Vic Socotra

January 3, 2009

Old Acquaintance

(Pacific Ocean Shoulder Patch)

It is almost like yesterday, with old times new once more. I don’t mean literally, since yesterday was thoroughly mundane, and filled only with the regret that the buzz-saw of business will start again on Monday.

It is about older times, and they are not forgotten. The ships met in the area south of the Sokotra Island in the Indian Ocean, in the approaches to the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb. It is a place where they used to be, back in the day. There was a press release about it, and it made me pause as I was on my way to do something else.

Ships of the Red Banner Pacific Ocean Fleet met the Red Banners of the Baltic near the old anchorage, and the great names of the past were trumpeted again: Admiral Vinogradov, Fotii Krylov, Pechenga, Boris Butoma, Neustrashimy and Yelnya joined at anchor in the protected lee of the barren island we all knew well.

Shoot, I knew some of the ships. Several of those hulls were in the water when I was a sea-faring man, and that is now a long time ago.

I had been there too, with my friends. If the Americans were present this time, the Russian Navy Information and public relations service did not see fit to mention it.

Wherever we went in the old days there was always a little Russian ship tagging along to keep tabs on us. We called it a “tattletale,” a minor irritant whose function was to serve as a monitoring station, in case we did something rash and began to launch strike formation, or in the last resort, a beacon to long range bombers or submarines in order to kill us with hyper-speed wake-homing torpedoes and supersonic cruise missiles.

We were all professionals, and did not take it personally. It is a complex bit of business, operating smaller ships around the gray flat-topped leviathans. Sometimes it was deadly. The aircraft carriers do not maneuver quickly, and when launching and recovering aircraft, do not maneuver at all.

In the darkness or fog, a slight miscalculation on range and bearing can bring disaster.

There are dozens of friendly gray warships, and hundreds of merchants, who have learned this to their great regret. Superstructures have been sawn off and hulls sliced in half like a dice-o-matic by the knife-edge of vast and implacable inertia.

The Russians became adept at staying near the formation, without being in it, and sometimes there were even communications between us and the Main Enemy.

Once, in the waters east of Sokotra, I happened to be with the three American carriers that happened to be present. One was coming, one going, and one was in mid-deployment. They joined up for an unusual display of maritime strength. The logistics of bringing a dozen cruiser and destroyers just soaround the three resolute airfields of steel was complex, never mind the part about launching the aircraft in just the right mix for the dramatic fly-over for the photographers.

As a courtesy, a message was sent to the little Russian ship inviting them to take a designated position in the armada so that they would not feel left out. After all, they had done this deployment with us, and were part of the Great Game.

The Soviet Skipper politely declined, and retired to a position where he did not appear in the public relations pictures for our Navy. Understandably, he did not want to appear as a mouse with the elephants.

That was in 1979, a sunny day in the Indian Ocean, a place were the clouds could have been a Copley watercolor, and the sea the color of the most delicate aquamarine.

There have been a hundred deployments since then, including operations in places that would have been unthinkable in the time of the Soviet Empire. The Americans are still there, of course, off doing something of importance in support of the winding down of Iraq, and the winding up of Afghanistan. The Soviets went away with the great change, but now the Russians are back.

So are the Chinese, who have returned to the waters off the Horn of Africa for the first time since China became Red, and with the boldest purpose since Admiral Zheng He took his great treasure ships to the coast of Africa to demand tribute five centuries ago.

I don’t know if the decline in oil prices will make the Kremlin re-think their return to the Great Game. They face another challenge, quite beside that of operating and maintenance funds, since steel decks and hulls are not what the landlubber thinks. The hard steel is just a phase-change in the inevitable and successful return of iron ore to flaky bits of rust.

Dust to dust, and all that. Humankind and our machines are just a stage.

Before it all crumbled away, the Russians (and others) have been selling their old technology to the Indians, who run a quite professional navy, and to the Chinese as well. The former live in the neighborhood, and have an understandable proprietary interest in their ocean. The latter has dispatched a three-unit fleet from Hainan Island in their Sea to protect their vast merchant fleet from the predations of the pirates of Somalia, a place that was once a nation.

The pirates have seized and ransomed over 40 merchants last year and collected $30 million in ransom. The latest was earlier today, the first I have heard of this new year, a merchant with 2,000 metric tons of diesel fuel. It was dragged into the coast of Somalia, and its crew is doubtless trembling in dread. It is past time to do something about it, and the Russians and Chinese are back to do it.

There was a time when the Brits would have taken care of the matter expeditiously, and later a time when we cousins would have acted decisively. Perhaps it is a better world for this apparent cooperation between sea-faring nations.

It is certainly a new one, for all the constancy of its spin on the wobbling axis. What with everything old coming round again, it should not be surprising, even if it makes the hair on the back of an old sailor’s neck rise.

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