31 January 1990

(French aircraft carrier Foch (R99)).

Started out wild and wooly today. I actually got outside for a while…but I’m getting ahead of my story.

The pandemonium level was extraordinary right through the early hours this morning. Finally had wrestled the genie back into the bottle; we had the DCAG’s graphics built, ready to pull the big combined CVW-6/ Foch (R99) airstrike into Corsica together. Foch is one of the two Clemenceau-class aircraft carriers that get France a place at the Big Boy Navy table. Notable throughout this evolution was the fact that we couldn’t talk to Foch, which was putting quite a crimp into little details like the timing of the rendezvous.

The plan, as best I understood it, was to brief everybody at 0600, hold until we figured things out and then go for it. I had just closed my eyes in the blackness of my compartment when the phone went off and startled the shit out of me. I had placed the handset on the chair next to my bed because I knew I was going to have problems launching after four hours of sleep.

Instead, it was Murph on duty with the glad tidings that Rookie, the CDC officer, had somehow cracked the code. The French would rendezvous with us at about 1000, but would provide complete details via an airdropped package at 0815 on the flight deck. I grunted my deep thanks because I could now sleep until 0730. I let the blackness settle over me….

…and rejoined the circus at 0729. When I walked into Planning most of the aircrews had drifted in and I heard the Boss warning the Flight Deck guys to get their heads down and get in deep shelter because a Super E was going to make a run on the flight deck with the package.

(French Navy Super Etendard with speed brakes down).

I looked at Murph and we raced out of Planning and up the ladder to Vultures Row. We popped out to see Scopes from the Staff with his video camera. The air was filled with brilliant dazzling sunlight, the smell of oil from the catapults and a whiff of the primordial sea. I peered around owlishly until a rap on the glass of the flag bridge caught my attention. It was RADM Allen, and he pointed out to the abeam position. As my eyes focused I saw a slim dark shape starting to make the turn into the 270 radial. He disappeared behind the bulk of the Island but I started to count off the seconds as he rolled into the groove and made his approach.

He appeared suddenly, 50ft over the deck at about 200KTS and popped his speed brakes. A long cylindrical object dropped out, bounced once around the three-wire and rolled gracefully to a stop on the four wire. Perfect pass. The Super E rocked his wings
and disappeared swiftly over the angle and arched off to the north. As DCAG said later, “That guy would be welcome here; he’d get aboard the first pass.”

Sweetpea summed it up in his message to the French later in the day when he said it was the neatest piece of flying he had seen in 30 years.

When we got the package down to mission planning and took it apart, we found maps, a cunningly illustrated strike plan, a Michelin road map of Corsica and target photos. DCAG briefed each object as it came out of the package and after a hurried run through the aircrew fled to man up the airplanes.

It wasn’t flawlessly executed, but everyone who went had great fun and nobody got into trouble. At the same time we had a mini-strike going against the Italian carrier Garibaldi, which seemed to go well and all the other usual sort of things.

Only problem of the day was the refusal of Capo Frasca Target Control to let our guys get on the target at the scheduled times. The Flag Staff drafted a strong message; after some examination of the problem it appears that the enemy may not be our Italian NATO Allies, but our compatriots in the USAF who jointly manage the target.

Hard to figure who the enemy is sometimes, you know?

A party of journalists is supposed to come aboard tomorrow to document another Routine Day on the Boat, which is exactly what happened. We have to get started on updating the orders-of-battle list for the East Med where the exercises stop and it all gets kind of real again.

70 days to go.

01 FEB.

It was a pleasant day to spend inside next to the fire. If you had one, that is. On deck, it was grey and misty and generally vile. The clouds hung low and the boat was moving pretty well right through the day.

Only one bilateral exercise on the menu today; this one mostly featured the fighters going out and hassling with our Tunisian buddies from the 15th Squadron. The rest was straightforward operations as usual as we transit down south of Sardinia. Despite the potential for miscommunication, everything worked out well.

Hard to believe we pulled out the maze of permissions required from the Ministry of Defense.

The VS-28 Vikings may have gained contact on the sole Soviet Nuclear sub in the Med this morning. Even our friends at the Sardinian Target cooperated and let our guys on the complex.

Things were going so well I put off doing the eight things I should have been doing and did some house cleaning. I destroyed the residue from the Campaign brief; all the working papers and the four intermediate briefs it took to get to the final smooth version. In fact, I was a burning fool with the TS stuff and am now within striking range of getting rid of it all, and clearing the books. After all the stomach churning anxiety of seeing hundreds of documents with my name affixed to them strewn around the center I think (barring an act of belligerence) that this is going to work out OK.*

The stuff I should have been doing includes the concurrent fitness reports on the Junior Officers, letters of commendation for the enlisted guys, a welcome aboard letter to my relief (whose orders I found on the board this morning) and a formal command letter to the same guy. After the message from DIA I know that they are processing my nomination to be Deputy Chief of the Middle East-Africa Division in the JS organization on the Joint Staff. I put my name in the hat for it since I am hoping Mike M is the pick for flag, and am betting if he makes it, he will be the JS. Having worked assignments there at the Defense Intelligence Agency that controls the billets, I know that can take quite a while, and further, that I could be wrong about Mike and I could get lost in the bowels of the Pentagon. Still, it removes the potential threat from a change of Detailers and having to deal with yet another face with some great ideas for my future. Of course, if it turns out to be Captain Larry instead of Smilin’ Jack maybe a tour at the Naval War College could be back on the menu….oh well.

Better to live with the Threat as it is constituted, I suppose.

CAG asked me last night if I was happy with those orders. I said: “I guess so.” Still, the thought of leaving the Wing just when we get back to a regular workday with 0730-1600 hours and weekends off and winding up back in the center of the octopus is a bit daunting. Washington may be where the flagpole is, but the twelve-hour days in the Five Sided Adult Care Facility and the awful commute sucks the life out of you.

The weather continued to deteriorate through the afternoon, becoming truly bleak with about 40kts of wind over the deck. Shaky Jake of the Bulls came aboard the deck hard, saying later in the debrief that his nose gear collapsed and gave us a spectacular arrested landing with just the tiniest of starboard wing scrapes. Thereafter, the powers that be rethought options about finishing the flight schedule that night.

They wound up cancelling the last two event; seemed like the reasonable thing to do with Operations, Training and Readiness (OPTAR) money so tight these days. Save the gas for sometime when we can do something valuable with it rather than launch guys to go orbit around Marshal and bolter all night. Word is also out that the JO bag-ex (maximum cats and traps for training) and the bombing derby are cancelled for tomorrow; so as a line period this started like gangbusters but fizzled quickly.

As it is my firm belief that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, I set the troops to putting together the charts for the Passing Exercise (PASSEX) and building the kneeboard card package for the aviators. I’m supposed to brief the fucking E-2 Steeljaw ready room tomorrow on the Theater Intelligence Architecture (whatever that is), since they contribute to the Purple Network that provides situational awareness to the aviators, and that is why we got the boondoggle to FOSIF Rota. I suppose I ought to start working on it.

69 days to go.

*So, after we got back from cruise, and things had returned to a sort of normalcy, FID’s Mission Planning spaces had been emptied of all operational equipment and sanitized of classified material, since the maintenance crew needed to have access. We happened to be back on the ship for a meeting before I detached for Washington.

The five-drawer safes were all open, drawers jutting out to permit combination changes for the next deployment, and I happened to looking at one, and I noticed a thin flash of white in back of one of the drawers- behind the gray metal of the drawer itself. My heart raced, and I fished around the narrow opening and succeeded in pulling it out. It was wrinkled like an accordion, and was the first page of one of the TS/SPECAT target packages. It must have peeled away from the rest of the file when the drawer was jammed shut, and had rested there peacefully for weeks.

I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed, and they had not. I walked briskly to the shredder and took care of the problem. Now that FID is being broken up at the scrap yard down in Texas, I wonder what else they might find?

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303