Editor’s Note: Bear with me. We will get everyone home tomorrow- well, maybe…
Cruise Boxes
(Navy Cruise Boxes: an open and shut case.)
08 APR 1990:
The realization that things are almost over fir this cruise suddenly struck home with reality today. Yesterday, we were trapped in a time dimension in which there was no future and no yesterday; no urgency and nothing in particular to do except exist. Today there is too much to do. I vault out of the rack at 0730 to start getting the workspace organized. We occupy the morning breaking out the metal collapsible cruise boxes, building them up and filling them with books, charts, files and office equipment. The electronic window of the platform TV monitor indicates it is grey outside.
At 0900 there is a photo opportunity for the Battle Group. Sweetpea pronounces it an official goat-rope. Then two cycles of Functional Check Flights (FCFs) to see if the hangar queens have really been fixed, and recovered a COD with no mail. Enjoyed a late lunch with the Skipper of VAQ-142 and Thorn Turner. The COD pilot in the chow-line says there is a ton of mail for us in Bermuda; I am hoping we get it tomorrow.
After lunch I duck down to the room, not to sleep but to get organized. Chop has nearly succeeded in getting himself completely packed out. His locker is vacant. I sort through my drawers and separate valuables, souvenirs and things-to-be-dealt-with-later.
When I swing by CAG Admin later, I discover the Tiburon Corporation has sent us two toner cartridges. The laser printer is saved! What a treat; now we can do as many revisions to the End-of-Cruise report as we need to, expanding unnecessary work to fill the available time.
We then launch into a drill over a missing Top Secret File, which isn’t, thankfully, but does take several minutes to locate. In the midst of this I have no humor when Karl F from VA-176 hits me with a blast of Crazy String from the door.
I am losing my sense of humor.
The afternoon features the Navy Relief “Fun Run,” which kicks off at 1900, after secure from Flight Quarters. There is 35KTS of wind down the deck and rain is flying nearly horizontal down the angle. It is too hard for the scheduled one-hour event and they scratch it after about thirty minutes.
That night there is a formal dinner hosted by CAG in Wardroom Two. All the players are there: Sweetpea, Buzzard, the Big XO and the Air Boss. The Menu is – as elegant as they can get out here and the mess specialists are trying their absolute best. They wear little vests over their white uniform shirts. We are all in Blues and the whole thing is really quite impressive.
CAG presents gag gifts to our Hotel Fifty-Nine hosts. New office keys for the Boss and Mini (signifying their summary ejection from the palatial Air Department Spaces and relocation into the current CAG Admin shoe box.) A CVW-6 plaque for the Big XO, (because he doesn’t display one in the Wardroom Lounge) and a framed picture of his precious cappuccino machine festooned with squadron zapper decals.
For Sweetpea there is something special. Chop has found a navigational beacon from an A-6 and it is mounted on a plaque with the inscription: “The Red Rotator.” It comes with a spare battery.
The Admiral has a few concluding remarks. It is clear that he is sorry that he didn’t go to war on this cruise, and since this is the last of his career, the peace makes him sad. I have mixed emotions on that count. Action would have spiced thing up but it would also have generated more paperwork in this horrid peacetime environment. So it turns out that the closest we ever got to doing anything in anger was the strange aborted mission to grab Manuel Noriega, Dictator of Panama in the Caribbean back during FLEETEX last summer.
After we disperse, Doc McKenna organizes an impromptu farewell gathering. I offer up my stateroom as the gathering spot. The centerpiece is a box of liquor-filled cherry chocolates. Jaunty bonhomie over the chocolate could only last so long, so the room cleared out early.
I can’t bear to go back to the office, so I laid down on the rack and watched Eddy and the Cruisers Part Two: Eddie Lives.
At midnight, Chop returns to the room with a bucket of ice and a mischievous smile. He is flying off in the morning; for him the war is over. He reaches into his locker and produces what must be the only non-alcoholic bottle of Korbel in the world. We usher in the last day of the cruise with a glass of the bubbly and sleep like logs.
09 APR:
This is it. If it doesn’t get done today, it ain’t gonna get done. I arise at 0730. Chop normally works at about 78RPM anyway, but this morning he is positively flying. He is out of the room and walking to the helo by 0815 .
I instruct him not to return his room key to the Ship, because the INSURV team comes aboard at noon and I don’t want to share my last twenty hours on the boat with anyone new. I strip his bed, though, just in case. Then up to Mission Planning to complete the job of throwing things into cruise boxes for the offload.
I am having a hard time staying focused on the task at hand. I find myself considering the strong possibility that I am going to be seated by my wife at poolside at our house in Orange Park tomorrow afternoon, watching the boys leap and sipping a daiquiri …
Five cruise boxes are required to get the classified stuff all into one place. The space is starting to look like a warehouse. The INSURV team starts arriving at 0900 from Bermuda and their Admiral is aboard by 1130. The pandemonium level is extraordinary even by the standards of this cruise. We have two cycles of flight ops; inspectors are appearing in the space with clipboards and grim looks. VF-31 and VS-28 have been ejected from their ready rooms to accommodate the INSURV, so most of the officers are hanging around Planning with no where else to go. The squadron Intel guys are throwing things in boxes and the air is crackling with electricity.
There is a Staff Meeting at 1230 after a very crowded lunch in Wardroom Two. Pack-up is complete by the last brief and Mission Planning is empty by 1700.
I bag a quick combat nap and am back in the office by 1900 to start preparations for the Fly Off Brief at 2000. CAG leads it off with the admonition that he doesn’t want to see anyone do anything stupid due to Get-Home-Itis. “Don’t take an unsafe jet,” he says, and completes his motherhood speech quickly. Everyone I can see has an advanced case of that very disease.
Then Scooter is up and he briefs the Fly Off plan. There will be two launches. The Jacksonville-based squadrons will go at 1100, staggered to permit unit join ups and mass fly-bys for the families at NAS Cecil Field. The Oceana gaggles will launch in the afternoon, and the E-2 bubbas will provide flight following and hand-off to the FAA controllers as our jets enter their areas of responsibility.
This all is relatively complicated, as apparently the air traffic control system is not regularly configured to deal with gaggles of thirty-odd tactical jets racing in from the open ocean.
Lutt-man, Doc Flynn and myself are flying off with the Gamblers. Since they have no ready room at the moment, we conduct the mass brief after Scooter is done right there in Mission Planning. We will attempt an eight-plane fly-by at Cecil. In order to do so, we have to first collect all the airplanes in one place and orbit at arbitrary navigation points en route, so as to ensure that there is sufficient separation between arriving flights. The squadron Skipper is nervous. His change-of-command will occur shortly after our return. He hasn’t had a major disaster yet, and all he can see in his imagination is a mid-air involving all his aircraft right overhead the home field.
He is on the verge of directing individual straight-in approaches when cooler heads prevail. This is going to be a riot!
The plan is to load our gear at 0600 tomorrow. Individual crews brief at 0845. Walk to the aircraft NLT 1000. Launch about 1100; with a airborne time zone change, that puts us overhead Cecil at about 1245. We will recover as two-planes after the fly by to thrill the crowd, and then join up in two groups on the ground and taxi in as four? planes. Then we shut down the engines in unison and wait for the Customs guys to clear us. Simple as pie. What could go wrong?
After the brief, the crowd thinned out fast. I felt strangely disoriented. I was all packed and ready to go. There was really nothing further I had to do except get some sleep, and naturally that was impossible. I had a hot dog at mid-rats and it floated in my stomach along with some old CVIC coffee and the last of the cherry liquor chocolates that Doc Flynn was (successfully) trying to get rid of. There were a few attempts at some camaraderie, but everyone seemed lost in their own thoughts.
I hung out in planning until 0100 or so, smoking cigarettes and flipping between the two channels on the TV. Finally the last movie was over and there was nothing else left to do but go to bed. And wait for tomorrow, which had already begun… Crab salad, fresh FID-baked bread, industrial grade tomato juice; onion soup au gratin; beef tenderloins Chateaubriand; potato and vegetables; éclair and two cups of cappuccino for all hands.
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
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