On Gonzo Station, Part Eight

Editor’s note: It is back to work week, which accounts for my failure to digitize these ancient notes. It is January, 1980, in the Northern Arabian Sea. There might be something going on we do not understand. Or not. But the paperwork has to be perfect.

(I wish our picture had been as clear as this one, taken of a surfaced ECHO-2 SSGN in the Barents Sea. Then I wonder what we would have done?)

For multiple examples of just how cheap the whole human experience turns out to be, come down to Mission Planning and plow through the overnight reports, both classified Secret-level and the unclas press accounts. This particular morning I flipped over the cardboard cover we made for the Secret/GENSER (General Service) message traffic. I had stenciled on the words: “Dangerous Unevaluated Intelligence- Not for Air Crew Use” to ensure that the pilots and Flight Officers would be tempted to learn exactly what was going on around us.

There were reports that 4l were dead and 110 injured in a riot near the Iranian coastal town of Bandar Langeh on the Persian Gulf.

Three were killed in a scuffle in Tabriz. 14,000 Kurds went AWOL from the Iranian army, and pilfered as they went. They liberated 60 Chieftain tanks, presumably to intimidate potential pursuit.

In Afghanistan, the fighting was reported heavy in the South, East, and North East provinces. Casualties for the occupying Soviet Red Army were between 250 and 9,600, take your pick. The State Department is claiming over 100,000 Soviet troops are in-country now. The bottom line is great, for a spectator sport. Both sides say “No prisoners.”

To fight the hill-tribesmen in their own mountains! What a challenge!

It is an incredible task, even for the splendidly-equipped Red Army. Their machines designed to roll once more over the flat land of Germany, blitzing through the Fulda Gap and over the Rhine and dashing for the Channel.
To sit inside one of the monster vehicles, looking up at the jagged granite peaks, wondering which ones conceal the savage, hash-smoking Afghan guerrillas. Like Kipling said: “Thrice he heard the breech-bolt snick, though never a soul was seen…”

I hope they get their asses handed to them in pails.

The student madness continues unabated in Tehran. They are going to try LCOL Roeder for espionage. He is from Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, according to the AP.  His dreadful war crimes include 148 missions over Vietnam, and is therefore one of the “savage and vicious elements sent to Iran in guise of diplomats.”

Of course the Vietnamese will be invited to the trials, to get their licks in that they could not from the ground ten years ago. You have to love theatre of the absurd.

Retreating further into the amphetamine paranoia, the student occupiers also claim to have unearthed another Spy Nest. This one is down the street at their own Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When the students staged their attack, US Charge d’Affaires Bruce Laingen, DCM Victor Thomseth and Security Officer Mike Howland were at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, where they were transformed into “semi-hostages.”

The militants are demanding they be turned over to them to join their comrades in captivity.

I want to kill them now more than ever. The worms. But that is the ostensible reason we are here in this place, circling endlessly.

Ah, but the Admiral. Now that we lost an airplane, and started out the New Year of 1980 auspiciously with two Foreign Object Damage incidents (FODs), it appears that he wanted to address the assembled Gators in the halls of World Famous Ready Room Two. He came down to buck us up and give us some food for thought. In fact, his unscripted remarks were a veritable Whopper of cogitation pills. There were several topics of extreme interest, but I should begin with the fact that you don’t make two stars in today’s Action Navy without some potent ju-ju.

The Admiral has a lot going for him. He is whipcord-lean, a fighter jock back in the bad old days, and had done his tours in D.C., and been an Airwing Commander (CAG) and the Charlie Oscar of his very own birdfarm. He has a polished manner and an easy delivery. What it must mean to him, to cruise into rooms and hear: “Gentlemen, the Admiral.”

Some guys come into a room and you know that the courtesy is almost an intrusion into what they are doing; they are eager to get on with the meetings, or the lecture, or whatever little task has deflected them from the important business for which they earn their pay. But this man seems to glory in it. Not that I begrudge him his respect.  But he comes into the Ready Room and nearly walks the length of the central aisle before he utters the negligent “As you were, Gentlemen, as you were.”

It is a studied gesture, like the carefully negligent pose behind the podium. You can always tell a fighter pilot, as the saying goes. You just can’t tell him very much.

“Sometimes wish I was still down here, instead of back in the chair down the hall,” he says with practiced nonchalance. Sure.

The man wishes he were still just a Gator, instead of fighting the career battle of his life with the Flag Continuation Board coming up. His address contributes to the unease I have felt all along, which is not a little like looking behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz and finding out that Dorothy was right all along.

The Admiral’s delivery is impeccable His uniform is crisp. His silver hair is perfectly cut, and he is not wearing wash khakis or color-coded flight deck jersey. He looks and speaks as the very model of the dynamic leader.

But when the questions begin, he begins to wander. He betrays a certain glibness of content that starts as a disquieting note, and goes on to terrify. For example, he says he believes it is possible to strike the Soviets tactically and not have the confrontation escalate immediately out of control. He dodges questions about Soviet intentions, saying he doesn’t have the information.

Yet I know that he has at least as much as any LTJG who reads the Secret-level message boards down in Planning. Later, on his morale-boosting tour of the Ready Rooms, he tells the Rock Rivers of VF-161 s that “there are no submarines up here; they are all south of Socotra Island and we know where each one of them is.”

O.K. But no not so fast, Sir. Last week the Marine photo-Phantom RF-4 was taking some Infra-Red images of USS Parsons. The Marines left the IR cameras on, and the Photo Interpreters got to pour over a mile or so of film of the empty ocean after the recovery. They were scrolling through it pretty quickly until they got to a very curious image, which seemed to show something very interesting to anyone concerned with the integrity of the floating steel fortress where we live.

The image on the film is something that strongly resembles a Russian Echo II-class submarine, at least to the eyes of the Photo Interpreters. When I saw it, I could identify the eight missiles, still warm from being exposed to the sun when the boat was on the surface. The image was convincing and riveted my attention. This was huge. If there was an un-located and unidentified Soviet guided missile boat running around, we had a major intelligence failure. It was also a problem on a couple more levels.

First, an Echo-II SSGN carries eight P-6 (SS-N-3a “Shaddock-A”) anti-ship cruise missiles, mounted in pairs above the pressure hull. The missile could be armed with either a 2,200-pound high explosive warhead, or a 200 or 350 kiloton nuke .

This would be arriving at a speed of about 1.2 Mach from a maximum range of 220 miles. The circular error probability was not the strong suit of the missile, and really was pretty about crappy for conventional explosives but perfect for nukes. In order to more effectively kill us, the P-6 featured a radar homing seeker, just in case.

(ECHO-2 SSGN with tubes elevated to launch position).

To fire the missiles, the sub has to surface and elevate the launchers to about thirty degrees. My publications suggested that this was not exactly a ripple-fire event, since it could take thirty minutes to fire all eight missiles, though that was sort of beside the point. If the first one got in our general direction, that would be all she wrote and my stereo would get wet.

So here is the ambiguity of this. I thought if you detected a submarine, you ought to alert the system. There are procedures in place to do it. Instead, the Flag Staff waffled when we raced up to tell them what we thought we had found.

We got denial. See, the System says they have everything under control. There are no phantom Soviet missile boats steaming around the Indian Ocean with contingency nukes on their missiles. If Midway reports a submarine that the System does not acknowledge, we could be left open to ridicule from the shore, since the Shore is always right, and the Fleet is always wrong. One has to pick the issues you are going to raise with the Shore.

I thought it was straightforward and a cool detection, if valid, and the idea that there was a missile boat in a contingency to kill all of us made perfect sense, what with what was going on up North, in Afghanistan and Iran. Of course the Soviets would want to be able to take us out if we attempted to intervene in the Afghan thing. Maybe if we decided to act on Iran, too.

The Staff waffled for about two hours. This is on matter that should have been reported up the chain in minutes. They fail to issue instructions for one of the small boys to mosey over and go active on the sonar and ping the crap out of whatever was there.

The OPREP message finally goes out with the weasel-word “POSSUB,” or ‘possible submarine’ along with the routine ship-sighting message traffic. No other action is taken; no ASW assets are directed to the Datum. No further investigation is conducted. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I think about it. But the Shore says there can’t be anything out there ready to lob a nuke at us.

On the other hand, the administrivia counts. Everything must be perfect before it leaves the ship. His Chief of Staff and Flag Intel officer massage the message into hamburger for a couple hours, trying to get the nuance correct. They adjust the date time group of the message so it is compliant with reporting standards. Everything coming from this Staff, and the Ship it rides must be perfect.

Good God, man, we are talking careers here. And we know where all the subs are.

(Possibly the only image ever conceived that features the famed F-4 Phantom fighter in its tertiary ASW mission).

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com