(USS Midway in the Indian Ocean. Steel Beach Picnic. Photo Socotra).

The Bad Old Days are starting to look pretty good.

I mentioned that I arrived in USS Midway three years almost to the day after Operation Frequent Wind. I was a junior partner (the junior-ist of JOs) in Medium Pursuit Squadron 151 (The World Famous Bland and Mellow Vigilantes of VF-151).

When we were not staring down the Iranians in the Indian Ocean, or drinking really expensive beer in the Honcho-ku outside the gate of the Yokosuka Naval Complex, we were menacing the Soviet Homeland as part of the Carter-Reagan defense buildup.

Our squadron used to dazzle our many fans when the aircrew intercepted the big Soviet bombers coming to look at us. The Russians would hold up Playboy magazines. We painted Victor Belenko’s name on the canopy rail of our fighters, implying that the MIG-25 Foxbat pilot who defected to Japan was flying now for us.

Everyone had a grand time taking pictures of one another. In fact, fighter pilots the world over are pretty much the same. They like to go fast and go hard. Our guys tended to avoid one thing with the heavily-armed Peer Competitors: it was a maneuver they called “thumping.”

(VF-151 F-4 Phantom tucked in with a Long Range Aviation TU-95 Bear Delta. Photo Splash or Nasty or someone. Official Navy image).

It used to be more common than it is now, everything being so serious, and particularly after that Chinese hot-dog killed himself and almost the entire crew of an EP-3 AIRES reconnaissance aircrew. It was part of an increasingly aggressive pattern of CHICOM behavior in the South China Sea, but you never can tell what motivated the behavior. Fighter pilots tend to have short attention spans, or maybe I should be charitable and say that the pilots of the day were just accustomed to thinking at 400 kots. Thumping is one way to avoid boredom.

I got thumped one time in the Gulf- it was by our guys, but that is what makes it so universal.

The last eighty days of that line period in the North Arabian Sea on Ma Midway sort of blends together. They were all the same, except one.  I finally threw up my hands and got permission to get off the boat. That is how desperate the situation had become. I had put in for leave so I could go to another aircraft carrier for a few hours. Visiting another ship for liberty.

I had a couple buddies who run a Carrier Onboard Delivery detachment and who flew the trusty C-2 Grayhound around the Arabian Ocean, picking up the mail, and spare parts and passengers. Tedium to Apathy to Boredom, Mr. Roberts called it. The C-2 is a twin engine turbo-prop, the fuselage is an elongated tube, and it has a ramp that drops in the back. It may be the ugliest and slowest airplane ever to fly, but it is by far the most popular, since it represents escape from the ship. I jumped at the chance to not look at the gray bulkheads for a day.

Today’s mission was to go drive around the Iranian Coast, note what shipping was present and then amble on down to the mighty USS Nimitz and drop off some packages. Then we would return with parts for the Midway. Two catapult launches and two arrested landings. Yawn. The crews call this a bore-ex, conveying both the sense of excitement accompanying the mission and the actual conduct of it, boring holes through the sky. They have been doing this shuttle schedule for two months. They are pleased to bring the Spook along. It is something different, and I will have to take the notes on the merchant shipping. That is precious.

We went up on the roof- the flight deck- to pre-flight the airplane. The Indian Ocean sparkled under a blazing sun. The wind was out of the north-west and with the motion of the ship it came down the deck at 30 knots. The sleeves of my green flight suit flapped in the breeze. Not being a pilot myself, I was curious about the ritual. Ron was pilot-in-command. He walked me through the rigorous inspection.

“These are the boarding stairs,” he said, gesturing with his index finger.

“Roger” I agreed. They appeared to be stairs.

“Up there are the wings. They are folded.”

“Check.”

“Here is the tow-bar. It is only rated for eight more cat shots before it fails.”

“We only have two today, right?”

“Yep.”

“So it won’t fail on the catapult stroke until next week, plunging the hapless aircrew into the cruel sea?”

“Yep.” Ron touched one of the big propellers. “Up there are the engines. No fluid running out of them.” Little puffy clouds blew by above.

“Roger. No fluid. That would be a bad thing, right?”

“You ready?”

“Let’s do it.”

I had to sit in the back with the Loadmaster and the crew chief. The seats face backward, toward the ramp. Ron fired up the engines and got things stable. On command from the Air Boss in the Tower he taxied forward toward the number one catapult on the bow. Midway was old and only had two.

Newer ships have a third located on the angle deck. The aircraft bucked a little as we crossed the jet blast deflector and lined up on the catapult. I could picture the green-shirted deck operations kids capturing the tow bar and placing the little dumbbell-shaped metal hold-back that would keep us in position until the catapult fired, shearing it in two. In my mind I could see the catapult officer- the Shooter- directing us into tension.

Ron came up on the engines and the airplane shuddered and danced.

The Crew Chief said “He saluted the Shooter….Ready…” and as the words came there was a roar and my stomach headed north and my torso was thrust against the straps. There was terror at being caught in the hand of a giant, suddenly nothing and the feeling that you must be falling.

Catapult shots are cool. Zero to 110 miles per hour in two and a half seconds. Anything not nailed down in the cargo compartment dents whatever it hits. We did a gentle clearing turn out of the departure pattern and headed north for Iran. We drove along over the azure sea for about forty miles, climbing to 12,000 feet. We passed overhead the USS Texas, our early-warning cruiser. She was busily taking on old mail and wilted lettuce from a fast supply ship alongside. The cost of Iran was beginning to show up on the radar and Ron turned us west to skirt the coast and head toward the Straits of Hormuz. Dan was co-pilot. He un-strapped and gave me his helmet and the left front seat. Boredom alleviated. Ron told me to take the yoke and suddenly I was flying a Navy turboprop off the coast of a volatile and dangerous rogue state, led by fanatical fundamentalist clerics.

Fighter pilots will tell you that the hardest part of their jobs is conducting an intercept of other fighter aircraft. Million dollar radars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in training, all for the purpose of putting two tiny specks together in the same part of the vast heavens.

Oh, bullshit. It’s a piece of cake. All you have to do is slide into the seat, put your hands on the controls and look out the port cockpit window. I had intercepted an F-14 Tomcat without even knowing it.

“Hey, Ron!” I blurted out. “We got company!”

Eyes wide in amazement, I saw the American fighter- we call them “Turkey’s”- just hanging out there about forty feet away, wings swept to full forward so he could fly as slow as we were. The tail markings indicated it was a Black Spade Tomcat off Nimitz. They were the first outfit to use the new neutral-gray camouflage. No garish paint, squadron insignia or decals. Just a lean gray airplane, all business, with a small black spade painted on the vertical stabilizer. A thirty-seven million dollar air shark.

There was no way for them to know that I was just a tourist, so I casually gave them a “thumbs up” and the radar intercept operator in the back seat acknowledged it. His visor was down and I could almost see our reflection in it. The fighter paced us for about thirty seconds, looking at the name painted over the access hatch of our aircraft. “The Spirit of Olongapo.” Then they slid out in front of us in the clear sunlit air, lit the afterburners, wings programming back into a sharp “V” and they disappeared.

“Wow” I said cleverly.

“Yeah,” said Ron, pressing his throat mike. “But look for his wingman.”

I didn’t have to look far. Suddenly appearing right in our windshield was the planform of an F-14. It seemed close enough to touch. “Shit!” Our airplane flew into the jet wake and pitched violently until we passed through to clear air. My heart was beating rapidly. “Does that happen often?” I asked when I could steady my voice.

“Only with assholes. Goes with the mission area. The jet-jocks get bored. They call it thumping. They come up underneath where you can’t see them and then pull into the vertical right in front of you. That one wasn’t too bad. He was probably two hundred feet away.”

“Jeeze. Seemed closer than that. Dan might have to check this seat before he sits down again.”

Of course, I meant to tell you how we got to be so good at what we were doing- not that we weren’t anyway, but we sure had an opportunity to practice a lot more when USS Ranger pranged that stupid merchant ship in the Straits of Malacca, and we had to go cover for her.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com