H.M.S. Illustrious

by HMS Illustrious (retail) (epub)

  I had hoped to be able to complete a bit more of my CB muster today, but I got almost exactly nowhere with it, as I had to act as a host for an Air Vice Marshal, RAF, for the bulk of the morning (when I wasn’t in Flyco) and a good part of the afternoon. Quite interesting, though very tiring, tramping round the ship and trying to field questions. Once I had got rid of him, I went back up to Flyco to control the remainder of the afternoon’s flying, which finished at about 1850. Just time for a quick meal, and then back up to Flyco again for the night flying…

  We seem to have had rather a lot of Russian influence in our lives just recently, and I don’t mean we’ve all been pissed out of our tiny minds on best Smirnoff. First of all, we were advised by the intelligence community (most members of which seem to bear almost exactly no resemblance to James Bond) that there was a Russian submarine transiting through the English Channel, and as we were in the area we sent a handful of our ASW Sea Kings to have a look at it (it was, of course, on the surface) and to take a few pictures for our records. It was a Juliet-class (all the Russian weapons of war are named by the west, and the names frequently indicate the type of weapon. So, fighters are Foxbats, Floggers and Fishbeds, while bombers are Badgers and Bears and so on), and the opportunity was also taken to get some passive sonar recordings of it, again for Allied records.

  To explain that rather more fully, the main weapon that we have against the Russian submarine threat is the ASW Sea King helicopter, which has both an active (dunking) sonar and passive sonar buoys. An active sonar is one which transmits a sound wave and listens for a returning echo from a metallic object. The disadvantage of this type of search, undertaken by the dunking sonar body fitted to the ASW Mark 5 Sea King, is that the submarine can tell that you are looking for him, as he can clearly hear the sonar signals with his own sonar, sometimes from hundreds or even thousands of miles away, if the sonar conditions are right.

  He will find it difficult to estimate the range of the sonar emitter, but he will be able to obtain a very accurate bearing along which to search. And, of course, the position of the Sea King will not indicate the exact position of the force, but it will certainly give the submarine Captain a pretty good idea of the bit of sea in which he should be looking. Active sonar is used against conventionally-powered submarines, as these are very quiet indeed underwater.

  Passive sonar, on the other hand, is used against nuclear submarines, as these are very much louder than conventionally-powered craft, and is very simply a sonar listening buoy which is dropped from the helicopter and then radios recordings of any sounds it hears to the helicopter. The buoys are dropped in a pattern, to try to monitor a large area of the sea, and cease operating after a short time, to allow others to be dropped without producing a confusion of signals. The big advantage of these buoys is that, as they produce no sonar of their own, the submarine can’t tell it’s being tracked, unless it actually bumps into one, of course, and so hopefully it won’t take evasive action.

  The reason that we are so interested in obtaining the sound signatures of potentially hostile submarines, therefore, should be fairly clear – if we know what a particular submarine sounds like (and they’re all different, even within the same class), we can quickly recognise it if we hear it again. Both these aids to submarine detection will be used by our Sea Kings, depending on the threat assessment, and usually, to avoid irritating Greenpeace and needlessly blowing whales to pieces (a whale and a submarine sound very much alike on active sonar), we make a pass over the object towing a MAD probe. This is a Magnetic Anomaly Detector, and it simply detects variations in the Earth’s magnetic field, such as that produced by a large metallic object, like a submarine. No distortion therefore indicates a whale, and we stopped several attacks in the South Atlantic for this reason, and hopefully a lot of whales are still alive as a result.

  To continue the Russian theme, we were briefly involved in an exercise with Portland and Yeovilton today, when we played the part of a Russian aircraft carrier, and were ‘attacked’ by aircraft from the two air stations. And to complete the Cyrillic connection, we were ourselves shadowed by an AGI (Auxiliary Gatherer of Intelligence) – a Russian ‘trawler’, whose crew wouldn’t even recognise a fish unless it was served to them on a plate with chips, and which followed us for most of the day.

  The two things that the Russians still don’t seem all that good at are Replenishment At Sea (RAS) and flying operations, so carriers tend to attract a good deal of attention from these little things, and we often try to put on a bit of a show for them. All very friendly, really, but they can become a bit of a nuisance if they get too close.

  Prince Andrew popped up to Flyco while I was controlling the night flying to show Commander (Air) his flying log book. And a very impressive document it was too, being twice the size (at least) of the standard aircrew log, with ‘HRH The Prince Andrew’ in large gold letters on the front cover.

  Very neat, and useful as a doorstep, I would have thought, if for no other purpose. Actually, Andrew (like Charles) is a very competent pilot, no matter what the media might say to the contrary, and he has a good number of hours under his belt already. He stayed up in Flyco for a few minutes, chatting, and watching the flight deck operations from the other end, as it were.

  During the evening we had a steam-past of Illustrious by three minesweepers, which proved to be a very tame affair, as they only came within about five cables (half a mile), and were fairly well separated as well. It was just as well that they were, as the Captain decided that it was all rather boring, took control of the ship from the Officer of the Watch, shifted it into top gear, gave it a sharp burst of right-hand-down-a-bit, and quite literally did a slalom run through them, watched by white and terrified faces on the ‘sweepers. It must be quite a sight to see 20,000 tons of carrier sweeping (no pun intended) down on you, especially if you happen to be on the deck of 500 tons of ‘sweeper. I suspect that several pairs of trousers needed changing shortly afterwards. It was, of course, quite safe. Ish.

  This ship is incredibly powerful – the figures make very interesting reading. Our generating capacity is 1 per cent megawatts (about enough for a town of 20,000 people) from each of our eight diesel generators. (The same unit, in fact, powers the British Rail high-speed train). Our main engines are four of the gas-turbines which power Concorde, each pair driving through a gearbox the size of a reasonable semi-detached house, and giving us approximately 100,000 shaft horsepower to play with. This impressive outfit will accelerate us from a standstill in the water to thirty knots in under three minutes, and stop us in the same time, in well less than half a mile. The ship can turn incredibly rapidly, doing a complete circle in about 200 yards if necessary, and can easily out-manoeuvre most other vessels afloat. And the Captain treats it as if it was just a big powerboat.

  The other evening he walked into Flyco, confirmed that we had stopped flying, and were ready for the RAS, took a quick look ahead to where the tanker was waiting, rubbed his hands, walked on to the Bridge and said ‘I have the ship. Starboard thirty.’ And the ship simply blasted round in a rapid turn, swiftly engaged reverse, and was in exactly the right position for the RAS.

  The Captain is the best ship-handler anyone I have talked to has ever seen, and none of the other Watch-keeping Officers even comes close to his ability. When he’s performing, he’s well worth watching. After our slalom run through the ‘sweepers, he came into Flyco to apologise if he had disturbed our meals in the Wardroom, and admitted that it had been a bit childish, but he had felt like having a bit of fun.

  I finally got away from Flyco at about 0030, and retired gratefully to bed, where I lay wide-awake for a further hour while a Sea Harrier carried out a high-power ground run directly above my head…

  Saturday 28th May 1983

  A rather quieter day, thankfully, as we finished flying in the early afternoon, instead of the early hours of the morning. The day did have its moments, though, as we had a major fire exercise on the flight deck this af
ternoon, and which was rapidly escalated into a whole-ship fire exercise in order to test all our fire-fighting systems. It’s a bit tiresome if you get lumbered with some of the odd jobs in this kind of exercise, but it is obviously vital to practise this kind of evolution, as it’s the only way, short of the real thing, to check that your systems do actually work. The Americans, in particular, have lost a lot of men and aircraft through relatively minor incidents on the flight deck or in the hangar rapidly escalating.

  The exercise effectively terminated flying for the day, so after that I was able to go away and sort a few little jobs out that I’ve wanted to do for a while. One small funny that occurred during the Harrier recovery was that the Senior Pilot was given clearance to 4 spot, and was told it was the one by the HAPI (Horizontal Approach Path Indicator). The reason for

  that remark was that although the Harriers almost always land on 4 spot, this particular pilot always seemed to be some way off in his landing. After he had touched down, we told him he had made 3¾ spot (his closest yet), and was ten seconds late on his Charlie Time (pre-briefed land-on time).

  As we head east towards Lisbon, the ship is travelling quite fast, as we have very recently received intelligence that a very new Russian aircraft carrier has just passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, and we are hoping to be in a position to intercept her in the Bay of Biscay for a surveillance operation, subject to approval from Whitehall. So, instead of the planned passage speed of about seventeen knots, we are doing about twenty-four knots, to give us a bit of flexibility.

  The evening film was Convoy, which I watched in the gently throbbing Wardroom on the new Teleject big-screen CCTV system we now have installed. Despite having seen it before, and being interrupted by hordes of drunken pilots, some of them in apparently terminal conditions, I enjoyed it.

  Sunday 29th May 1983

  A very quiet day to begin with, as we are still chasing this Russian Kiev-class carrier with a totally-unpronounceable name, and so that she would not be able to tell that we were looking for her, we went totally Emcon silent. That means that we ceased radiating all radars and radios – Emcon stands for Emission Control – so that we could get sufficiently close to her to guarantee a rendezvous. If she knew we were in the area, she might well try to use her superior speed (she has about five knots on us) to get away.

  Nothing happened until 1430, when we discovered that she was about 120 miles to the south of us (an Intelligence-derived report), and we therefore turned south and made our best speed towards her. At around four in the afternoon, we punched two Harriers up to try to locate her, and after a brief, but successful, search, we made visual contact with the Russian

  ship. We then spent a fairly entertaining couple of hours formatting on her and I’m quite sure that several miles of film were fired off by people on both vessels – I took about ten or twelve photographs. The carrier is a good deal larger than we are and carries both rotary wing aircraft (usually the Hormone type) and the Russian equivalent of the Harrier, known (to us) as the Harrier-ski, though there were no aircraft visible on her deck.

  We are relatively well armed, but the Russian ship positively bristles with weaponry, some of which is still not too well known to the West – for example, we believe that they have a laser-gun, designed to either incapacitate pilots of attacking aircraft, or else to knock out incoming missiles. The Harrier pilots reported that as they flew past her after the initial location, all the anti-aircraft weapons were trained at them (presumably just in case). By the time we joined the little group (the carrier was escorted by a Kashin-class frigate and with a Portuguese frigate in company), they had relaxed a great deal, and there were quite a few members of the crew on the upper decks, having just as good a look at us as we were at them.

  We formated on the Russian vessel’s port (flight deck) side initially, matching her speed and keeping about 300 yards clear, then after about thirty minutes we accelerated away from her, crossed her bows, and then did the same on her starboard side. As a point of interest, we have agreed a set of signals with the USSR to cover meetings such as this, so that each ship knows what the other intends to do (we obviously cannot talk directly to them, because of the language problem) and hopefully avoids one ship ramming the other. We therefore signalled to her, and signalled each intended movement before we executed it, and there were no problems. We pulled away from her and her two escorts at about 1830, and then headed, at a rather more leisurely speed, towards Lisbon. The carrier’s name sounds like ‘Nobrossis’, but is predictably enough spelt nothing like that.

  Monday 30th May 1983

  A very early start for quite a lot of people on the ship, as we went to Sea Harrier Alert State 5 (ready for launch within five minutes) in the very early hours of the morning, and stayed at alert until about 0800, sorting out a variety of Frog attacks using Mirages and Super Etendards, as we head gently south towards Lisbon. I’m delighted to say that I was not in any way involved, so I was able to thoroughly enjoy the meal (a Chinese and Indian buffet supper) and the film (Live and Let Die) last night, and wake up this morning with an undisturbed night behind me. Chuckle, chuckle. I understand that most of the attacks were successfully sorted out by the Harriers, and the odd ones that went through were then engaged by the Vulcan Phalanx.

  After the excitements of the early morning, the remainder of the day was very quiet indeed, as we went into a Maintenance Day schedule, with no planned flying and very little obvious activity on board, although no doubt all sorts of people were beavering away in quiet corners. I left the Air Office to fend for itself for most of the day, and got my show sorted out on ITV – it seemed to be quite well received, and I did manage to get a video of it, which rather pleased me. The evening film was Rocky III, and as I have almost exactly no interest in boxing (apart from perhaps getting it abolished), I declined to watch it.

  Tuesday 31st May 1983

  Despite the fact that this was theoretically a normal working day, the prospect of arriving in a port (although the port in this case was Lisbon – hardly the entertainment – or anything else – centre of the civilised world) seemed to have driven all thoughts of normal work completely out of everyone’s mind. The Wardroom seemed to be full of loafing bodies for most of the morning, and there was a general aura of TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday) about the place.

  Morning found us fifty or so miles out from Lisbon, and we made steady progress towards the port, taking an early lunch, until it was time for Procedure Alpha (all the aircraft up on deck, and all of us looking pretty about the upper works) as we entered the River Tagus. As was Captain Slater’s wont, we were making quite substantial speed as we approached, and executed a very sharp right hand turn at the end in order to bring the ship to its anchorage. We spent the afternoon at anchor, while waiting for a Russian ship to shift away from the harbour wall to make room for us, and we finally moved alongside just after six in the evening, to the great delight of the ship’s company, who had not been relishing the thought of a half mile boat trip in fairly choppy waters. As we entered, we had a pretty good view of the whole city, and it looks much as I remembered it from my previous visit here in 1977, which is not very impressive. However, to save me moaning about how little I like Lisbon, I will instead quote verbatim in the next paragraph from our official ‘crib’ on the place.

  Lisbon is the capital of Portugal and lies on the northern bank of the River Tagus. The city is thought to have been founded thousands of years ago by Ulysses, the hero of Greek mythology. It is from Lisbon that many of the great discoverers (Columbus, Marco Polo et al) sailed in the Middle Ages. To the west lie the holiday resorts of Estoril (with Europe’s largest casino) and Cascais, where beaches are plentiful – although the River Tagus itself is heavily polluted. Portugal is Britain’s oldest ally and at Torres Vedras there are the remains of defences built by Wellington in the Napoleonic Wars. The NATO base at Oeiras, twelve miles from Lisbon, is the headquarters of Vice Admiral Elias Da Costa. He is the Portuguese CINCF
LEET and the NATO CINCIBERLANT. In his NATO hat he is the area commander responsible to SACLANT for the sea area around the Iberian peninsula The weather in Portugal in June is generally good with temperatures ranging from 13° C (55° F) to 25° C (78° F); humidity varies between 50 per cent and 70 per cent. There is significant rain on one day in six. The wind is generally between NW and N, at around 10–12 knots.

  So now you know.

  The ship was once again like a tomb this evening, with almost everyone who wasn’t on duty off ashore, and we are not expecting it to be a quiet and peaceful stay here, as the French ship Foch (careful how you say that) is in. She is a carrier, a little bigger and a lot older than we are, and as I have yet to meet any Englishman who can put his hand on his heart and say solemnly that he actually likes the French, it doesn’t take an Einstein to realise that if Jack runs into Pierre in some bar somewhere, the results are likely to be quite physical. We will see what the morning brings.

  Wednesday 1st June 1983

  It was, by all accounts, a pretty noisy night. I went down to the Wardroom for a final cup of coffee before crawling into bed, and found that there was a small gathering in the dining room watching a film – Clint Eastwood in Every Which Way but Loose – and so I stayed up to see the rest of that: most enjoyable. Talking to people this morning, it seems that my expectations of yesterday were very largely fulfilled, possibly even exceeded. There were numerous fights ashore, with people returning to the ship in a rather battered state (neither the Officer of the Day nor the doctor – Pete Glew – got much sleep), as well as the inevitable drunkenness and a certain number of problems not entirely unrelated to the ‘ladies of the night’. One rating was in a bar largely filled with Frogs from the Foch and was goaded beyond endurance (or, as he put it, ‘the bastards wound me up’) when they started chanting ‘Exocet, Exocet’, so he applied physical restraint (’I went over and lumped a couple’). A typical incident.