My night, in contrast, was quite staggeringly boring, with only two Sea Kings flying through, though a third managed to stagger into the air just before John Lamb reappeared at 0400 to relieve me and get ready for the first Sea Harrier launch.
Sunday 2nd October 1983
My birthday, most of which I slept through, getting up at a little after 1400 to go on watch at 1600, though when I awoke and checked on the flying programme for the day with Flyco, I discovered that we were by that time up to Amendment List 2, and the Sea Harriers were flying until after 1700, so that effectively delayed my arrival in Flyco by a little over an hour.
Once up in Flyco, it was a relatively exciting night in the early stages, with two helicopters recovering with emergencies – both landing safely – and the second one distinguished itself by then dumping a substantial amount of hydraulic fluid all over the flight deck. This act was not well received, as it meant a good deal of work to get it all cleared up again afterwards. Then things ran down, with only routine deck moves to handle.
Apparently there was a good deal of excitement earlier in the day when we were ‘sunk’ by a submarine (for the first time ever), and had a green grenade fired at us. This is simply a green coloured flare which is fired by the submarine instead of a torpedo when the target is in the firing position, and by an analysis of the relative positions of ship and submarine, it is possible to decide whether or not the ship would have been sunk in a real situation. What has made several people on the ship more than a little annoyed, from the Captain downwards, is that one of our helicopters actually saw the sinker – the submarine’s periscope sinking below the surface – but the PWO(U) (Principal Warfare Officer (Underwater)) decided, for reasons best known to himself, not to prosecute this confirmed contact. I believe that this officer has had a terse, short, and somewhat one-sided conversation with the Captain shortly afterwards.
Monday 3rd October 1983
I was roused from my slumber at 1130 this morning in order to repair to Flyco to take over the watch, as John Lamb had to go off and take lunch with Admiral Fitch (FOFE). Flying, in fact, had effectively finished, and all we were waiting for was the 814 Sea King which had flown ashore to Brindisi in Italy to deliver mail and, on a more sombre note, the body of the chief petty officer who died last week. Theoretically, the aircraft should have been back on board by lunchtime, but apparently while ashore they ran into a positive mountain of red tape, and only finally returned at 1730, which made it a very long and boring afternoon for me, sitting up there in Flyco just waiting.
There was a memorial service for the deceased member of 814 NAS at sunset, and they could hardly have had a better day for it – a flat calm sea and virtually no wind, and with a most spectacular and colourful sunset.
We have just completed Phase 2 of the exercise, and we are not due to enter Phase 3 until midnight, so the ship relaxed a little bit – the Wardroom went into Red Sea rig for dinner. And, while at dinner, there was a series of most interesting pipes, culminating in a situation report (Sitrep) from HQ1, which is the section of the ship responsible for damage control, advising that we have a major problem with the after aircraft lift.
Apparently it has jammed near flight deck level, and has pumped all of its hydraulic fluid out into the lift well in the hangar. This has produced three very dangerous problems – the hydraulic fluid represents a major fire risk; the lift is not moveable except by its own hydraulics, and as these are now useless, there is virtually nothing to stop the lift falling to the bottom of its travel by gravity alone, which will produce considerable damage in the hangar, and very probably to the decks below hangar deck level (these have been evacuated); and the open lift well is an obvious hazard to personnel working on the flight deck. We are still not sure exactly when, or if, the lift can be repaired by onboard staff, and so flying tonight is looking a bit shaky at present. The next few hours could be most interesting.
I was right: they were interesting. I sat down to watch the evening film – Death on the Nile with Peter Ustinov and David Niven heading a star-studded cast – and to listen to the pipes on the lift situation. The final pipe, made shortly before midnight, was to the effect that the problem with the lift is major, certainly beyond the capacity of the ship’s staff and equipment to rectify at sea, and that all we are able to do is shore the damage up and try to make it safe. As this renders us more or less useless for operational purposes – we can’t operate Sea Harriers at all, and Sea Kings only with limitations – the ship has signalled to CINCFLEET suggesting that we withdraw from the exercise forthwith and return to Portsmouth for the necessary repairs. We have not as yet received a reply to this request, but we are anticipating that it will be agreed to, and we are therefore expecting to reach Portsmouth on or about the 12th of October, with the intended visits to Athens, Genoa and Gibraltar scrubbed. There will be more news tomorrow.
Tuesday 4th October 1983
We have an expression in the Navy – ‘Haven’t you heard; it’s all been changed’ – and that more or less summarises today.
Flying last night was obviously out of the question, but we did go to Flying Stations at about five this morning, in order to recover a couple of Sea King Mk 4 helicopters from Hermes which had been tasked with removing FOF3 and all his minions from us and take them to Hermes for the exercise. I stayed up for that, until relieved by John Lamb, and then retired to bed.
When I got up at about eleven, things were no different, except that FOF3 had, of course, gone. Rumours about our programme were rife, but few people thought that we would do other than return to Portsmouth by way of Gibraltar (just in order for the lift to be made safe). However, this evening the Captain made a very brief broadcast, and things have indeed changed. It appears that the Admiralty and the government are very keen that we do continue with our proposed round of Mediterranean visits, though we are not at this stage going to be rejoining the exercise, and it is therefore planned that we put into Taranto tomorrow morning to enable the lift to be returned to flight deck level (if possible) and secured there. If this can be achieved, then we will presumably continue to Athens and Genoa as originally planned, before getting the damage permanently repaired back in Portsmouth. If Taranto can’t achieve this, then we are back to the drawing board. It looks like an interesting day or so ahead. As a point of interest, the last time a ship named Illustrious was in any way involved with Taranto was when the last HMS Illustrious launched her crippling strike of Swordfish aircraft against the Italian Grand Fleet there. Quite a change – we need their help now.
Work continued throughout the night, and all day today, to make the lift as safe as we possibly can. We have been greatly assisted by the very good weather – if the sea had been rough we would really have been in trouble – but it is still a long job, and not finished as I write. The lift is a totally massive structure, weighing about sixty tons (not including the wishbone legs attached underneath, and it has slipped both forwards and sideways, tearing out the railbed on which the wishbones run, as well as pulling the two rear guide rails off the bulkhead, and the whole thing is in a very precarious state indeed. If it did fall, there is a very real possibility that it could go through the hangar deck and into the deck spaces below, and these have been, as I said earlier, evacuated as a very sensible precaution.
The attempts to secure it are not easy, as we are just not equipped with the kind of heavy gear necessary for such an operation. The teams involved have been welding substantial plates to the deck, then running steel hawsers under the lift platform and attaching them to the plates, increasing the tension with portable winches. The consensus of opinion is that the precautions taken would probably not hold it if it decided to slip down, but are intended to hold it rigid, so that there is much less chance of the lift platform tumbling down.
If it does slip, then almost certainly the hawsers and chains (and possibly the deck itself) will give, but it is hoped that the rate of fall of the lift would be reduced, thus reducing the consequent
impact damage at hangar deck level. All in all, though, it’s a little bit dicey, to say the least.
Wednesday 5th October 1983
With the decision to head for Taranto taken, we turned about and headed to the north, heading out of the Ionian Sea and into the Gulf of Taranto, which is the instep bit of the boot of Italy. It was hoped to arrive by about 0800 this morning, but during the night the lift shifted very slightly, and so the ship’s speed was reduced from seventeen knots to about fourteen, in order to reduce the vibration through the ship, and as a result we arrived at around 1100.
We came to anchor a considerable distance off the port – about two to three miles – and we will be remaining here while the Italian specialists (in conjunction with the people being flown out from Britain) decide whether or not the damage can be rectified here. If it can, then we will presumably be entering the inner harbour (where the Swordfish wreaked such havoc in 1949) in order for work to begin. If it cannot be undertaken here, then we will depart and go elsewhere, so we are still rather at a loose end with regard to the ship’s future programme.
To stretch the long arm of coincidence a little further, after the highly successful attack on Taranto, the Germans launched a series of reprisal attacks on the Second World War Illustrious as she headed for Malta, and these attacks continued even after her arrival in Grand Harbour. Though the ship suffered almost constant bombardment for hours, and there was a heavy loss of life, the only major damage to the ship was, of all things, to the after lift, which was actually blown completely out of its runners and onto the flight deck. It seems somehow poetic that we are here forty years later, trying to have the after lift fixed by the Italians.
The Commander has just made a pipe advising us of current intentions. It seems that the specialists from the United Kingdom will not now be arriving until this evening, and so the ship will definitely be remaining here at anchor in the outer harbour (Mar Grande) until tomorrow. If it is decided to attempt to effect repairs here, then we will move into the Mar Piccolo, the inner harbour, to a berth where we can embark two large mobile cranes onto the flight deck. Meantime, it is intended to grant leave here (the Supply Officer (Cash) is ashore getting some lira at the moment), so the good news is that we will be getting Local Overseas Allowance with effect from today!
Quite a large contingent from the Wardroom went ashore tonight, and upon their return they pronounced the food and drink good and cheap, but bemoaned the fact that the place closed at 1030 or thereabouts. The other complaint was the Mickey Mouse money here – a meal for four officers cost L93,000 which sounds quite horrendous, but was in fact a bit over £40 – and so you have to carry vast wads of notes everywhere. There is also a rather rough area not far from the landing position for the Liberty Boat, and through which the ship’s company have been very strongly advised not to pass – on likely pain of death, in all seriousness. Needless to say, a couple of our stalwarts decided that was just the place to go, but were not simply warned off by a couple of benevolent locals, but actually put in a taxi out of the place. It’s obviously a really nice neighbourhood – not even the police go in there, apparently, and open gang warfare is the norm.
I stayed on board, of course, and watched the Kenny Everett Video Show on CCTV, which was excellent, followed by most of Going Steady – a sort of American-dubbed Italian effort about teenage love (one of a whole series of films spawned by Lemon Popsicle) – and which I did enjoy. The script is actually very funny, and the music (all old rock ‘n’ roll) was splendid.
Thursday 6th October 1983
Another day at anchor. We have had the experts out, I gather, though I have seen nothing of them myself, to look over the lift, and it now seems that we will not be moving into the inner harbour until tomorrow at the earliest, always assuming that an attempt to rectify the damage will be made here. As far as the ship is concerned, it was another lazy day, the sun beating down and the decks liberally sprinkled with the inevitable ‘bronzy-bronzy’ enthusiasts, and with virtually no real work to do. I have been trying to catch up with things in the office, but there honestly isn’t a great deal to do even there, and I have deliberately left myself some jobs for tomorrow morning, packing up and returning to my cabin at a little after three.
And the evening bulletin on the ship is no more specific than those so far. Apparently there was a good deal of consultation over the lift problem, but a method was finally decided upon, using either cranes actually on the flight deck or pontoon or dockside cranes, and the contractor had sufficiently strong lifting cables and chains to take the weight of the lift platform, and all seemed about to be ready for work to start. Then it was discovered that, certainly, the contractor had the right gear for the job, but we couldn’t have it for at least a week, for a variety of logistical reasons. Back to square one – this problem was very largely caused by the language barrier (here more an insurmountable obstacle than a mere barrier), as only about two people involved in the negotiations are fluent in both English and Italian. So it now looks as if we will not be going alongside until Saturday at the earliest, if at all.
The plan to go to Athens still stands, as far as we are aware, but there has been a notable lack of communication from the rarefied height of the Command on this ship (probably because our future programme is not something over which we have any control), so we are still rather in the dark. However, it has apparently been confirmed that we will not be going alongside in Athens, as there is no berth there for us. That’s cheered us all up no end, as it means using bloody boats to get everywhere, and it will mean that the cocktail party (if it still goes ahead) will be a very protracted affair, and some people might find it a good deal faster to swim out to us than wait for one of our few boats. We’ll see.
Friday 7th October 1983
Another day, another dollar, and still no news of the relief column. We are still sitting out here in the sun, looking at Taranto and wishing it was Portsmouth – or even Plymouth, at a pinch – and wondering what the hell’s going to happen. With every passing day, of course, the time-scale gets tight. In order to make Athens on the 14th, the absolute latest we can leave here is the 13th, and our speed, of course, is entirely dependent upon the state of the lift. We discovered on the way into Taranto that at seventeen knots it moved, and so if it is in its present state we are going to be limited to a low speed passage.
As a further complication, any possibility of heavy weather will have us running for cover in the nearest suitable port. In view of the lack of any progress on the lift so far (apart from the initial work of trying to make it safe, that we did by ourselves), we are now thinking that we will probably end up making Athens with the lift as it is, but that we might then cut our losses and run direct for home, with only a very brief visit (if any visit at all) to Genoa. That, however, is just the word on the streets, and does not necessarily bear any relationship to reality.
Despite the gloomy reports on the delights of Taranto – ‘if you were going to give Italy an enema, it’s where you’d stick the tube’ and so on – Paul Harvey and I decided to brave the elements and give the place a try. We caught the 1600 Liberty Boat for the three mile and twenty minute ride to the Mar Piccolo. It was a beautiful day, and quite a pleasant ride, apart from the noise (deafening) and the vibration (quivering) of the boat itself.
As we got closer to the city the waterfront, which had looked relatively elegant from a distance, deteriorated into a very shabby facade, the buildings clearly needing a good deal of attention to their peeling paint and broken shutters.
We disembarked in the Mar Piccolo, within the confines of the Italian naval base itself, where three frigates were moored. The Mar Piccolo is really vast, and it was easy to see why the Italians turned it into one of their premier naval bases, and also why they would have felt secure there. At a quick glance, I would think that you could probably accommodate forty or fifty cruiser size and over ships, and twice that number of frigates, and still leave a fair amount of room to manoeuvre. And
that’s big.
Paul and I left the boat at the jetty, and walked back towards the sea-front, along the side of the channel down which we had entered the Mar Piccolo – this inner harbour is effectively within the city of Taranto itself, a vast lake around which the community has grown up – and then turned east along the sea-front.
First impressions (and most subsequent ones) were not favourable. The place was exceedingly grubby, almost all the buildings seeming to be in dire need of immediate attention, even if only of a cosmetic nature, and everywhere and everything seemed to be covered in a layer of dust. Everything, that is, except the pavements, and these were very liberally bespattered with large and noisome offerings from, apparently, millions of dogs. Not nice. There was also an almost all-pervading odour of urine, especially in one subway we used, leading me to suspect that all is not well in the drains department.
The skyline was a positive forest of TV aerials, and there are apparently a lot of stations on the air down here – I was told up to about twenty-five, but that was possibly an exaggeration – and in this highly religious, Catholic, country there is apparently a near-pornographic channel (23) available. Despite extensive twiddling on the Wardroom TV set, we have so far failed to locate this channel, but researches are continuing.
We looked in the few shops we found, but with a single exception (a very up-market furniture shop, retailing some of the most beautiful, both in style and manufacture, furnishings I have ever seen, at an appropriate price) we saw almost nothing that could not have been purchased for the same price (or even less) in Britain, and a lot of the goods on offer were really tatty and cheap. Shoes looked a reasonable buy, at a slightly lower price than in the UK, but clothes seemed to be more or less on a par, using our rapid calculation method for converting lira into pounds sterling – divide the price in lira by 1,000, and then halve the result. With £1 = 2,300 odd lira, this method is surprisingly accurate.
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