Editor’s note: more complete idiocy out there on the campaign trail yesterday. I am going back where the only real threat in the world is a heavily armed Soviet Union in 1989. Gentle Readers, remember, if you will, the merry band of Carrier Air Wing SIX embarked in USS Forrestal (CV-59) who did not know how radically their world was about to change.
-Vic

24 November, 1989

Another day. Up with the first launch. In the space from 1100 to 2400. Seven cyclic events; finished exercise Harmonie Sud-est, helped Flash with the POSTEX message; answered a lot of phone calls; listened to all the briefs. Had dinner with the CAG Staff (spaghetti); midnight rations (“MIDRATS”) rats with the Gamblers from VS-28.

Got a newspaper dated- today (European Stars n’ Stripes) which came in with the COD crew from Rota. The headlines are great. They say the following, in terms of that news which carries a personal involvement: The Saltwater Summit is not going to be a “feet up, get ta know ya” deal.

I agree with the commentator that says there is going to be something significant announced at this thing. I am thinking it could be something like the pullout of 35,000 troops each from Europe. The Europeans want to call the shots on their destiny, now and I think they are tired of having us always at the head of the table. Two: the Syrians are digging new positions around the Christian Enclave. A warning to Lebanon’s General Aoun or preparation for the invasion?

There was a mail call, but the post office called and said there was no mail for the CAG Staff and not to bother to send anyone down when they called it away. Much moaning and gnashing of teeth about being so cut off from home.

Where is the mail? Is it piling up somewhere in the States? The COD guys say they have brought everything that is in-theatre, so it must all be in a warehouse. Maybe the mass mailing to the troops in Europe is confounding us. This is very depressing. Nothing worse than a no-mail call mail call. Makes you assume nobody cares.

The Admiral laid a vast amount of tasking on us late. I have to produce the boilerplate for a campaign plan prior to Naples. This will be interesting. We do not have the resources onboard to do a good job, and they won’t allow us to go off ship to get what we need. We will try to end-run the system by having the civilian CNA rep on the Staff go via his chain back-channel in DC.

Weather was cold, blustery and rainy. France socked in, which made the low levels not too much fun. I’m trying to get on the flight schedule with VA-176 as they have had a plague attack their BN’s and they are even flying some enlisted guys on tanker missions. I think the ops o is ducking me, though.

The Marines lost a helicopter from USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2) off the coast of Palma last night. The bad luck continues.

25 Nov:

Got mail to day; dated the 16th of Nov, so it is nine days in transit. My first is probably still inbound; she says all the other girls have gotten letters and she’s sad. Maybe she will understand when she gets my first.

Things have eased up a little bit. We did four events today; all night goes. Had the morning to start cleaning out the Top Secret stuff we have gone through. That was prompted by a little scare I had from a missing TS SPECAT message. My heart went pitter-patter and I had to take a couple deep breaths.

I ransacked the safe and sight-checked everything. No joy. Got down to the short hairs where I was starting to think what the formal investigation would prove when I hit the Security Manager’s last resort. I pulled all the drawers out of the safe and sure enough, the missing pink piece of paper was jammed way in the back. Happy day.

So things are much better arranged and soon all this will be locked up and put away securely. I hope. The dull ache of all this material is getting me a little down.

Flight ops started late, first brief at 1615L. That provided the wonderful opportunity to get through some paperwork and actually work out. Jogged on the flight deck; wonderful clear day with merchant ship’s and puffy clouds. Ran about twenty minutes around the airplanes and over the ties down chains before they called away the FOD walk-down. Walked the flight deck with the Roof gang looking for stray foreign objects and cooled down before doing my weights and sit-ups. Felt wonderful. It is a magnificent thing to be outside. I am getting as pale as a fish belly.

Following PT I began to get apprehensive about the Michigan-Ohio State game. From the paper we got yesterday I knew it was being telecast over AFRT to the troops in Europe. We pulled all the strings we could but couldn’t get anyone to tune a receiver to the game. Consequently it was a nervous evening. Someone claimed to have gotten the first quarter score over CNN that was up momentarily on the satellite.

We finally got reliable information. The airborne E-2 AEW flight had a Michigan grad onboard and he contacted Lages Airfield in the Azores on the HF radio; they provided running scores and the E-2 passed the scores using the base-plus system over the Strike control frequency to a Michigan grad who was standing the ASUWC watch back here on FID.

The wonders of technology. We are now trying to figure out how to copy the Notre Dame-Miami game in real time …..

Oh, yeah, and my first random urinalysis test came up since Third Fleet. Another wonderful and debasing experience with two troops watching in a dirty head way aft (right under the· arresting gear.) At least I don’t think I’ 11 have any problems passing it. Haven’t had a poppy seed roll in months.
Airwing faults (as viewed from the Staff}: not enough pictures of white merchant shipping. Yessir, Yessir, three bags full. Note to briefers: hype the picture taking tomorrow.

26 NOV:

Big Mirror Image strike this morning so I crow-barred myself out of the rack at 0730. Not enough sleep, having got down about 0230. Made it up to Mission Planning in time to ensure that the tables were down and 30 chairs set up. I’ve got Wally and Al on the night shift and they do a very competent job with the ever-watchful Seaman Berger and our resident ineffective 2nd class, Jonesy.

I got through the message board before the house filled up and got squeezed into the background. Going back to the coffee machine I discovered that Notre Dame had been thrashed by Miami, 27-10. Frabjous day!

The Wolverines were back in the race for Number one. Only undefeated Colorado (who will play a doubtless very pissed off Irish in the Orange Bowl) and untested Alabama still are undefeated. This will make the New Year’s Day games very significant.

Of course, I will probably be in some romantic Chateau somewhere on the Loire River Valley, but the ship and our many Irish Bashers are exultant. Poor Lutt-Homme. He could have been a lot worse after the Michigan loss, so I let him alone in his considerable misery. I understand fully.

The strike brief was a set piece affair, the drill being to actually break out and assemble the ordnance we would use if every tasked to do one of these things, then take it down again, load on some little practice bombs and launch the same strike and support packages utilizing the correct Launch Sequence Plan, fly all the profiles, and then construct the BDA and post-strike messages.

About three-quarters through the brief, Shaky Jake mentioned that Lutt-man had been nominated to take videotape of the whole thing from a dedicated helo. When the crowd thinned out I found the mission commander and asked if I could bum along as well.

Not a problem! Great, I said. I called Scooter to ensure that there would be no compelling reason for me not to go and raced to my stateroom to find by flight suit, red turtleneck and flight boots. I reported to the Red Lions ready room, got myself one of the spare LPA’s and helmet and we walked at 1020.

Naturally, the ready room is near a steam junction so we were very comfortable without flight jackets. Inside the ship, that is. We were comfortable even while the engines spooled up. We launched at 1052L after sitting in the engine exhaust for twenty minutes with the sliding door open.

Lutt-man and I were back on the PAX jump-seats in front of the door; I ·had my camera with the telephoto lens and was ready to rock and roll. We got clearance from the tower and suddenly the aircraft lurched into the air. FID’s deck slid below us and suddenly there was the roar of the wind and we arced away into space.

Wonderful hop! It was magnificent to be outdoors, and with the door open there was plenty of noise and excitement. We looked out on the vast expanse of blue Med like a picture window. We were cool, but not cold (at least the first three hours) and did more things than I can recount.

Let’s see: Helos buzz around like dragonflies for a living. First we did plane guard in the starboard Delta pattern, driving around while the strike launched. We than had some time to kill before we had to mark the target area with MK58 smokes. We practiced some hovering. We lined up a HIFER/HOTPUMP availability with the USS Stump (DD978), one of the Spruance-class small boys in company with the FID group.

We examined a foreign merchant ship and shot a bunch of pictures. Having made sure that was stressed in the brief, I felt it was only fair to burn a bunch of government film in the effort.

After about thirty minutes we watched the aircrewmen come back, climb into gunner’s belts and break out about fifteen of the long grey cylindrical smoke bombs. We descended to about lOOFT and dumped them in a cruciform pattern where they produced a haze of smoke on the water below a broken spot in the 19-20, 000ft overcast. We rose to about five thousand feet and Lutt-man and I got into the gunner’s belts and scooted on our buns over to the open door.

It was exhilarating! We watched the strike formation form up for the initial target runs and dump a mess of 7501b inert bombs down into the smoke. The graceful dive and pullup belied the grim purpose of the maneuver. Fun to watch, as were the strafing runs they practiced later.

Having finished our task we settled back for the rest of the short flight- only three more hours! We zoomed all over. We practiced approaches to the Thorn; we hovered over her absurdly little flight deck and I wondered just how close the rotors could come to the hangar; we picked up a fuel hose while hovering and refueled while aloft (HIFIR= helicopter inflight refueling).

We landed and completed refueling with the rotors running and paid with a credit card; we rigged more merchant ships, got tasked to use dipping sonar to look for the Soviet Nuclear submarine in the vicinity, scurrying from point to point. We watched flight ops and roared around the battle group. What a blast!

The roar and the vibration can put you to sleep, though. We were sleepy, cold boys with full bladders when we arrived back on the FID.

Naturally, the sight of m in a flight suit and LPA was cause for general merriment in Mission Planning when we brought our film· in, but I am trying to get as many of the guys the chance to fly as possible. Motivation. And, believe it or not, the 4.5 hours I spent away from the florescent light made the rest of the day, the hassles, the crash message writing and all the rest seem like a piece of cake.

I can’t recall that anything else really means anything today, no global catastrophe I am aware of.

The President’s advance team came aboard today via COD (we listened to the lady pilot call the ball on the radio and watched her approach from the helo) and so all that hoopla gets closer. We operate south of Sicily tomorrow and transit the straits tomorrow enroute Malta and the waters just north of the Gulf of Sidra (and further South, the Libyan Line Of Death). Enough for today.

Manana.

27 NOV:

Seven flight events today. A few minor flails. We lost a Sparrow missile off one of the Tomcats last night on the catapult stroke. Not a good thing, but on the whole, infinitely preferable to what happened on IKE when 36 Sparrows and Sidewinders were washed off the elevator.

Then our fwend, the waskelly Wainwight (CG-28), acting as the anti-air warfare commander (AAWC), put us on report for having an F-14 intercept an unidentified contact (poss commercial air). Big no-no. CAG had to run around, grab the aircrew and plot a chart and march everyone down to the Admiral to explain the situation. Quite a far cry from the days of Ma Midway and “Well, we didn’t do it because we weren’t flying that day, and even if we were flying· we were under positive control the whole time anyway.”

Otherwise an odd day. Busy, due to seven events, and my job as Mission Planning traffic cop/expediter/floor walker kept me busy enough but there really wasn’t anything out of the ordinary going on. A cipher day in the long chain of days.

It occurred to me that this is the November from hell. Pulled out the morning of the 3rd; that was a whole work day and everything else, except for one afternoon and three evenings ashore has been like this. It simply doesn’t seem like it is ever going to be different or ever going to end.

Clearly a case for the chapter in the tale of time as a purely relative commodity. I know I have been places where it seemed longer but I really can’t imagine when they might have been. I think that 96 day-stint on the line at Gonzo station seemed to go faster than this.

Later, they had the tape of the Notre Dame game on this evening and played it in all its glory. Lutt-man almost couldn’t stand it.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
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