Editor’s note: First decent night’s sleep since the road trip started last week and I feel almost human. Off to the farm and the first cut on the pastures of the season later today! Now, back to the thrilling days when I was a callow young LCDR and under the misapprehension that everything made sense, in a certain elliptical fashion…

Vic

28 November 1989

I jogged by Sicily late this afternoon. There was a lovely sunset, which contributed to making the tie-down chains on the airplanes impossible to see as I plodded along on the non—skid of Mighty FID’s deck.

I was pleased not to take a header into a drop tank or along the ragged surface of the deck necessary to keep the tires on the jets from slipping on the moisture and oil slicks. The island looked beautiful. There is something about seeing land that makes you feel like you have actually been somewhere.

On a whim, I polled the delegation down in CVIC and due to the aggressive flight schedule, it turns out about half the cast hasn’t been outside since we called at Toulon. A wonderful MED cruise, sealed in a warren of steel boxes. It is not just a job…

Accordingly, I got Charlie Conway out to do the Spy in the Sky bit on the Dawn Patrol helo. He had a blast but forgot to write down where the merchant ships happened to be when he took pictures of them. Oh well, shit happens. Good day otherwise, except no mail for the third consecutive day.

The workout felt great. If only I could have got more done on the Campaign plan for the Admiral. We’ll see how big the load is tomorrow. There are six cyclic flight events scheduled, two day and four night, down two from the usual eight total, slit 4/4.

The aircrews are grumbling about the night flying, since it basically is scary and tough to do a lot of good training for the fighters in the dark. All the airspace is restricted around here (it would be laughable if it wasn’t so hard.) A circle 75nm surrounds Sicily and defines the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), which overlaps part of Tunisia where you can only fly below 3500FT.

(The Hon. Sally J. Novetzke, U.S. Ambassador to Malta, 1989-93).

Weird. The first event tomorrow is a dress rehearsal for the “routine cyclic flight ops” demonstration for the President. There actually could not be anything less routine about putting on a show for the Commander-in-Chief. The U.S. Ambassadoress (Ambassadrix?) to Malta is gracing us with her presence tomorrow in preparation for the Presidential visit.

More fun with protocol from the pointy edge of the forefront of global diplomacy.

29 Nov:

Today was a blur. I got up with the knowledge that I had to power straight through the campaign brief and get the thing wrapped up. We got a late start on flight operations due to the Presidential rehearsal. I got down to CVIC in time to ensure that the 1030 brief went smoothly; all participants were there in person. The Deputy is back from his job interview in Brussels and he meticulously briefed for about a half hour a series of events that (I could easily be wrong) went something like this:

“Launch, go to the Marshall stack and orbit, Listen to the Boss, fly by the ship when he tells you, then land.”
Maybe it is more complicated than that. I dunno, I’m just a ground-pounder.

We live in the future, of course, They did their thing; the supersonic pass by the F-14 rattled the bulkheads all the way down here in Mission Planning. Special guest of honor for the rehearsal was the Ambassador, the Honorable Ms Somebody-or-other. Due to the impending Summit, the heavily modified Presidential HS-3 helicopters (three, count ’em three) were flown out from CONUS via C-5 Galaxy heavy lifter, and she had the use of one for the day.

The scope and expense of a Presidential visit is staggering! I see why Mr. Bush’s people want to contain the meeting to the confines of a Naval Ship. Based on the circus going on out here, a land-based meeting where the Media could have relatively easy access to everything would be absolute and total chaos.

For example, our distinguished visitor list, excluding the
Presidential Party, Staff, Advisors, Secret Service and Press 
Pool will run to about sixty people. Every Flag or General Officer in the theater wants to be here to get a small piece of the reflected power. For example, the politically well connected Geo-Politician who commands U.S. Naval Forces Europe, ADM Jonathon T. Howe (I heard stories about his towering ego from a pal who was on Cruiser Destroyer Group ONE under his command) will be onboard, and, having some time to kill during the visit, intends to drop by CVIC for some contingency briefs
after the President departs and he is once more the King of the Mediterranean.

General Brent Scocroft, the National Security Advisor, may also walk through the spaces. This is a CIRCUS in capital letters. Not to mention the fact that the RADM’s campaign brief is due to be presented tomorrow night at 2000.

The deadline is looming and there is too much going on to get to work…

30 Nov: Time was finally found to do something constructive about 0030 this morning. It was one thing after another. Top Secret messages which only I can pick up at Main Comm; crisis in the access list, which some bureaucrat has taken for action as a FITREP Bullet; because the Ship doesn’t have Airwing service records, they assumed we had left the ship and eliminated all of us from the access list.

There were dozens of niggling problems. Each time I sat down at the typewriter to start pounding out the intricate details of blowing the crap out of a third world infrastructure, someone wanted to brief me into a new program, schedule Mission Planning for an extraneous meeting or do something novel, unexpected and ill-timed.

My patience was running thin. Finally got everyone to bed and out of my hair and plowed back in the Campaign plan. By the time 0330 came and went I had what I thought was a workable plan, copies were made for CAG and DCAG to look at, and bullets extracted and passed to the inimitable Seaman Berger, the only human on the ship who has mastered the precious skill of making briefing slides on the mysterious Harvard Graphics computer program.

The Troll, as he is known both for his powerful physique and mental outlook, is the only man who can make pretty viewgraphs. He is consequently the most popular and powerful man in Mission
Planning.

In order to make sure CAG had a chance to look at the damn thing, I had to pop out of bed again at 0700. While I was scraping my face with the razor and looking at the puffy eyes in the mirror I got the feeling that this was going to be a challenging day.

I delivered the Plan to the Big Guys and began to cope with the
No-fly day. Meetings were scheduled in Mission Planning all day. I got through till about lunchtime and was seriously dragging. I snuck away to my rack, laid down and the next thing I knew it was 1630.

Time was a’wasting. I had to brief the plan to the RADM at 2000; I hadn’t seen the corrected copies of the draft, so I had to get moving. I wired up a set of CNT khakis, no ribbons, still crisp from the dry cleaners. Hustled up to Planning and found the documents waiting on the keyboard of the word processor. There were very few corrections, thank God, only a couple of happy-to-glad changes, and I was pleased the document seemed to be what they wanted.

I had a slightly smaller chance of being blown out of the water at the briefing. Now, there was the small matter of 
finding charts, threat rings and visual aids. Things were coming together about 1930 when I got a call from the Deputy saying they were waiting for me. I looked at my watch, horrified that I had somehow missed the deadline. I never miss deadlines. I was a victim of the Admiral’s schedule.

He had the time, and the time was now. I gathered up my materials and Josh and I went down the corridor to the tactical flag command center- TFCC. I ran through the amount of material I didn’t know and was daunted. Still, time for the game face. Let’s do it.

Sweetpea came in and the atmosphere was relatively relaxed. Whatever it is that happens to me before the briefs happened as it always did. The brief went great, and the Admiral seemed impressed with our plan to blow the bottom out of everything above and below the surface of the Wine Dark Sea. CAG and DCAG were pleased they had dodged a bullet. I was very happy to have escaped with reputation intact. There were several questions about things like target prioritization and other nits and grits. Unfortunately, we are back to the drawing board again on a lot of it.

I had hoped to put this action item behind us, but no such luck. Next milestone is December 3rd; then another trip to the lion’s den. This has every prospect of being one of those Eternal Action Items. Still, a victory for the day and I awarded myself with a Cordon Bleu Burger- fried egg, slice of ham and cheese on a beef patty on FID-baked roll for Midrats and an early trip to dreamland.

The President arrives tomorrow for his Saltwater Summit with Mr. Gorbachev, and the goat-rope will continue.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com