reports that the HS\u00a915 guys who bought us the cognac
\nwere thoughtful enough to put it on VF\u00a931’s bar tab. That Sabbath
\nin Tel Aviv was a rock and roll affair and the bars were jammed.
\n\u2039f\u2039\u00e5\u00ab\u2026\u00ab\u00abAt dinner the Admin stories were flying. Some outfits\u00a9 VF\u00a911,
\nnotably, had problems with the Hilton billing department. VS\u212228’s bill came in about a thousand more than expected. Our sedate
\nlittle sojourn will come to around $50 apiece for the staff,
\nquite a bargain, really. VA\u00a9176 had a biting incident as well,
\nbut the cloak of silence was coming down fast on the sordid
\ndetails. CAG and DCAG returned from Jerusalem with tales of
\nwonder.<\/p>\n
Then back to work. Air Wing training at 2000; Intel update on the
\naspirin factory, draft a five page message for the Staff. Someone
\nsteals a SECRET chart of Juniper Hawk and I have to decide
\nwhether to call in the NIS. Ugh. This is not going to be fun. Bed
\nat 0200. IKE inchops in two days.<\/p>\n
09 August 2022<\/p>\n
End of the Cold War<\/p>\n
I will not tire you with details of the medical adventure that has consumed the last month. This was in the background to all that. It is an actual cruise diary of what was the Last Cold War Cruise. Mr. Gorbachev came out to the Sea Sick Summit at Malta to formalize the moment, and so did President Bush.<\/p>\n
Screen Shot 2022-07-05 at 10.46.58 AM.png<\/p>\n
Now, this deployment is when it happened but of course it was only a part of it. It was a fun experiment that turned into something else on a winter deployment to the Med on USS Forrestal in 1989-1990. The notes were an attempt to capture the real nature of what it is like to get 70 or 80 jets worked up well enough to deploy to the world ocean, crossing the Atlantic and conducting operations in the West, Central and Eastern areas of what the Romans called the “Mare Nostrum.” If you have not seen it from the water, it is pretty neat. I never expected to find myself as an Amalfi coast kind of guy, but it is interesting to find these things out.<\/p>\n
This chunk of narrative is of preparing for the voyage home, the Cold War over but still going on. It is relevant now, because for the next thirty 33 years we continue to stumble forward as the Russian machine turned itself inside out. It seems like we are embarked on something similar. Here is some of what it ws like, with a publication date coming up shortly…<\/p>\n
– Vic<\/p>\n
WESTWARD HO:
\nJUNIPER HAWK, NATIONAL WEEK AND TURNOVER<\/p>\n
18 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
Got up with the Chop energy show at 0750.He has the upper bunk
\nin our compartment, and it was too early but
\nthat was the way things were going to be. Last-pulling-out-of
\nport day. I luxuriated in lying there looking up for about a half
\nhour, thinking about the things that had to be done. When I was
\nsufficiently depressed I got up and took a semi-refreshing shower
\nand turned on the TV. I couldn’t quite bring myself to actually
\nstart on the things I have to do, so I cleaned up. Made the bed,
\nhung up civilian clothes and generally tried to get the idea of
\ndry land and brilliant sunshine out of my mind.<\/p>\n
By the time I got down to Mission Planning I was thinking about
\nthe asshole that had stolen our SECRET Chart of the exercise and
\nmy mood descended. I was in a foul humor through the morning and
\na general pain in the ass to be around. I snapped at John Scali
\nwhen he came down to have me look at the message I had written
\nlate last night. It was hard to get focused, so I concentrated on
\ncleaning things up, throwing out old traffic and actually made
\nsome pretty good progress. By lunch I was actually enjoying my
\nbad mood until Lutt\u00a9man told me he wasn’t going to drink any more
\nfamous CVIC coffee until I got funny again.<\/p>\n
That shook me enough to put my usual sardonic grin on and after a
\nwhile it worked. I happened to stroll through CAG Admin at one
\npoint and encountered an irate Moose, who was vehement in his
\ncondemnation of the administrative nightmare it takes to close
\nout a Cruise. He was particularly incensed by a package of
\nawards that had come back out of the Deputy’s office with a lot
\nof happy-to-glad red ink changes and the number of pieces of
\npaper that would have to be re-run through the word-processors.
\nHis rage was so impressive and so towering that I felt pretty
\ngood by comparison. I got a haircut and felt almost chipper by
\nthe end of dinner.<\/p>\n
Today the Air Wing looked pretty good behind the boat, except for
\nthe last recovery. Toad was waving and so he was happy. The day
\nwas beautiful from what I heard and we survived the whole thing
\nwith near\u00a9perfect equanimity. Scooter had some problems with the
\nair ops summary input Josh had put together at the conclusion of
\nflight ops but there was no yelling or screaming. I suppose we
\nwill be able to save that for the next few days. The schedule of
\nevents worked in our favor today; it was mostly Carrier
\nQualifications for the aircrews (Cuz from VA-37 got six traps
\ntoday!) and services for the ships in company. Regrettably, they
\ngot all involved in chasing a Russian Tango-class submarine and
\nweren’t interested in the kind of training we could provide.<\/p>\n
I spent a good solid fifteen hours in the space and got the End of Cruise Intel input finished.<\/p>\n
One by one the milestones are starting fall.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow will have a lot of bilateral interest. We have ship
\nguests coming and things are going to get confusing, complicated
\nand emotional. But that is tomorrow. I have a chance to get a
\nhalf decent night’s sleep and that means we are another day
\ncloser to the turnover in Augusta Bay. We fly a long\u00a9range TARPS
\nmission on the IKE tomorrow, who is still located west of the
\napproaches to Gibraltar. If the Kitty’s can pull it off it will
\nbe a real triumph of the art. No one seems to mind the amount of
\nfuel we are going to burn to send a Tomcat from the East Med to
\nthe Atlantic and frankly I’m glad. This could be kind of fun.<\/p>\n
19 Mar 1990:<\/p>\n
A day that had its diamonds and its turds. Since I can’t talk
\nspecifically about the exercise in this somewhat constricted
\nforum, suffice it to say that a level eight goat\u00a9rope was the
\norder of the day. After a promising start on the third event, we
\nhad a fairly close brush with a dreaded Border Violation.<\/p>\n
Now, you must realize in this business that we rely on the pilots
\nto come back to the ship and essentially turn themselves in for
\nsins committed while aloft and out of view.<\/p>\n
Figure the odds. Bottom line is that the guys normally have a
\nhalf hour or so to figure out the right cover story and get it
\nstraight before they come in and debrief. The other part of the
\nissue is that we are \u00f9not\u00fa agents of the Inquisition and it is in
\nthe best interests of everyone here to ensure that the most
\nfavorable light is cast on any potentially unpleasant event. So
\nas I conceptualize my job, the only one who really needs the
\ntruth is myself and only so that I can best arm the Boss with the
\nammunition to defend himself and his Air Wing from the real
\nEnemy, who is situational. Sometimes it is the FAA and sometimes
\nit is Sixth Fleet. In this case it is some Government or another.<\/p>\n
I got a good refresher in the Aviation code early in this tour
\nwhen I was flying with VC\u00a95 down in Puerto Rico. I was in the
\nbackseat of a TA-4 with an old squadron buddy from VF-151. After
\nlaunching a BQR-34 drone for a Missilex, we were touring the
\nWindward Islands in international airspace. We were having a ball
\nwhen I noticed a Turkey from one of our squadrons arcing into
\nsomebody else’s airspace and violating the briefed rules of the
\nroad for the area. My pal (who, as a local, has to live with
\nthese people all the time) was irate. When I returned to Hangar
\n100 after the hop I was bubbling with residual adrenaline and
\nstories to tell. I started in on the offending Tomcat and Scooter
\nquickly drew me out in the passageway. He leaned in close.<\/p>\n
“If you ever expect to fly with anybody in this Wing you had
\nbetter learn to keep your mouth shut. Nobody is going to give a
\nhop to a blabbermouth.”<\/p>\n
So, with the exception of the Boss, Mum’s the word. I remember
\nthe first time I wrote a response to criticism from the
\nGovernment of Hong Kong, which went something like; “We couldn’t
\npossibly have violated your airspace because we weren’t flying
\nthat day, and even if we were flying we were under positive
\ncontrol.”<\/p>\n
So anyway, today’s story was that it was pretty close but nothing
\nbad happened and our guy pulled away in time and his wingman
\nagrees and what are you guys so upset about anyway?<\/p>\n
I even believe it.<\/p>\n
Well, unfortunately somebody else higher on the food chain didn’t
\nand we had one of those international snits where somebody comes
\nup on the radio and tells us to stop what we’re doing without
\nexplanation and we do, except we have a whole event airborne and
\nwe waste that one and then launch right into one of the most
\nfrustrating episodes of the cruise, which is a bit funny but more
\non the pathetic side.<\/p>\n
After some high\u00a9level radio chit chat the exercise was on again
\nonly by the time they got the decision Air Ops called me and told
\nme to tell the aircrew, except I pointed out that the aircrew had
\nalready manned up their jets and started their engines and that
\nit was going to be real hard for me to yell through the steel
\ndeck over all that noise and why didn’t they talk to them on the
\nradio? I called the TAO and told him, too, and Ops and figured I
\nwas about out of the loop.<\/p>\n
Two hours later the sixth event players trooped in and said they
\nhad spent the dark\u00a9assed evening drilling around looking for
\nsurface shipping and nobody had told them that the exercise was
\nback on. The point to this is that the guy who was controlling
\nthem on their fruitless mission sits exactly four feet away from
\nthe TAO.<\/p>\n
It makes you want to scream. I know who is responsible. I may
\nhave him shot.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, we did have our diamonds. The great public
\nrelations coop of the decade started out at 0730 this morning
\nwhen Skipper Denk and Crash launched in their trusty Tomcat and
\nflew out to get TARPS pictures of the IKE Battle Group. Ike is
\napproaching the Straits right now, or at launch time exactly
\n2,179NM to the west. Three tanking evolutions later (and about
\n30,000LBS of jet fuel) they rolled into the groove and caught IKE
\nwith her flight deck clobbered, minding her own business.
\nThat’s right: a ten hour mission, round trip of 4,300NM using
\n56,000LBS of JP-5 gas and we caught them asleep at the switch.
\nFantastic! Welcome to the MED, Eisenhower. They will pass
\nGibraltar tomorrow. Looks very much like we will get relieved on
\ntime, unless we wind up at war with that idiot Mohammar Qadaffy.<\/p>\n
It is 0130. They just called away a Medical Emergency in
\ncompartment 3-79-1L, forward CPO berthing. Heart attack?
\nIndigestion? Doc Feeks has volunteered to act as the Senior CVW-6
\nMilitary Customs Officer. Maybe a Chief has a Customs question…<\/p>\n
20 Mar 1990:<\/p>\n
I keep telling myself that all I have to do is get through the
\nnext few days and it will all be OK.<\/p>\n
I was expecting some guests from the Beach this morning, so I
\npropped my eyelids open when the Chop got up and laid there with
\nthe lights on. I got the telephone propped up on my chest and
\ncalled Conway who had the duty. “As soon as the Guests arrive,
\ngive me a call. I want to be there.”<\/p>\n
I heard the mighty thrashing of an HH-53 land on the deck above
\nbut no call came from Conway. Looks like the schedule was already
\nfalling to pieces. I got up anyway and started into another
\ntwilight day.<\/p>\n
First briefs went at 1015, I got the boards done and looked
\nsideways at the pile of classified material control records that
\nhad been laying on my desk since we pulled out. I had discovered
\nthat there was some considerable variance between my definitive
\nset of books and that being maintained by the YN1 over in Admin.
\nMy task was to put the books back together, annotate records of
\ndestruction and ensure that my records agreed with Admin’s.<\/p>\n
That involved comparing a few hundred pieces of serialized paper
\nthat had once been triplicate. So I stayed at my desk, activity
\nswirling around me, juggling books and memory and spot checking
\ndocuments to ensure that what my records said existed really did.
\nIn the meantime, I entertained Doc Feeks and Lutt\u00a9man and Mark,
\nwho periodically needed to get away from the hurly burly in their
\nspaces. DCAG came back from his meeting with the Friends and
\nallowed as how we had probably had a minor incident the day
\nbefore and remarked on the impressive credentials of the
\nindividual who had walked him through the affair. I answered the
\nphone and passed briefing notes to Rev Al through the afternoon
\nwhile making notations in triplicate.<\/p>\n
Flight ops concluded about ten and we got our last ragged summary
\nout of the way about 1030. The team is puffy and not working
\nwell. Josh is trying to quite smoking and is flaky. Murf got turned down
\nfor a sure-thing augmentation to regular Navy because
\nhe has less than a year on active duty. Or so the queer
\naccounting of the Bureau reckons, because Murf has been here
\nalmost two and a half years. Problem was his status as an “OSAM”
\nup until last fall, but that is too complicated (or surreal) to
\ntry to go into now. Everybody has got get-home-itis, including me,
\nand tempers are short and no one is having fun.<\/p>\n
At lunch today I listened to a chorus of agony from the entire
\ntable. Moose was moaning about DCAG, who wasn’t letting him go
\nhome early from Rota and organize the return. Mark is almost
\ndriven to distraction by the fact that he is supposed to detach
\nand go to a West Cost Squadron in three weeks and he is still in
\nEast Med with no orders. Lutt-man just hates his life as Hof’s
\nwhipping boy since Scooter has elected to take the high road and
\nstep back from the fray. I was actually feeling pretty good, or
\nat least the caffeine from the CVIC java had me artificially
\nalert at that time of the day.<\/p>\n
Which dragged on and on. We got kudos from the Friends on our
\nflight performance today, which I relayed to CAG. That reads no
\nincidents, to the uninitiated. When I finally got done with the
\npaper drill I just kept finding more paper. There is something
\nvery liberating about trashing all sort of formerly important
\npapers. I cleaned out two big file drawers and got all the SECRET
\ndocuments stuck in binders for easy accounting. I stripped out my
\ndesk drawer of all messages older than two years. I ruthlessly
\npurged two huge stacks of TACNOTES which have been superceded
\nwithout ever getting distributed; I confess to a certain
\nnostalgia, remembering the sweltering night back in the Caribbean
\nduring Advanced Phase when I had Cookie slaving over a searing
\nhot bulk copier trying to beat the CARGRU 4 deadline to produce
\nfifty copies each of the thirty-two separate documents. We go
\ninto the editing phase of the next edition this week. That is one
\nreason why Lutt-man is hating his life, as he is the new TACNOTE
\nOfficer.<\/p>\n
Now we have to get through the last two days of this exercise,
\nshadow the Soviet task group south of Crete, transit to the next
\none and turn over. I have to start the SPECAT inventory tomorrow
\nto get prepared to dump all this on the IKE.<\/p>\n
I must say that seeing their Card of the Day Message and lack of
\nresponse to the TARPS mission yesterday made me feel pretty good
\nabout our capabilities, despite the day-to-day agony. They must
\nbe feeling very much the way we did five months ago. Early day
\ntomorrow. Time for rest.<\/p>\n
21 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
It started too early and didn’t get much better. I am on the rag,
\nshort tempered and irritable. Haven’t had much sleep the last few
\ndays and the tempo of things is increasing. \u2039f\u2039\u00e5
\nStruggles today started with the Guests who showed up to have a
\nmeeting in my space about 0830. Had to roust the aircrews who
\ngrumbled at the early hour but it turned out to be a valuable
\ninterchange. Then we rolled right into flight ops. First couple
\nevents involved SSC and DACT training, but the DACT got cancelled
\nand TARPS missions were laid on and laid off with alarming
\nregularity. Situation is fluid.<\/p>\n
Scooter got upset with my guys\u00a9 he claimed only 2 of three tasks
\nhe laid on got passed\u00a9 and I found myself suspended in disbelief,
\nas he is in his workout clothes saying this shit and I know for a
\nfact he also took a nap this afternoon. He clearly has a better
\nprogram than I do. I told him if he had any problems he should
\njust talk to me, as I am around just about all the time. It
\ndidn’t register, I don’t think.<\/p>\n
Hard to believe. Everyone is ragging. Tempers are short. Things
\nare starting to disappear. Joining the Exercise Chart in the
\nGreat Unknown is my yellow ashtray. It may have gone into a burn
\nbag with the 150lbs of classified we shredded last night. Cleaned
\nout a few more files, drafted two long SPECAT messages for the
\nmirror-image strikes we will conduct on the 25th. I am starting
\nto drag again. I need some uninterrupted sleep to stop being so
\nsurly.<\/p>\n
It is hard, though. SIXTHFLT is making IKE jump through some
\nbodacious hoops and we are getting dragged along for the ride.
\nThe CONOPS drill has forced me to pull all the imagery out again
\nand blow the cobwebs off the mission folders and put up the
\nexclusion signs. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets
\nany better. The only positive note is that the star of the show
\nis the Starship Eisenhower and we are the horse-holders. I say
\nthe words “six days left” like a mantra but it doesn’t seem to do
\nmuch good.<\/p>\n
I wrote a personal back-channel to Rocky Wilkenson and told him
\nthat unless I heard differently, I was going to go ahead and
\ndestroy most of the classified stuff I have got. The turnover
\nfrom America was more of a pain in the ass than a help and I
\ndon’t want to do the same thing to these guys. We’ll see what he
\nwants to do.<\/p>\n
I understand it was a pretty nice day outside, but I couldn’t
\nvouch for it from here. Got a letter from Jane with two more
\npictures of the Boys. They are so huge now I can’t believe it. I
\nlook at Nick’s face and see the one that stared back at me in the
\nmirror for the first decade of my life. And Eric is so tall. He
\nmust have grown a foot. He has an impish grin and tosses his head
\nat a rakish angle. I had better get home and administer some
\nfatherhood to those lads.
\n\u2039Jane’s letter referenced the big shoot-out three blocks away. I
\nwonder what she meant by that?<\/p>\n
22 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
What a wild roller coaster of a day this was. I have burned
\nthrough whatever mild hostility I had to this line period and
\nentered an entirely new and somewhat surreal phase.<\/p>\n
I got to my stateroom fairly early last night, but was too wired
\nout to go to sleep. I wound up watching a movie until 0100, and
\nthen tossed and turned in my rack for a long time. When the phone
\nwent off, grenade\u00a9like, at 0745 I knew from the way my eyes were
\nstuck together that this was going to be an unusual day.<\/p>\n
It started like yesterday, waiting for the Guests. The giant
\nhelo landed shortly after 0800 and disgorged the briefing team.
\nThe space was filled with aircrew waiting to see how they did;
\nthat proceeded with a good deal of animation right into the first
\nevent brief. Which possibly caused some of the confusion we
\nexperienced a few hours later.<\/p>\n
The TARPS guys were flying a short-notice mission to go look at
\none of the Soviet anchorages. We had some information that
\nindicated the warships were not present, but out and motoring
\naround smartly north of there. Now, COMSIXTHFLT maintains rigid
\ncontrol over exactly what TACAIR can go do what missions in
\nproximity to the anchorages, with the commendable goal of
\nkeeping tensions low and preventing untoward interactions.
\nRegrettably, this adds a significant lead time into planning
\nthese little picture taking evolutions and we were trapped in a
\nbit of a time warp on this one. The Staff had sent the message
\nrequesting permission to go do the mission, but as of brief time
\nwe had not heard a yea or nay from the Mandarins.<\/p>\n
Naturally, the nay came in after the aircrew had manned up,
\nengines turning, the radio transmission cancelling the mission
\nwas garbled and not received and we merrily drove over the
\nanchorage without the requisite permission. We had a little
\ninquisition over that one; aircrew, CO’s, Deputy, Briefer and me
\nin a little search-for-the-guilty. Deputy was real mellow and the
\npictures turned out well, so that flap whimpered to a slow death
\nlater.<\/p>\n
We transitioned into flail about the CONOPS mirror image strike,
\nof which there is a slight chain of command problem (since CRUD-12
\nhas the lead on this, do we wait to hear from them what they
\nwant us to do? What will their pre-exercise message say? what
\ntime and what direction will we run the simulated strike?) Our
\ndirections are mixed, and we essentially are told to sit down and
\nrelax until we hear what they have to say….until the afternoon,
\nwhen we get Spanky McClusky radio-derived Intelligence (‘SpankInt,’ for short)
\nwhen he overhears the Red Rotator telling his fellow
\nwizard that our Concept message is already on the wire and that
\nhe ought to speed things up.<\/p>\n
Which sort of pokes things in the ass from our end and so we
\ncrashed through the message, got a quick chop on it and I worked
\nsome of my magic and got a bogus date\u00a9time\u00a9group assigned so it
\nlooked like we had actually sent the thing about eight hours
\nbefore we actually did. Then we got a tasker from the Intel
\nMandarins to review all the Essential Elements of Information
\n(EEI’s) for the entire target process and, by the way guys, could
\nyou possibly have that to us by the 26th?<\/p>\n
So I flailed at that one for a while and walked down to chow with
\nCAG and the boys when Dayne Denning from the Fightin’ Bitin’
\nSchnauzers braced me and said there had been another border
\nviolation and I took swift and immediate action to get all the
\ninformation. I jumped on the wardroom phone and had Perky break
\nthe mission code the offending bird had been squawking and found
\nout it had been a Thunder jet. I grabbed a plate of some oddly green
\nlooking curry and walked back to the CAG Staff table and leaned
\nover and told CAG it had been 500-series airplane. He didn’t seem
\nthat interested so I sat down and ate and then wandered back to
\nwork.<\/p>\n
Where I discovered why he wasn’t that interested in the facts of
\nthe matter because he already knew them pretty well. He had been the
\npilot.<\/p>\n
So, now it won’t be Deputy going in to the Exercise debrief in
\nthe morning, it will be CAG. I talked to him later, at midrats,
\nand he was exceedingly unhappy with his B\/N. I know the man and
\nit is all too bad. We will see how this plays out. That asshole,
\nthe Naval Attache, is reportedly drafting a message from the
\nAmbassador to VADM Williams. Great interlude.<\/p>\n
Then later, we lurch into the long message strike plan for CONOPS
\nand the clocks change from ‘bravo’ to ‘alpha’ time (gain an hour)
\nand work through to 0100, when I call Scooter to pimp him about
\nthe graphics for CAG’s presentation in the morning (he has to
\nboard the COD at 0500) and he says he hasn’t quite got to that
\nyet because Murf’s reconstructed bomb\u00a9hits memorandum is all
\nfucked up. Since that is my bowl of rice I storm over to find
\nthe Deputy and Lutt\u00a9man in the office and the memo covered in red
\nink. I am tired and pissed and afraid that the numbers are all
\nfucked up and we will wind up at 0230 with all the aircrews and
\noperations officers in the Wing standing around bitching about
\nwhat weapon went where and who the guilty bastard is.<\/p>\n
As it turns out, the only thing wrong with the memo is that one
\nbomb got brought back to the carrier rather than being dropped at
\nsea, which wasn’t the point, but rather that the percentage of\u2039f\u2039duds was unacceptable.<\/p>\n
Taking the low road, I was relieved that the data was correct and
\nthat this was an ordnance issue vice an Intelligence one.<\/p>\n
Which brings me back to my trusty word processor and helping
\nBerger to de-crypt Scooter’s writing. And maybe some sleep in a
\nwhile. This will be painful because I have to get up early and
\nget the draft strike message to the Deputy early so that he can
\nchop on it before transmitting it by 1000L.<\/p>\n
One thing is for sure. It is now the 23rd and we are lurching
\nsteadily on toward Augusta Bay. I can only marvel at the
\nopportunities we have to flirt with the extraordinary.<\/p>\n
23 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
Today was a day of triumph and frustration, of low comedy and
\nprofessional vindication for the CV-59\/CVW-6 Fighting Team. It
\nstarted with the wake-up call. This was so painful that I laid in
\nmy bed for nearly a half hour looking up before I could get the
\nenergy to move. I got to Planning about 0750; CAG was long gone
\non the COD to the Juniper Hawk Debrief. I immediately started to
\nwork with XO Carrol White on the CONOPS contingency plan; he was
\nwaiting by the safe ready to go.<\/p>\n
Phones started ringing and the coffee was flowing and the day
\nunfolded with astonishing rapidity. The launch and constructive
\ntarget positions changed about three times by the time they laid
\nout the fried shrimp for lunch. We ate with the Deputy; we were
\nin the grip of a Staff spasm which put us on hold until the
\nAdmiral made some fundamental decisions about where submarines
\nwere going to be placed and where we could stir the waters with
\nconcrete-filled iron bombs.<\/p>\n
It was sort of cool, and the action was fast paced. IKE was
\nsupposed to raid us between 1300-1800, so the thrust of the day
\nwas to avoid being discovered. There was a formidable capability
\narrayed against us, but Rookie Word came up with a traditional
\nCV-41 WESTPAC gambit. We were not going to drive peacefully down
\nthe published Point of Intended Movement. Instead, we broke to
\nthe northwest and laid on some of the 3,000BBL of fuel CAPT
\nThomassy managed to squirrel away for this very contingency.
\nMeanwhile, the ship went into strict EMCON and allowed the FOTC
\nbroadcast to put out bad locating data that kept us right where
\nthe simulated bad-guys were supposed to think we were.<\/p>\n
OK, so the ship is in EMCON, which means all the launches and
\nrecoveries are happening with the benefit of the radio, which is
\na sort of eerie situation. Can you imagine it? All those huge
\nhunks of aluminum hurtling around, not talking, getting themselves
\nsorted out and landing without once breaking silence?
\nIt is a wild thing, and thankfully the day was nice enough to
\nsupport it.<\/p>\n
So we had two basic plans. The defense was arranged to keep two
\nairborne fighters at max conserve down the threat axis with
\ntankers shuttling gas out to station. Four more fighters were for
\nDLI (deck launched alert). Two E\u00a92’s and two EA\u00a96B’s were way
\ndown the threat axis to keep their ESM gear trained for inbound
\nraiders.<\/p>\n
So the defense was first oriented toward fooling them and second
\nto constructively blowing them away before they got within range
\nto do anything about it.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, our offense was cleverly crafted. We had requested
\nlow\u00a9level times over Sardinia a couple weeks ago and the tanker
\nsupport for Sigonella to support the flight there. Our raid
\nchecked in on the eastern side of the island; IKE was operating
\njust to the south. When the guys popped off the low\u00a9level they
\ncontinued the run\u00a9in and caught the Battle Group in the straits.
\nWe blew them away! Round two to the ancient FID with our antique
\nairwing! Ha! Welcome to National Week, IKE.<\/p>\n
One of the low comic moments came when XO Gershon flew out in a
\nGambler S\u00a93A and dialed up the IKE Mode II codes and joined up on
\nsome of IKE’s own Vikings. XO operated around the IKE for about
\ntwenty minutes, practiced some dry plugs on the S-3 tanker and
\ngenerally had fun. They wouldn’t give him any gas, though, so he
\nthen joined up on the Air Force tanker and got 2,500LBs. When he
\nchecked off the basket he passed his billing identity as Long
\nHorn 707. So long, and thanks for all the Fish! He never got
\nintercepted.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, we had Lizzie Borden and a wingie check back from the
\nS\u00a93 det at Sigonella. Lizzie was the det OIC there for a few
\nweeks, and finally had to return to the ship. In their defense,
\none has to admit that the situation was not exactly normal; FID
\nwas off course and not talking. Lizzie thought we would be
\ndriving along on the published track, whereas we were actually a
\nhundred and seventy miles off to the north. Consequently, when he
\nchecked in with the airborne E\u00a92, he got vectors which took him
\nNNE. The Hawkeye was a busy buckeroo up there all day, trying to
\ncover the Early Warning Mission, keep Yorktown informed (the
\nblackshoe motormouths breaking EMCON jeopardized the entire plan)
\nand be air traffic control and Land\/launch for silent FID was
\nprobably too much. In any event, Lizzie heard that he was
\n“cleared direct” to the boat. Regrettably, the island of Crete
\nwas in the way and he just flew over it. So I got to spend the
\nhalf of the afternoon I didn’t spend on the CONOPS plan writing
\nthe Unit SITREP to a host of Med commands. Don’t know if the
\nGreeks will pout or not.<\/p>\n
But the best low comedy of the day was provided by a young
\nParachute Rigger Airman Apprentice, who flew in to NAS Sigonella
\nfor further transportation to his ultimate duty station. Filled
\nwith trepidation about his first carrier airplane flight on the
\nCOD the young man screwed up his courage and marched across the
\ntarmac and climbed up the ramp into the COD. He strapped in,
\nbackwards, and shivered. The large ugly airplane lurched into the
\nair and lumbered toward the ship. After fifteen minutes in
\nstarboard delta, the COD swooped down the glide slope. Looking
\nout the tiny porthole the airman could only see water rushing
\nbehind and then suddenly the flash of black deck and the whole
\ncontraption was snatched out of the air and ground to an
\nimprobable halt. The C-2 taxied out of the wires and folded the
\nwings as the handlers got it situation abeam the island. The ramp
\nfolded down and the PAX rushed out and were ushered across the
\ncommotion of the flight deck, down into the island to the ATO
\nshack.<\/p>\n
Where he discovered to his consternation that he was on the wrong
\ncarrier.<\/p>\n
As our first Prisoner of War, he was treated to cookies on the
\nbridge with CAPT Thomassy and a sheepish picture of the young
\nman with a placard reading “POW” around his neck hangs outside
\nof Strike OPS.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow, we feature medium range strikes, and will probably get
\nthe tasking for our second (and last) CONOPS strike.<\/p>\n
24 MAR, 1990:<\/p>\n
The National Week experience continues today. FID continues to do
\nwell against the new guys.<\/p>\n
I got my wake\u00a9up call at 0545, or so they tell me, because the
\nfirst thing I really remember is Charlie calling just before 0800
\nto say that they were launching the alert fighters because an IKE
\nraid was inbound. I cursed and tried to move but had some minor
\nlocomotion problems. I managed to get to work in about twenty
\nminutes to find the second event brief breaking up. I started out
\nbummed because someone ripped off the picture of the Clueless
\nBlue Blasters that I had annotated the night before. Things are
\ncontinuing to disappear as the souvenir hunters start to hoard
\nthings for their end\u00a9of\u00a9cruise stashes.<\/p>\n
XO White was looking for me so he could get into the safe and
\nstart back to work. So we did CONOPS for a while and I drafted
\nand sent a back channel to Strike U lobbying for Josh and Thorn
\nTurner to get a couple of the new jobs that are opening up there
\n(if it all happens and the roof doesn’t fall in on the Defense
\nBudget). It is nice to get something out of the way early, sort of
\nvalidates the day.<\/p>\n
According to the sacred SOE, this day was to be broken into two
\ndistinct parts. During the morning, from 0800\u00a91300, IKE would be
\nthe aggressor and send raids against us. During the afternoon it
\nwould be our turn to go after them. It was an exercise
\nartificiality to which I was not partial, favoring the Battle of
\nMidway approach, massed raids flying by one another. But of
\ncourse they didn’t ask me.<\/p>\n
IKE still didn’t have a good feel for where we were and their
\naircraft acted as missile sumps for our cruisers and fighters.
\nAbout 1130 some guy (who had been constructively shot down three
\ntimes) finally blundered in close enough for the ship to simulate
\na Nato Sea Sparrow shot on him and the jig was up. Presumably
\nwith the locational data in hand we would get a stiff war at sea
\nstrike before their offensive war was over. There was a nearly
\nimpenetrable haze where we were operating west of Crete, though,
\nand the CAPT kept the ship under a low cloud bank and I don’t
\nthink IKE ever really got the big picture.<\/p>\n
The notion of force regeneration is makes all these endeavors a
\nbit surreal. We “constructively” shoot a guy three times but he
\ncontinues to come inbound and pass locating data back to his
\nship. So we can’t measure empirically how well we really did.
\nNow, the CAPT was up on the 1MC giving all hands an update on how
\nwell we were doing in splashing the raiders and smashing the
\nships. I think, after looking at the debriefs, that they never
\nlaid a glove on us and we probably put between 2-4 Harpoons into
\nIKE.<\/p>\n
That closed out the Blue\/Orange war today. Now we move on to the
\njoint CONOPS strikes tomorrow, the Missilex the day after, one
\nmore CONOPS flail and then into Augusta Bay for the turnover.<\/p>\n
In between all the rest of the day’s fun and games we tried to
\nfigure out why the ship claimed that Biff Ethington flew 9 miles
\ninto the Tripoli FIR (I don’t think he did) and how well the
\nTARPS guys did against the Gulf of Sollum on their run (all the
\nSoviets were home except the Foxtrot, who is doubtless up to no
\ngood) and draft more responses to more crazy tasking.<\/p>\n
After dinner I saw an opportunity to sneak away for a one hour
\nsiesta so I could plow through the night, if required. I had no
\nmore than begun the long plunge into the cool darkness when
\nsomebody began rapping on my door. I tried to ignore it, as I
\nknew that my guys would simply have called on the phone. The
\nrapping went on and finally I had to drag myself out of bed to
\nanswer it. An unidentified enlisted guy stood there and told me
\nhe was here for a TV accountability check.<\/p>\n
I blinked and said “what the fuck?” cleverly. “Go away and come back later.”
\nI fell back and was in heavy REM sleep in a couple minutes. I had a
\nparticularly vivid dream which made me sit bolt upright just
\nafter 1900. I dreamed we had been extended on station.<\/p>\n
25 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
So today was the day we really plunged into the long delirious
\ntunnel of National Week. Mirror Image CONOPS was the first event
\nof the day; brief at 0700 for a 0900 launch. Complicated effort,
\n27 airplanes on the launch and a major postex message to write
\nonce we found out what it was that they wanted, the whole
\nenchilada, voice reports too.<\/p>\n
Off we went. Now, in keeping with the way we do these things
\nthere were two or three other parallel events which began this
\nmorning. We began the planning process for the CONOPS strike the
\nday after tomorrow, which is essentially where we were on
\ntoday’s strike two days ago. The Missilex began to intrude on our
\ncollective consciousness for tomorrow, and naturally the turnover
\nand EEI message for COMSIXTHFLT all had to get done.<\/p>\n
So in approximate order: launched the strike on time, best
\nperformance by the Flight Deck this cruise, launched everybody in
\nabout 19 minutes. Strike worked like a charm, nobody went down on
\ndeck, great radio discipline, all bombs on target and nobody
\nboltered when they recovered.<\/p>\n
The reconstruction took about the next four hours, and I got the
\nsmooth rough to Deputy by 1500. Cyclic ops and the ASW exercise
\nwere going on and Gene Smith and Rocco Montesano had flown over
\nto IKE in an A-6 to do face-to-face planning with the CVW-7 guys.
\nI finished drafting the EEI’s message for the good CDR Lewis and
\nfound myself collapsing into the word processor. Nothing seemed
\nto be happening, and waiting around didn’t seem to make much
\nsense.<\/p>\n
It being 1600, I ducked down to the compartment and grabbed a
\nquick hour-and-fifteen minutes of unconsciousness. I dreamed
\nsomething, not sure what, and awoke on my own just before 1800.
\nAmbled back up to mission planning. XO Smith was back from IKE
\nand ready to get rolling, the tasking message came in and we were
\nready to get going on the next round of CONOPS planning. Deputy
\nhad hacked the postex to pieces, it was a Flash message (which is
\nthe only way things are getting off the ship these days) so I got
\nthe materials out for the XO and got to work on a near complete
\nrewrite. That wasn’t quite complete when the Good Commander Lewis
\ncame in with the modifications to the EEI’s message, so then we
\ndid that and got CAG to sign off on the postex and I split for
\nMain COMM.<\/p>\n
When I got back we had our best show of the day. The evil CDR
\nLewis stormed into the room, brandishing the tasking message and
\nfoaming at the mouth. “Goddamn it, Gene! What the fuck!” he
\ngrabbed the XO and strode direct to the map board. “Don’t you
\nidiots know you can’t launch airplanes from a carrier in the
\nmiddle of the land?!?”<\/p>\n
Naturally, those of us not being yelled at had quite a ball with
\nthis one, particularly the guys who used to work for HOF. The
\nissue was that the ASW exercise featured synthetic geography
\nwhich imposed land on the middle of the MED. The CONOPs planners
\nhad the gall to imagine that they could pick a launch point for
\ntheir drill while the carrier was located, constructively,
\nhundreds of miles away in a narrow bay.<\/p>\n
To which we said “Who the hell cares?” but nobody asked us. HOF
\ndragged Gene down to the Flag spaces and got on the radio and
\nchewed the IKE guys a couple of new places to bleed. It was clear
\nthat we were not going to get any new launch posits to plan our
\nroute from, so the strike is on hold. In the meantime, we brief
\nthe range surveillance S-3’s at 0330 and the Missilex shooters at
\n0530, and host Mr. Workman, distinguished Naval Intelligence
\nCivilian at 0800. We will get the CONOPS message either in the
\nmiddle of the night, or first thing in the morning.<\/p>\n
The Missilex fades back into the ASWEX which then lurches into
\nthe CONOPS strike with all its ancillary paperwork and back into
\nASW, 36 hours of flight ops and then finally it is Augusta Bay.
\nHave to organize the turnover materials at some point, too. Could
\nbe busy. Of all things, though, I am sort of enjoying myself.
\nThere are other folks around here who are threatening to slit
\ntheir wrists. After the stories I have heard about the
\npandemonium over on the IKE, I am very pleased to be right here
\nin our own snug Mission Planning.<\/p>\n
26 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
It should have been OK today but somehow it wasn’t. Didn’t get up
\nuntil 0710; missed the first two briefs but got about five hours
\nof sleep. The first two launches were godawful early. The
\nGamblers briefed about 0330 for a 0630 launch. The Fighters (who
\nwere going to be the first shooters on the Missilex) briefed at
\n0530 for the 0800 launch. The Admiral flew over to Yorktown to
\nwatch the festivities on the large screen display of the Aegis
\nstar\u00a9cruiser. Good for us because he was gone; bad for CAG
\nbecause he had to sit in one of the tall chairs in Combat and
\ntalk on the radio to the Red Rotator who had all sorts of
\ninformation CAG didn’t. It was going to be that kind of day for
\nCAG.<\/p>\n
They were booming off the catapult as I was choking down my first
\nmug of coffee. Meanwhile, we had the ASW players from that
\nportion of the exercise landing and XO Smith was struggling through
\nthe confused strike message from the CRUD-12 trying to
\nretrieve coherence from what was looking increasingly like
\nmulti-colored spaghetti on the chart.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t working too well.<\/p>\n
I was surveying the increasing pile of junk on my desk….card
\npacks, top secret folders, bootleg copies of SPECAT messages with
\ndismay. People were coming and going and sanitizing the space
\nevery thirty minutes was making critical pieces of paper submerge
\ninto the bond paper morass. I was looking at a random pile of
\ndiskettes, wondering which one of the fifteen had the right
\nmission on it. It was that kind of day.<\/p>\n
The issue with Missilex’s trying to do what you have got to do
\nwithout either shooting the civilians or dumping an aluminum
\nrainstorm on them. Thus, the S-3’s spent a good couple hours
\ndriving around the exercise zone (which we had appropriately
\nNOTAM’ed, it being about one-third into the Libyan FIR) warning
\nfreighters out of the way. Meanwhile, the spendthrift Fighters
\nwere hanging on the impeller blades trying to conserve fuel and
\nwe kept launching alert tankers out to keep the thirsty fellows
\nhappy.<\/p>\n
About four hours into the flight schedule we had a green range,
\nand the drone carrier and the fighters were cleared to move into
\nposition. Everything was go, adrenaline was rising, and the drone
\nwas launched….only to turn into a saltwater seeking missile.
\nTwice. Which involved another half hour delay while they launched
\nanother airplane and another drone. At long last they were able
\nto get all the players right over a green range, the drone
\nworked, and they shot it out of the sky.<\/p>\n
Which made the fighters ecstatic, but bummed out the surface
\nships, who were to be the backup shooters in case they missed.
\nSo our guys got to come home. The exercise wasn’t over, though.
\nThe Shoes had to have their chance, too. So things dragged on for
\nanother couple hours, during which CAG got increasingly
\nexasperated.<\/p>\n
Flight ops continued, morale and motivation was at a low ebb. In
\nmy effort to cross train the AI’s, I had allowed some to go down
\nto SUPPLOT to learn some of the all-source tricks of the trade I
\nlost one who decided he wasn’t going to do anything else.
\nConsequently, we were short handed and pissed off. I was groggy
\nand couldn’t get started on the inventory or the other projects
\nso I went for a nap.<\/p>\n
Wrong move. I slept fitfully for an hour or so and awoke
\nunrefreshed, disoriented and cranky. I walked into Planning and
\nPerkie hit me with some project Scooter had kicked back and I
\nsaid “Well fuck him!” Only to discover that Scooter was standing right behind him.<\/p>\n
So we had an emotional minute or two. Then Berto Schnable and
\nGentle John Kurowski almost came to blows over something
\ninconsequential. It was that kind of day.<\/p>\n
We got XO Smith set up for his brief. The Admiral changed the
\nlaunch points, but aside from changing things (again) it went
\nfine. We had aircrew planning the nits and grits through about
\n0200 when the last of them gave up and surrendered to sleep. I
\nstarted the night shift on sorting the three hundred\u00a9odd imagery
\nflats for the final inventory and turn\u00a9over and began to clean
\nout my desk. I had skipped dinner and felt generally burned out.
\nThe coffee of the day had given me a low grade headache. I was
\npouring over the pink sheet when I discovered the near\u00a9final
\nkicker in the National Week total harassment package.<\/p>\n
We will start thirty\u00a9two hours of continuous flight ops at 0330
\nthis morning. We will fly through the day tomorrow, then start
\nuploading real ordnance in the afternoon for the simulated
\nstrike. The we download same, upload the fake stuff and run the
\nsimulated strike. My job starts when they get back around 2200,
\nas we construct the post exercise report. We will wrap that up
\naround 0200 or so, whereupon we switch time zones again. To the
\neast. Which means we lose an hour of sleep without actually going
\nanywhere. Some rocket scientist has had the two carriers on
\ndifferent time zones! They figure it would be too complicated
\nwith us lying beside each other in the anchorage, which is
\nundoubtedly correct.<\/p>\n
Turnover starts at 0800, so I expect we will be as shiny as new
\npennies. They are saying that bad weather is rolling in from the
\nwest, so who knows what will happen. One has to hope for the
\nbest.<\/p>\n
27 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
I was in the office until 0300 this morning; hung up on some
\ndetails and daunted by the amount of stuff we had to do today.
\nWandered down to bed after tasking Charlie to place a telephone
\ngrenade next to my pillow not later than 0745.<\/p>\n
It went off approximately as scheduled. I shaved and wandered
\ngroggily past the CAG office where I found the first flail of the
\nday already in progress. Deputy was hunched over the message
\nboard underlining a message. He turned around and asked why we
\nwere not operating in accordance with the Force AAWC Intentions
\nmessage.<\/p>\n
I was at a bit of a loss for a real swift answer, and responded
\nwith something like “Well, er, I have a message that says to use
\nthe old codes….” while thinking to myself “who the fuck is the
\nFAWC?” So I had my first little project even before I got into
\nthe office. I found my second one when I found a note on my desk
\nreminding me of the FIROPS message for COMSIXTHFLT that was
\nprobably due yesterday. We naturally launched an immediate
\ninvestigation and came up with the guilty party, who was all of
\nus, which meant me for not thinking hard enough about today.<\/p>\n
Excuses were easy, like we didn’t get the message and we had
\nconflicting guidance from the Staff but that is considered
\nwhimpering or whining so we did what we could to fix the
\nsituation and move on from there. The fix was to make new cards,
\nget them out to the ready rooms, change the brief, coordinate
\nwith Air Ops and assign Murf to quickly research about forty
\nsorties from yesterday and start drafting a message for chop.<\/p>\n
Gene Smith’s crew was all up planning tonight’s CONOPS thing nd
\nso there was SPECAT all over. Despite the number of people coming
\nand going, planning and whatnot going on, there were not that
\nmany sorties being generated. I took a bold step and started
\ngetting the Turn Over package together. It was about time.<\/p>\n
The rest of the day was spent putting the package together,
\nholding a destruction party for the tons of stuff we temporarily
\nown and inventorying same. We made great progress and I was
\nburned out but happy with the way things were going. We had some
\npanic from Gene’s planners, one of whom has a great capacity for
\nbringing all the sweat pumps on line at once, and the Deputy
\nhacked up the FIROPS message pretty well so we redid that and I
\ngot the FITREPS on the guys back. They turned out well; Deputy
\nwas pleased and they once they go smooth they will be ready for
\nCAG. Quite a good feeling because the last thing I want to do is
\nget into that paperwork drill this late.<\/p>\n
By that then it was brief time for the CONOPS drill. The Ordies
\nhad been building and wire\u00a9checking and loading all day. There
\nwas kind of a festive air around the place. Aircrew were coming
\nin, clamming the helmets down and announcing that they were
\npleased to call it a cruise; they had flown their last hop. The
\nguys got out and took pictures of flight ops and reported that it
\nwas a pretty day. I will go look at it tomorrow.<\/p>\n
I got a thirty-second commercial about closing out the SPECAT
\nprogram in the brief and then HOF called and tasked me to build a
\nlittle orientation booklet for our French pals who are going to
\nRoosie Roads\u00a9 you know, target photos, bus schedules, that kind
\nof thing\u00a9 then had some dinner with CAG and the Deputy. I snuck
\naway for a quick nap before the launch so I could get through
\nwhat promised to be a long night and was only awakened twice with
\nfrantic phone calls. The level of caffeine in my system wouldn’t
\nreally let me get down anyway, so I succumbed to the inevitable
\nand went back to work.<\/p>\n
Every time I leave the place something else is going wrong. This
\ntime the back-channel message I sent to FOSIF Rota demanding an
\nopportunity to get ashore on April 1st turned into a bombshell.
\nWe got a call from SESS (Ship’s Signals & Exploitation Space)
\nasking about it and the Staff called down and asked for a copy of my
\nmessage and there were dark rumblings
\nthat Dru had turned the thing around front-channel, referencing
\nmy irreverent message and asking for me to Debrief the Entire
\nDeployment as CTF-60!<\/p>\n
Yike! There was about forty-five minutes of trying to figure out
\nwhat was going on. I was convinced for a while that I would soon
\nbe dancing in front of the Admiral and be ritually disemboweled.
\nThankfully, the real story was that FOSIF sent it back channel,
\nnobody got it but the Staff Intel officer and me. I got a mild
\nreprimand and then I invited him along for brunch and the crisis
\npassed.<\/p>\n
Then the strike recovered and it turned out that it went very
\nwell indeed. Our guys can do what they are tasked to do, however
\nobtuse the mission. I spent a few frantic hours until the great
\ntime change putting the post exercise summary together and it is
\nnow 0400. The turnover bunch will show up here in four hours. I
\nsuppose it is time to get some sleep. After the ritual is
\ncomplete, I intend to sleep for a week.<\/p>\n
TURNOVER: AUGUSTA BAY<\/p>\n
28 MAR 1990:<\/p>\n
Got out of Planning about 0400. Sleep was not a priority issue. I
\ntasked Charlie with three key elements for the morning. I wanted
\na wake\u00a9up call at 0715 without fail to ensure I was on station to
\ngreet the team from the IKE. The Deputy, in keeping with his
\nprogram to ensure that everything went First Crass, wanted some
\nof the world famous FID bake shop breakfast pastries ( the ones
\nwith the specific gravity of a dwarf star set out. Lastly, I
\nwanted a fresh cauldron of CVIC java available to help jolt
\neveryone’s systems into some semblance of activity.<\/p>\n
Charlie came through. My wakeup call penetrated my consciousness
\nand the usual amnesia of short term sleep was penetrated.
\nNaturally it hurt a bit, but there were important issues to be
\ncovered. I shaved and put on CNT khakis with ribbons. With ten
\nminutes to kill, I stopped in Wardroom One and enjoyed two eggs
\nsunny side up and some half toasted bread. Fortified, I was ready
\nas I was likely to be for turn-over. I arrived in Planning at
\nexactly the right time, only to discover to my amazement an
\nutterly transformed space. The deck gleamed. Crisp blue
\ntablecloths covered the battered folding debriefing tables.
\nChairs were arranged in neat discussion group areas. At the far
\nend of the space, near the map boards, a buffet had been set up.
\nHeavy silverware was laid in perfect order next to an astonishing
\nassortment of fat\u00a9pill pastries. At the far end of the table was
\na large silver salver filled with bacon and sausage. Tall
\npitchers of orange juice. The IS’s and Charlie stood off to the
\nside with broad grins.<\/p>\n
They had worked a miracle. When I had left the space but hours
\nbefore it was cluttered with half-filled cruise boxes. CAG and
\nDCAG came in and were suitably impressed. Although we were ready,
\nthe transportation folks let us down and there was no indication
\nof when (or if) the CVW-7 guys would arrive. After about forty-five minutes
\nof jaunty camaraderie, the grownups gave up and went
\nback to their officers. I had used the opportunity to have Deputy
\nre-chop the CONOPS message from the night before; as is so often
\nthe case, it was a major re-write although we had simply followed
\nthe format we have developed only two nights before. C’est la
\nvie.<\/p>\n
Once complete, I got CAG to look at it and with a minor flourish
\nof the green pen I was free to tweak the thing on disc and get it
\ndown to Main Comm. Second to last outgoing; now all we have to do
\nis send the message closing out the program and we are done with
\nthat for the next eighteen months.<\/p>\n
At length, the Guests showed up via H\u00a946 from IKE. By that time
\nthe bulk of the food had been devoured by the troops, but it was
\na class act and Charlie and the Boys did proud. A troop of
\nAir Wing Seven staffies arrived about nine-thirty. All concerned
\nwere pretty well burned out and were chug-a-lugging coffee to
\nstay awake. My counterpart, Rocky Wilkinson, showed up in the
\nfirst increment. Since his guys didn’t make the first flight, I
\npulled out this running log and covered some of the main issues
\nthat confronted us and offered them up for discussion.<\/p>\n
Turnover after you arrive in the MED is not the greatest program
\nin the world. IKE deployed with a full bag of support materials,
\nand if any is more cramped for space than we are. Rocky is a
\nveteran of FOSIF Rota, so there isn’t much about operating here
\nthat he hasn’t supported from the beach. He also made a good
\nchunk of the last cruise on IKE, so the MED is really his old
\nstomping ground. We hit some of the ports and procedures he
\nhadn’t seen yet and I didn’t really have much to add. He has got
\na strong program and good AI’s working for him, so I’m sure they
\nwill work things out just fine. Consequently, the package we had
\nput together the day before was largely a burden he didn’t want
\nto deal with.<\/p>\n
We went through the materials and he took mostly unclassified
\nstuff, our card packs and a few maps and charts. Most of the
\nmaterial we wound up throwing back into a box for later
\ndestruction. We talked about life in the CONOPS planning process
\nand how much better things were gong to be during the summer, at
\nleast from the liberty standpoint.<\/p>\n
My main lament was the lack of operating time, and the consequent
\nviolence of every minute we had available underway. There was
\nlittle opportunity to wok into the cyclic operations gradually, a
\nfew cycles on the first day out to get comfortable. Instead, it
\nseems we are flying into exercises from the instant the hook is
\npulled and we keep hitting it hard until the very moment the
\nhook goes down again. The in port visits are too long and too expensive
\nand they give everyone entirely too much time to think about
\nother places and things they would prefer to be doing. I treated
\nRocky to a FID lunch of fried chicken and we talked about
\ncomparative working hours and conditions.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t seem much different over there. Rocky has logged about
\nfour 26HRS plus days on the Translant and the first round of MED
\nops. They all look tired and pale and mirror image the way we
\nlooked. I asked what it was like to work for a CRUD staff (mostly
\nBlackshoes) and he said it was actually a little easier than
\nworking for an aviator. RADM Lynch basically takes what the
\nStrike planners says on faith, trying not to betray his
\nignorance. So not altogether too hard. He had some questions
\nabout the new CAG they would be getting in the fall, a guy named
\nJim Sherlock.<\/p>\n
Lutt-man was having discussions with his opposite number across the room.
\nHe heard the name Sherlock mentioned and summed it up
\nnicely. “That guy is the anti-Christ” he said, and left it at
\nthat.<\/p>\n
We got the things Rocky wanted packed up and I escorted the party
\nup to the flight deck. I blinked at the light even under the
\nleaden Sicilian skies. It was my first time outside since Israel.
\nMT. Etna was snow covered and vast in the distance.<\/p>\n
Most of the SIXTHFLT was at anchor around us. IKE was massive about three
\nmiles away. Tico and Yorktown rode easily astern and the
\ndestroyers and logistics ships were scattered in all directions.
\nHelo’s flew non\u00a9stop from all points of the compass in graceful
\naerial ballet. Rocky, his two AI’s and our turnover package
\nlifted off in an HH-53, en route his Mission Planning and the
\nbeginning of his cruise.<\/p>\n
A giant weight lifted from my shoulders with the helo and I felt
\npositively at loose ends. I walked up forward and contemplated
\nthe dancing helos for a while. The wind was damp and the deck
\nslippery from liquid FOD. I swung back down to the Flag Intel
\nspaces and chatted with Jim Everett, Jim Hoey and Regan Chambers
\nfor a while. They were busy and pumped up and I was finished and
\nexhausted. I went down to my compartment and laid down in the
\ncool darkness and slept. I awoke after an hour and looked around.
\nThere was, for the first time, nothing in particular I had to do.
\nI rolled over and slept another three hours.<\/p>\n
Later, with my energy levels refreshed, I returned to the office
\nand lead another destruction party. We had just finished
\ndestroying the charts and TOP SECRET documents when I got a call
\nfrom Scooter, who said be sure to save them for the Post
\nDeployment Report.<\/p>\n
Oh well. Turnover is done. We are underway at 0300, westbound
\nagain. I feel curiously empty. Perhaps more sleep will cure that.
\nIt is hard to believe but I will be home in twelve days. The ache
\nto see Jane and the Boys is almost beyond bearing.<\/p>\n
29 MAR:<\/p>\n
A dog day. A post deployment day. A day of loose ends and wire
\nabraded nerve ends. I was up in the spaces doing destruction, a
\nspecial project for the XO of the fightin’ bitin’ Silver
\nSchnauzers, and trying to burn the caffeine out of my system. I
\ngot to sleep about 0430 and was awakened briefly to the dulcet
\ntones of CAG, who had a penetrating question about a message
\nsecurity bust from the Red Lions. From my REM sleep I was able to
\noffer a cogent analysis of the problem and recommended
\ncancelling the errant message and reissuing it at a higher
\nclassification. I lay there looking up for a moment and then
\nyawned and the next thing I new it was 1330 and about time to get
\nwith the program.<\/p>\n
Things started slowly because the grown-ups had gotten off ship
\nlast night for the big CO’s dinner to conclude the turn-over. I
\nheard some great tales this morning. Someone looking at the
\nCAPT’s gig and reporting all the glass gone from the forward
\ncompartment windows. Someone hitting the Admiral smack in the
\nforehead with a water-soaked roll, and later the Flag and his
\nstaff racing down the NATO fuel pier to leap into the Barge to
\ndrag race the other Flag staff to the carriers. It sounded like
\nfun and none of them regained their focus until late in the
\nafternoon.<\/p>\n
I confronted just a few short fuzed problems resting on my desk.
\nOne was the task of photographing the charts for the end-of-cruise briefing….
\nyou know, the ones we had finished shredding
\nthe night before. We scrambled around for a while and came up
\nwith a representative sample from the squadrons and arranged for
\nthe ship’s Photomate to make them into slides. There will be a
\nlot of work to do to get it out of the way, but at least it will
\nbe something to keep us busy across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n
Then got into a conversation with John Kurowski that got me upset
\nabout the message controversy we had the other night. It turned
\nout that the Staff had never been an addressee on the damned
\nthing and therefore they didn’t have any business reading the
\nmessage in the first place. Which got me really hacked off at the
\nself righteous little shit who was down here talking about
\nloyalty to the staff and some other pithy issues. I’m glad I
\nnever got involved because I would have offered him a new set of
\nlumps out in the parking lot. And that worm Scott Sinclair, who
\nmanaged to get my messages to everyone except the one to whom it
\nwas addressed….<\/p>\n
So I was in a fine fettle when it became 1600 and I realized that
\nit was time for the meeting I had called to make the awards
\npresentation for the cruise. I called the meeting to order and
\nsummarized the accomplishments of the deployment, which was most
\nnotable for representing the long line of carriers that had
\nfinally broken the will of the Soviet Union and finally won the
\nSecond World War. As long as they lived, I said, they would be
\nable to point back at this moment in time and know that they and
\nall our comrades who had gone before had made a difference in the
\nworld.<\/p>\n
Then on to presenting letters of Appreciation from CAG and
\nfinally the presentation of the Navy Achievement Medal to Petty
\nOfficer Berger. I was very moved by the whole thing; it being the
\nfirst time I had ever done something so significant. It was a
\nreal thrill to see Berger and how proud he was and quite frankly
\nquite a charge for myself. It was really neat to be able to do
\nsomething so inexpensive and yet so meaningful for the
\nindividual. Really a charge.<\/p>\n
Then we launched into a couple other ad hoc projects. Lutt-man
\nand I filled out the FEDERAL Express vouchers to get us on the
\nhelo to Rota on the 1st, so we could have brunch with the FOSIF
\ncrowd. I couldn’t bear not having at least a morning ashore
\nbefore the TRANSLANT, and there is some actual work to be done.
\nHopefully over Bloody Mary’s.<\/p>\n
Then we schemed a way not to answer a message from SIXTHFLT by
\nbumping it over to the new guys (“REFS A and B provide CVW-6
\ninput for final report specified REF C”) and Berger’s CO stopped
\nby to yell at me for awarding a medal to one of his people
\nwithout telling him. Sometimes you can’t win. The Schnauzers had
\ntold me months ago Berger wouldn’t get a medal unless I got one
\nfor him, so I did all the paperwork and got the CAG to give one
\nup, and CAG told me to give it to him. I swear, there isn’t
\nanything these last couple week you can’t turn into some kind of
\ncrisis. Then the toner ran out on our only printer and I drafted
\nand sent a priority message begging for more out of Rota. Then I
\nwrote this and my computer crashed and I had to write it all over
\nagain and that is exactly the kind of day this has been.<\/p>\n
It is nearly 0200 and it is time to go to bed. Two days to
\nGibraltar and outchop. Twelve days to NAS Cecil Field.<\/p>\n
30 MAR:<\/p>\n
It was a peaceful night, few announcements on the 5MC on the
\nflight deck and with the catapults shut down, the compartment was
\ncool and peaceful. I dozed until 0900….I heard the “ding, ding”
\nthat signified two half hour periods had passed since the change
\nof the watch at 0800. I was contemplating what to do about waking
\nup; whether I should turn over and try for more or get up and get
\nabout my affairs. I began to run through the list of things to do
\nwhile I lay there, cozy, when the phone went off and the day
\ncrashed into me ready or not.<\/p>\n
It was Flash from the Rippers who wanted to know if he could use
\nthe laser printer; in view of the fact that the Rippers had
\nprovided most of the charts for the end of cruise brief, I was
\nhard pressed not to acquiesce. The toner crisis reached critical
\nproportions. There must have been four squadrons down to try to
\nget on our machine; the opnote response I got from Rota was real
\nsnotty and said essentially “FO&D, we ain’t got none.” So we
\nflailed around trying to figure out if we could get someone CMSA
\nin Norfolk to get a toner cartridge out to the C-141 that is
\ncoming to Rota to pick up the early birds.<\/p>\n
John Hedlund chimed in with an OPNOTE asking for our schedule on
\nthe 1st, but regrettably we can’t give him one. Don’t know when
\nwe can get on the helo.<\/p>\n
Then Scooter wanted to view the slides we had taken the day
\nbefore; so we had a special screening and he seemed pleased. We
\nare forging ahead on that and the turn around training cycle.
\nThis drifted into lunch with CAG and the Deputy, and thence on
\ninto a lazy sort of afternoon cleaning out files, organizing the
\nrest of the photo shoot and preparing to close out the special
\ncategory CONOPS program. The earliest of the early bird returnees
\nare headed off today. IS2 Alexander from ship’s company is headed
\noff on emergency leave because his mother died yesterday.<\/p>\n
Got a letter from Jane; the afternoon drifted away sorting
\nthrough the piles of crap on my desk and shooting more chart
\ngraphics. At dinnertime I elected to jog instead of feed. I ran
\non the flight deck for about twenty minutes; it was drizzling and
\nthe deck was slippery as hell and being alert was rather pleasant. The
\nhighlight of he activity was an announcement from the tower that
\na KC-10 was cleared in for a fly by. We could see the landing
\nlights way astern and it looked like the pilot was lining up for
\nan approach. Finally he pulled off down the port side, landing
\ngear down and floated by. An impressive sight. Then he cleaned up
\nand disappeared into the low clouds.<\/p>\n
I took a shower and pressed my way through the crowd of troops
\nwho always muster directly in front of my door. I laid down on my
\nrack and watched a segment of Ask the Chief, one of the strangest
\nshows in the world. Among other tid-bits, it was revealed that
\nthe Mayport Club system is going to the same nonsense as Rota,
\nwith an “all hands” sports bar where the EM Club used to be,
\nelimination of the Chief’s and Officer’s Clubs. This is all
\nbullshit and it depresses me. I imagine the rest of the changes we
\nare liable to see are going to be even more extraordinary.<\/p>\n
I dozed off for a moment and Wally woke me up to go get new CMS
\nmaterial….for the last time of the cruise.<\/p>\n
Then down to Fo’csle Follies, a wild and raucous hour of
\nscatological funnies during which the top nuggets and top
\nsquadron for landing grades were recognized. The clothing was
\noutre; Fighters in Beach garb, helo guys in sports coats and ties
\nand shorts. Duke was clad in a raincoat with an enormous water
\ncannon on the back. It was a wet evening and the globs of crazy
\nstring were flying all over the Capt and the Admiral.<\/p>\n
The H-53 crew was their, including a female pilot who could
\ncredibly compete for the title of “World’s Plainest Naval
\nAviator.” I wonder what she thought? Maybe having got as far as
\nshe has it rolls off. Still, I would think it would be a little
\nirritating. Things are definitely going to change when women come
\naboard in force.<\/p>\n
Best song was unquestionably a rendition of Billy Joel’s song “We
\ndidn’t start the Fire” by VA-37, followed by JQ who did “Dear Admiral, Dear Admiral.”<\/p>\n
At the conclusion, the Admiral waxed pretty emotional. It is his
\nlast cruise. Somebody observed it was the Winter Cruise from
\nHell, but I think it was just another cruise in the long line. No
\nbetter, a little worse in some regards, but basically, just
\nCruise. Tomorrow ends our longest month.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotora
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HAIFA, ISRAEL: INTIFADA FOLLIES \u0153\u0153 11 \u00a9 17 MAR 90 11 MAR: Among the Believers. We dropped the hook at 0730 in the roadstead off Haifa. I was up, bright as a penny, for the Ops Meeting in CVIC. I was already resigned to the inevitable delays in getting off the ship; what with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24359","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=24359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24360,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24359\/revisions\/24360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}