H.M.S. Illustrious

by HMS Illustrious (retail) (epub)

  First of all, obviously we want to know if the pilot suffered any problems with the aircraft prior to landing, which would preclude his return to the Illustrious, or if he simply ran low on fuel and couldn’t find us.

  If the former, then he will certainly be congratulated on his initiative (though I suspect that it would have been preferable to have chosen a ship of a different nation if possible – Spain and Britain not being on exactly the best of terms at the moment (Gibraltar and all that) – though in truth the Alraigo was almost certainly the only vessel for miles around) and skill in landing an aircraft the size of a Harrier on a ship that small.

  However, if there were no mechanical hitches, then what he should have done was to climb as high as possible, dial up Guard frequency (243.0 MHz), which is always monitored by ships and airfields all over the world, and made either a Pan or a Mayday call. Either Illustrious or the Foch would have been almost certain to hear it, and we would then obviously have switched from the exercise role to a ‘No-Play’ or ‘Real World’ role and taken all the necessary steps to recover him. Now, if he didn’t do that, he is quite likely still to be congratulated on his initiative and skill, and then be given a thorough bollocking for not doing the right things.

  Either way, I suspect that we will be hearing more of Sub Lt Watson in the near future.

  Back to reality – in this case the reality of Exercise ‘Ocean Safari’. We started the exercise today, with the usual heavy flying programme, which will be continuing long into the night, which in turn means no sleep for me for a while. We are also secured for action, which means that everything not actually bolted down has to be locked away in a cupboard or tied up with string to prevent it flying about if we get hit, and we are all walking about the place carrying our handbags – containing AGRs (Anti-Gas Respirators), anti-flash hoods and gloves (white cotton devices designed to prevent flash burns following an explosion) and life-jackets. Meal times have also been revised, to allow people to eat at more or less any hour of the day or night, and we are now working in defence watches. Or, to be exact, just about everyone on the ship is working defence watches (four hours on, four off, four on, six off, six on) except John Lamb, Paul Harvey and me, as we are all indispensable (ha!) and we have to simply stay flexible and cover the Ops Room and Flyco as required by the daily flying programme. Good game.

  We believe that the unscheduled arrival of Ian Watson in what amounts to Spanish territory has now made the national news, so no doubt all is now a lot clearer to you than it is to me. One quick word before I forget about signals – I mentioned a ‘Flash’ signal, which has nothing to do with scaring middle-aged ladies in parks by men in dirty macs. There are two things of significance about a signal – the first is its security classification, which starts at Unclassified, then Restricted, Confidential and Secret, after which you move into the esoteric realms of Cosmic Secret and so on (all the nuclear stuff, basically). Unclassified and Restricted signals we treat more or less the same, and are not accounted for in any way, but must not be released to a member of the press or general public. The Confidential and Secret are logged in and out, and need two signatures to be destroyed, as a reflection of the more sensitive information they contain.

  The second thing of interest about signals is their precedence, which is the speed at which they are to be handled. The lowest precedence is Routine, followed by Priority, Immediate and Flash – the latter being given automatic precedence over all other signals – and these precedences have, as a point of interest, nothing to do with the security classification, so you can easily have a Flash Restricted signal (as we had last night), or a Routine Secret.

  It hasn’t really been 801’s week. Quite apart from Ian Watson’s escapade, their Commanding Officer made a slight faux pas on a sortie this morning, when, on the half hour, when he should have selected the next period’s code on his IFF outfit (Identification Friend or Foe – a secondary radar transponder which indicates the aircraft’s identity), he in fact dialled up the time instead! This gave rise to a certain amount of hilarity in our Operations Room, and I suspect that the French (with whom we have now joined as one force) were having a chuckle about it as well.

  A very long day for me, as after getting up at seven in the morning, I had to stay up in Flyco to control the helicopters until nine on Wednesday morning – a total working day of twenty-six hours, so it’s perhaps not too surprising that I feel a little ragged round the edges. The good thing about the night, I suppose, is that it was at least quiet, with the Sea Kings simply arriving on deck, re-fuelling, re-arming and changing their crews, and then going off again. Tomorrow night will be a repeat performance, by the look of it.

  Wednesday 8th June 1983

  The ship did all sorts of good exercise things today, from what I can gather, but I’m delighted to say that I slept through the lot, finally arising at about five, and feeling none too bright, a feeling which persisted until the early hours of the morning. The Sea Kings were Rippling 2 over the twenty-four hour period, so I had a fairly boring time up in Flyco, with a mere handful of landings and take-offs to handle.

  A Ripple 2, by the way, is just a type of flying programme which maintains two aircraft on task at all times (apart from the brief changeover period when the aircraft return to re-fuel and/or re-arm). The more usual programme is a Ripple 3, which maintains three aircraft on task, their recovery times being staggered so that only one is off the screen at any one time. And a screen is a group of aircraft protecting a ship or force by screening them against submarines, using their sonar equipment. And after that brief lesson in anti-submarine warfare tactics, I bid you good night.

  Thursday 9th June 1983

  Another day in bed, and another long night in Flyco. The mixture, in fact, as before, and the whole thing only enlivened by the fact that the CCTV film was Star Wars, which I thoroughly enjoyed, as usual.

  Friday 10th June 1983

  The good news of the morning was obviously the election result, which I think pleased just about everyone on board, with very few exceptions. We were able to tie in to the BBC world Service, albeit with indifferent reception, and got a more or less blow-by-blow account of the results as they were announced, which served to relieve the monotony of the night to some extent.

  Another day asleep; another night awake. No change.

  Saturday 11th June 1983

  I’ve got more or less into the routine of living like a distant cousin of Dracula, and never seeing the sun, except when it rises through the early morning clouds at about 0430. Actually, it some ways it’s not such a bad life, with the definite compensation that as I tend to be asleep when my boss is awake, and vice versa, I don’t get quite so many idiot telephone calls from him wanting bizarre things done by first thing yesterday at the latest.

  From my point of view, the thing that strikes me most about this exercise is that we really don’t seem to be doing anything or going anywhere – all the Sea Kings do every night is to potter off and look for submarines, and we are always in company with the French carrier, Foch, with the John F Kennedy a massive, lurking shape just below the horizon. In short, there seems nothing to tell whether we are in the first or the last day of the exercise. I suppose things are rather different from the point of view of the warfare officers. I will certainly be glad when it’s all over and I can get back to normality.

  Sunday 12th June 1983

  An uncomfortable day and night, due to the very heavy swell which is the norm in the Bay of Biscay. The sea was almost a flat calm, but the swell was about fifteen or sixteen feet, which is quite enough to lift this ship heavily every few seconds, and which made turning the ship round quite a performance, as we had to stop all aircraft moves, both on deck and in the hangar, and lash them down, otherwise the act of turning across the swell could have literally rolled them off the deck or into other aircraft. We had no incidents, but it did concentrate the mind wonderfully in the wee small hours.

  Another CCTV treat, as we had The Empi
re Strikes Back to amuse us during the afternoon, and which I actually got up to watch. It is perhaps of some significance that the Padre’s choice of film for this exercise period – Jesus of Nazareth, parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 – has received the lowest ever viewing figures since we started CCTV, while things like Star Wars seem to fill the TV room to overflowing, and if you want a seat you have to be there good and early.

  Monday 13th June 1983

  At last the end of the exercise is in sight, to everyone’s great relief, and we are already making plans for Brest. I have put myself down for a coach trip round the Brittany countryside, which looks like being most interesting, and good value for money too, as it’s free, and we even get a packed lunch into the bargain! I saw the JFK for the first time today, as dawn broke, and quite a sight she is too – at 89,000 tons she is almost five times bigger than we are, and carries more aircraft than the Hermes, Foch, and the Illustrious, and all the other ships in both Orange and Blue forces put together. She’s quite massive, by any standards, and I just hope that I will be able to get a rather closer look at her later on, and hopefully when I have a camera to hand.

  The high-spot of the day, without a doubt, was the unexpected arrival of mail from the UK. This appeared on board courtesy of a ship which had emerged from Brest (I could say on a milk run, but I will restrain myself) to join the group. Very welcome it was, as we had all prepared ourselves for over two weeks without hearing from home.

  When I appeared in Flyco to take over just after eight this evening, John Lamb greeted me with the words ‘You’ve missed a very good day.’ The word ‘good’, in this context, really means ‘extremely bad’, so it was probably just as well that I was a-bed. First of all, the French carrier Foch lost an aircraft – I believe a Corsair – which apparently cold-shot off the catapult. The pilot ejected and was unhurt (apart from the usual spinal compression fractures, I would imagine). To clarify that sentence slightly, a ‘cold-shot’ is a launch from the steam catapult (the only method of getting a fixed-wing aircraft off a deck, unless you are talking about a Harrier) when the aircraft either goes out of afterburner, or has an engine failure after take-off. In this case, it looks rather as if it was the former, as the aircraft stayed out of the water for about a quarter of a mile before the pilot apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valour.

  We had our own aircraft problems too, as the Commanding Officer of 801 NAS, Ian Ogilvy, who has yet to actually land on the correct spot on deck – a fact which has in the past caused a good deal of mirth, as his most junior pilot (Sub Lt Ian Watson, who has received about the same publicity as Mrs M Thatcher recently, as far as we can tell) is apparently able to land his Harrier on a space no larger than a bed-sheet – excelled himself.

  Instructed to land on 3 spot (about halfway along the deck, to give him a good fighting chance), he chased the entire flight deck crew forward until they were hiding beside the ski-jump, apparently using his jet efflux as a kind of vast, backwards-operating vacuum cleaner, and then, as he pointed the aircraft at them, they all ran and hid behind the Island (the carrier superstructure). He finally landed sideways-on, on the ramp. I rather wish I’d seen it, though from a safe distance, thank you.

  Then a submarine surfaced alongside, to the great consternation of just about everyone, starting from the crew of the submarine and working outwards. We also had a series of green grenades all over the place (these are fired by a submarine when it would, in a war situation, have fired a torpedo), as a result of which the Foch has been ‘sunk’ at least twice, and the poor old Hermes about five or six times. So far, and despite the close proximity of the submarine – surfacing isn’t the same as firing a torpedo – we have survived unscathed, as has the John F Kennedy. However, there are still four days to go before we finish the exercise.

  The final straw was when about four aircraft arrived alongside at the same time, all demanding to land with a fairly wide range of unserviceabilities, and all unable to, as the ship was out of wind limits and unable to turn due to the submarine threat. The result was a very tight-lipped bunch of pilots circling the ship angrily and making pointed comments.

  Not the best of days, really. My watch started off quietly enough, but turned slightly to rats just after midnight when a Lynx helicopter suddenly popped up fifteen miles behind us and demanded to land on, carrying FOF3 (Flag Officer Third Flotilla), Rear Admiral Derek Reffell. He had been expected at 0230, and the time was then 2345, so we were caught slightly with our pants down, resulting in the calm and deliberate walk to meet him by our senior officers resembling something akin to the start of the London Marathon instead.

  After that, it all settled down a bit more, and the rest of the night was fairly quiet, with one exception – a Wessex pilot bringing on board the last of FOF3’s staff, who was apparently unable to find the ship, despite us being lit up like a Christmas tree, and who had to have a radar recovery. Then, on his way home, he couldn’t find Hermes either, and had to have a good deal of help from one of our Sea Kings.

  FOF3, by the way, has arrived on board from Hermes (the Royal Navy Flagship – meaning the ship in which the Flag Officer (Admiral) is, literally, flying his flag) because the Rusty H has had problems with its satellite communications system, which means the vessel can no longer offer the appropriate standard of communications for the Admiral. His arrival here has not been the subject of universal and unanimous rejoicing, as a whole bunch of junior officers have been kicked out of their cabins to sleep on various odd bits of floor about the place in order to make room for his vast staff.

  Tuesday 14th June 1983

  Things, as usual, seemed to be happening while I slept today, as the big news was that Hermes lost a Sea Harrier, and this time there was no passing Spanish freighter to put it down on. Not that it would have helped anyway – there were plenty of decks available for use, but the problem was the control of the aircraft. It seemed that it went into an uncontrollable spin (the Harrier has very small wings and control surfaces, and is for this reason a little sensitive to fly), and the pilot had no option but to eject, which he did safely, and was collected from the sea by one of our 820 NAS Sea Kings. He was taken to our Sick Bay first, and was then flown back to Hermes later in the day, apparently none the worse for wear. The aircraft, of course, was not recovered.

  Other than that, a quiet day, and the usual very long night.

  Wednesday 15th June 1983

  A day of nothing. A night of boredom. I’m getting very tired, trying to stay awake in Flyco all night (it’s about eleven to fourteen hours at a stretch, with no breaks apart from a quick snack at about 0100, which I usually eat in Flyco), as well as working for two or three hours in the Air Office as well, attempting to keep that side of my life running in some sort of order. I will be very pleased when this exercise finally grinds to a halt.

  Thursday 16th June 1983

  More work, as we now have our lost Harrier pilot, Ian Watson, back, and so the investigation into the incident has been proceeding throughout the day. All I have to do is to make sure that it all gets completed on time, which, bearing in mind Commander (Air) has a vested interest, is sometime yesterday morning.

  This was the final night of the exercise, thankfully, but it was not without incident. Prince Andrew caused me a certain amount of amusement by calling ‘Thirty seconds to four minutes to launch’ from his Sea King in order, as he put it, to allow me time to get the Flyco/Bridge relationship licked into some sort of order and to get a suitable flying course for his launch. The more usual call is ‘Two minutes’ (usually followed by ‘On deck’ – meaning ready to launch – about ten seconds later), which should give enough time to turn the ship into wind to create the appropriate wind over the deck for the weight of the aircraft and the launch position.

  Then, in the early hours of the morning a helicopter appeared out of the blue (or rather black, as it was a very dark night) and came to the hover alongside the flight deck.

  As we weren’t expecting
anything to return for some hours, there were only two possibilities (bearing in mind he was not calling on radio) – either he was lost, and had mistaken Illustrious for Hermes (about fifteen miles away from us), or he was in trouble and had just picked the biggest, closest ship to try to land on. Anyway, I kicked on the flight deck flood lights, and our centreline and deck edge lights, in order to cover both possibilities. If he had mistaken us for someone else, he would see the shape of the deck and push off or, if he was in trouble, he would then land. As it was, he pushed off, and came up on the Air Director’s frequency to confess his error a little later. When I told John Lamb about it, he said I should have left the lights dim, got him on deck and then refused to let him go – holding him to ransom from Hermes!

  Other little snippets: the RFA (Royal Fleet Auxiliary) tanker Pearleaf had a green grenade fired at her, indicating a successful submarine attack (we had no grenades at all fired at us, which is very comforting). When asked by Illustrious for her position, her reply was reputed to be ‘Fucking grim,’ but to my great disappointment this turned out to be just a story. Pity, because it really should have been true. The JFK also got herself ‘sunk’ by a submarine, but I suppose a target that size is pretty difficult to miss, given even half a chance. Talking of the JFK, we watched her RAS (Replenishment At Sea) during the night from the Seattle, and it really was quite a sight.

  We are all supposed to be fully darkened, except when launching or recovering aircraft, and both the American vessels were lit up, literally, like Christmas trees – you could see them from miles away, making them a gift of a target for a submarine. In fact, Illustrious has been adhering rigidly to this restrictive lighting policy, and we seem to have been about the only ship that has.