“May Day” all over today. Not a peep out of the Soviets. Oh, wait, I know. But back in 1989 it was not so quiet….

Giant Snake Burrowing Rockets

(1989 image of the Kirov-class Battlecruiser deployed to the med).

13 DEC:

The nightmare begins again. I don’t know quite how to put this, but each time we pull out things are absolutely horrible. Maybe the whole ship ought to be on a detox program. Unbelievable. The astonishing things was that everyone on the staff was cold sober and well-rested and it still happened nearly as badly as it was pulling out of Naples.

I got up early to mail a box to the Boys for their birthday. Odds and ends had been piling up on my desk since early in the Naples visit. I had to wrap it and box it and actually Go to the Post Office. That means a trek all the way to the stern of the ship and up a ladder to either:

1) get in line behind a couple dozen enlisted guys waiting to do their banking and mail business and waste forty-five minutes, or:

2) Exercise Head of the Line privileges and feel the hatred and contempt boring in the back of your neck the whole time you are doing business.

This morning I elected to be democratic and wait in line, simmering slowly until the 85-year old civilian PACE instructor walked to the front in front of me and started fumbling in his wallet. I harrumphed and embarrassed him into going away. A small victory for democracy…..which of course I will not practice at the Ship’s Store or Smoke Shop.

Then back forward to Mission Planning for the big kick off meeting for the AGLOW CHARLIE exercise. I joked and hung out with the Inspection Team and flattered the Army Colonel who headed up the three-man team. Looked like a piece of cake and I intended to maintain a low profile through the entire drill. There was far too much else going on at the moment to worry about.

We would be kicking off the first sorties in support of the Tunisian Exercise that afternoon and the Campaign Plan was due to be briefed to Admiral Sweetpea the next evening. I had to get hot early and keep stroking. Lutt-man and I vowed to isolate ourselves and get the task done but the morning ran off before we knew it. We had an All Air Wing training session to get off that night at 2145, the same kind we had fucked away last week, and the Soviet Death Star Battle Cruiser Kirov was going to be arcing through the general vicinity sometime that day and there was the NAL-IV-I certification to get done with the TARPS guys.

A Wild and crazy kind of day was in store and we immediately lurched into crisis. It is all running together now, but we had a TARPS mission come back from a run on the KIROV, wonderful pics, first we had gotten, and I was running the hot prints around. Got them to the Deputy (CAG was airborne) and then up to Sweetpea as a courtesy.

The Admiral proceeded to use me for a human lightning rod as he exploded with rage. I was standing on the Flag Bridge and the Red Rotator was spooling himself into the overhead, culminating with a resounding fulmination about why there were people flying around soviet cruisers without his knowledge and why had he just launched (vroooom! crash!) an A-6 tanker to support the fast turn around of that very TARPS airplane to take pictures of it when it had just gotten back with them!

Spent a few hours running down the story and briefing it to the right people before being able to get back to work on the Campaign Plan. General chaos until 2130 when flight ops were finally secured, then the big brief for Phiblex until 2300, with masses of people coming and going.

Double Secret messages were flying for the Aglow Charlie evolution and the Marine Harriers have cancelled because they are snowed-in in back in North Carolina and we pick up the slack. We get two bonus early morning launches; first brief goes about 0330, second at 0445 and I stick around to make sure it all goes well.

Young ENS Hammerquist (“Call ENS Al, Attorney At Sea for help with those minor liberty incidents….”) is a great briefer, and I am confident things will go well when he is on the podium. I don’t remember much else about the day except it ran on until the next one and I went to bed about the time my roommate was getting up.

The new roommate is a strange duck. So young. Doesn’t know how to the lock the room door, or rather, doesn’t remember. Probably never had his roommate’s Rolex watch lifted by a broke sailor after Hong Kong….Gotta keep in mind that Baby Ruth has only got a total of two days in the Fleet thus far….be gentle on the lad.

14 Dec:

Airwing Training at 0945; the boys don’t let me down and it goes like clockwork. I’m on station again before 1100, while the briefs are in progress. Aglow Charlie is a dull throb in the background, briefing two set pieces to Sweetpea at 1400. TOP SECRET exclusion screens are erected around the folding planning tables up in Mission Planning, piles of TS papers, the Inspection Team is in my office, I’m working on the Campaign Plan at my other desk, papers strewn everywhere, Lutt-man and I shouting B-52 options at each other over the general din.

A particularly hard target nut to crack comes up in a certain denied area. We have nothing in Forrestal’s magazines that will take out a certain bunker. “What we need are the giant Burrowing Snake Rockets” I shout. “That will cook their gooses!” Lutt-man dissolves in laughter and we are on a roll, planning the employment of science fiction weapons for a campaign that will end world terrorism for all time……..Right up to the minute when I discover the disaster which waits this day.

This is not your garden variety disaster. This is a career-ender, a matter of Theatre Special Weapons policy, inter-service and NATO issues. We aren’t talking the Giant Snake Burrowing Rockets, either, we are talking the impossible coming to life and the Dance of the Four Star Elephants all across our little boat and Air Wing…..and much worse, one for which yours truly may ultimately have the blame…..the hunt for the guilty begins. We have planned the wrong nuclear targets.

It is all too hard. The RADM comes down sick, so ill he is confined to bed with whatever that insidious flu that has been raging through the ship and Air Wing team. I am off the hook for our brief at 1900, since Admiral Sweetpea is delirious.

In the meantime I have had to drop everything and being briefing the CAG, the ship’s OPs O and a cast of thousands. Ass covering has begun in earnest. Why were the wrong nuclear targets planned?

Who told who what? And when did we know? And why were these decisions made. I dig out old paperwork and messaged and recount meetings from last June. This is dual sweat pump operations because I am not going to go down on this without a struggle. I feel isolated, I see Scooter with just a hint of a grin, like he is very relieved to see someone else on the same blazing hot griddle he has been occupying alone for the last eight weeks.

After hours of talk and desperation I find the message that justifies, in cold writing, what we have done. We go through two acrimonious meetings with the Inspection Team, the ones to whom I have given nearly my last copies of Nick Danger in memory of another ship and place where the Special Weapons monsters didn’t lurk.

After hours of desperation and soul searching I feel the tide turning, I see CAG supporting our position, and CAPT Fitz the Staff ops guy chime in with resounding support. The last meeting with the inspectors is almost civil, but now the exercise is coming to a head and we have to do a launch sequence plan, a Phase III brief, a secure Recall drill, and a memo for the record to assist CAPT Fitz when he briefs the Admiral in the morning. We run through the first brief at 0700 and get the boys launched for the actual launch phase of the exercise.

15 DEC:

I have now been awake for 22hrs, the coffee and the shower not working anymore, when I hear the codeword of my Son’s name bring the simulated Special Weapons home before the simulated catastrophe.

They will never know the thrill of hearing their names used over the UHF Battle Group radio, echoing strangely on the bubble phone, “I authenticate your codeword Nick” followed by “I authenticate your codeword Eric” to end the exercise. We have saved something out of all this, and the operational portion has gone well. Maybe I have a career after all. Two last big ruts to cover. DCAG was trapped in Tunisia through a strange diplomatic foul-up and is flying aboard now on the COD.

I go over and hand him a copy of the memo©-or-the-record. His brow knits as he says “What the hell is this?”

CAG says “It is big, worse than you can imagine. The elephants are going to tromp all over this” DCAG reads the memo and the supporting message. “Well, at least we’re off the hook. We were right.”

“Regrettably, that isn’t the issue,” he says. “EUCOM had told us what to do. Not our fault but that, of course, doesn’t matter.”

As I hear him say that I know I’m in the clear, I’m OK. There is a God. I know I should be more concerned with the operational impact, all the extra work this implies, but my heart is buoyant because I still have a career and regardless of how horrible this all is I am still on the team.

Phew.

I try to sleep for only four hours but it doesn’t work and I am unconscious until 1600 in a black dreamless sleep so deep even the giant burrowing snake rockets can’t get at me.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com