On Gonzo Station Part Five

(USS Nimitz All-Nuclear Task Group transits Gibraltar en route the Indian Ocean at best speed, December, 1979. They say when the group turned the corner at the Cape of Good Hope the carrier was throwing a rooster-tale. Photo USN).

Gentle Readers, this is a Walter Reed Day, and I am hoping for an up-check from the Orthopods in the Bone and Cast clinic. I will keep you posted. Meanwhile, the merry band of OFRP pirates continue to orbit endlessly in the Northern Arabian Sea. It is approaching Christmas of 1979.

22 December 1979

In point of fact, it is tougher than human endurance sometimes. I overstate the matter by a bit, but bear with me.

On the 22nd of December we got confirmation that a weird proposal from Lantfleet had been approved, and that the brand-spanking new USS Nimitz- “Numbnuts,” we call her-  would be directed to pull the rods out of her Westinghouse reactors and steam like hell around Africa to relieve Kitty Hawk on Station at the Gonzo-rama,

With her she would bring two nuclear escorts, and she would be authorized a whopping 20 knots Speed of Advance (SOA). We knew it the day before, but Vinnie the Maximum Spook swore us to silence on the matter.

The implications from this tended to be fairly parochial. Naturally, Midway is like a union hire- first on and last off. The plan is to get Kitty Hawk back to cover the Korean Contingency, and let the Coral Sea pop out and relieve us. Fine and dandy.

The only sobering note is that Numbnuts can’t be here before about the 23rd of January, and after cross-decking the staff and some airplanes, that wouldn’t let the Hawk get anywhere out of the Indian Ocean for at least ten days. Then, allowing for poor old Coral Maru to get here would tack on another couple weeks, and there we are with the same amount of blue water to cover just to get to Subic Bay.

We all could do the math. That translates to something very much resembling the month of March before we see land again.

Oh, no big deal. At that rate, we would equal the post World War II record for at-sea days on the 28th of Jan, and forge on ahead to smash the record decisively by nearly 30 days. When you consider that 30 slow days in the slammer is about what you get for an encore drunk driving rap back home it makes you wonder. The record, incidentally, (at least by one reckoning, and we concede there are several dubious claims to it) is 78 days, set by the Enterprise way back in ’64. Our attempt, should things go by the tentative program, would be something on the lines of 108 days. Just another attempt to demonstrate the combat readiness of the Navy’s finest airwing and ship.

God help us.

Which they are in the process of destroying. The Engineers are tearing their hair out now. The whole concept of the Midway deployment points out the glaring flaws in the ship construction policy that has dogged the Navy since the days of Whiz Kid McNamara, We were supposed to get an “incremental” maintenance program, which would be done by the industrious Japs in 20 day shots throughout the course of a busy year of Pacific deployments. The shortage of assets has thrown that Into a cocked hat.

Our contingency deployment earlier this year (24 hrs. notice for 18,000 miles of steaming) was of necessity unscheduled, and this one is about going to finish off some of the plant equipment. Two 10,000-gallon fresh water tanks currently stand unusable due to seepage of bilge water. Basic processes of corrosion are taking their toll in a thousand little spots; the flight deck is bare brown steel, and slipperier than a greaser’s hair. And all this only l/3rd of the way through the length of the deployment this promises to be.

I haven’t mentioned the fact that as crew dissatisfaction (read boredom, crankiness, and fatigue) some idiot will start chucking quarters down the intakes of the J-79 engines of our Phantom jets, and we will start finding ourselves out of the airplane business. It happened last time, and in even the best crews there are fuck-ups and dirtbags whose grasp of the big picture ends at the end of their crank.

All that sort of thing would end at the slightest hint of combat action, but even steel must rest sometimes. And the flesh is weak, God knows.

The other implications are subtle, and have ripples that spread far beyond our parochial little spot in the pond. Pulling Nimitz out of the Med would leave only one carrier there, and the very fundamentals of NATO quake at the thought. Our Sixth Fleet presence is the main opponent to the Soviets; that is a given in all strategic planning in that Theater.

The abrupt removal of the foremost of our assets there can only point up how spread out we are. Our NATO buddies (the self-same ones who are still going at the arms sales opportunities in Iran: to wit, the U.K., Italy, and our erstwhile comrade France) are going to have to consider this very carefully.

It Is already on the planning table in the Kremlin, I have no doubt. There are so many areas to test now. The Vietnamese are about to begin the great offensive in Kampuchea, which will include some scrimmaging in Thailand without a doubt. How are we to react to that one, with only one carrier in the South China Sea? The Soviets could out-gun us in our own home turf. Even five years ago the South China Sea was an American Lake.

Strange days.

Also in the news today was our Soviet Natya tattle-tale escort. She signaled our bridge, passed the message that she would exercise her ADMGs off to the southwest, away from Midway. Bridge takes that and passes to CIC.

Does anyone think to tell us in Mission Planning? Do the aircrews get it? Not a chance. An A-6 on the third event launch reports tracer fire from the Soviets. “Should I take him out?” Jesus!

(F-14 Tomcat wave-off on USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63). Photo USN).

Also, an early morning thrill as we go to Flight Quarters early for the recovery of a Kitty Hawk F-14 Tomcat. It would be the first Tomcat trap for Midway. LSOs to the platform! Kitty has a main engineering casualty and can’t get the knots up to take the Tomcat aboard; some kind of inflight hydraulic problem prevents the jet from getting flaps down and is going to come over the ramp fast.

The CAG comes up on the box and says there will be NO, repeat, NO painting of the Tomcat in CVW-5 colors. Stickers, OK, but no paint guys…. At length, perhaps out of consideration for such shenanigans, Kitty pours the coals to it for one last try and successfully traps the tomcat.

There was mild disappointment that we didn’t get to pull one out of the fire for them. Something different.

A rumor going around that the Hawk got the body of the missing Marine, presumed to have snuffed himself the other day. No positive news, I would have presumed him shark meat long ago, on his lonely swim towards Israel.

Biff McCole suggested that it might just have been one of the bags of trash which we have been depositing off the starboard sponson aft for the last month. An interesting thought. Reports have literally thousands of the things bobbing about in the oil-slicked waters. The bags are supposed to perforated so as to sink within a few hours, but I suspect that they will be drifting for months. Perhaps providing the Somalis with a new industry…..

The North Arabian Sea does not get the Jacques Cousteau award for environmental excellence. This has got to be one of the most fucked up neighborhoods of the World Ocean; the supertankers apparently purge their tanks on the way in to on-load more crude. Looking off the sponson at the horizon, the water has an evil oily tinge.

It does not boil along the hull like it does in the cleaner water down south. It just has an iridescent hue as it slides astern.

I received letters from Dad and Uncle Jim which both included words to the effect that this would be one of the most memorable times in my life. I wonder if it is always like that; that the participants are too close to the action to discern anything more than fatigue and dull longing to be elsewhere, and the legend actually lies elsewhere.

I was perusing the Navy Exchange catalog (one of the few things to do in a situation like this is to plan where the pay checks which lie un-cashed in drawer and desk will be spent. Cameras, watches, guns) and Ed Markham strolled by my stool in Mission Planning. A Marlboro smoldered in the aluminum butt kit next to me, and the double paper cup on the planning table had been filled so many times that morning that it was starting to leak vile dark fluid out of the bottom.

We discussed the relative merits of double action handguns, Ed casually mentioned that a single action had very nearly got his head blown off one time. His war story was a classic.

It began:

“Well, I got shot down one time south of An Loc, see, and the Major who was in the right seat had his ankle trapped under the two armor seats that got unglued in the wreck. So, I moseyed down a ways to check things out. He got stuck for about 28hrs up there, but what I meant to say about double action pistols was this. I came on back up to the fuselage where the Major and this Second Lieutenant was. The Looie was dead naturally, and he didn’t care, But I came around the wreckage and there was this Gook. I could tell he was a communist because I didn’t know him, and also by the AK-47 slung barrel-down over his shoulder, I pulled out my Ruger Blackhawk.”

I asked Ed why he was carrying a hog-leg like that, when the standard survival weapon was a .38 Smith and Wesson.

He rolled his eyes toward the overhead. “They didn’t let us carry them issue, see, and I wanted to up-gun my survival gear. Of course, pilots are the worst people In the world when it comes to cleaning weapons, and I figured a revolver don’t have as many moving parts as those fancy semi-autos some of the guys carried. The Blackhawk was real wild west style. Well, I’ll tell you, I was startled when I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. I was putting my arm back down and I remembered you had to cock them things. Nearly got myself plumb wasted, I did. Gotta go man the alert. See ya.”

“Wait,” I said. “Did you shoot him?”

“Yeah. He got tangled up in the strap of his rifle. Thank goodness. Remember to cock the pistol, that is my motto.”

(Ruger Blackhawk .357 Single Action revolver. Photo Sturm-Ruger.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com