Jon Seal and the doc decided to have an extended wander round the shops, after which Mr Seal was going to take the Casino to the cleaners. Wayne and I decided not to do this, but to catch up with them later, at the Casino, and to seek liquid refreshment. This we did, near the harbour, and had yet another jambon and cheese sarnie, followed by a large ice cream each. Very enjoyable, despite the frightening prices, and we were entertained during our repast by the large yacht departing the scene. And very efficiently it did, too, with no fuss or messing about, despite the relatively constricted waters of the harbour. Whoever was in the driving seat had clearly done that kind of thing before.
The Casino was big and rather over-ornate, and was badly let down, in my opinion, by the vast number of slot machines crowding the floors of some of the rooms. I suppose that these machines produce a substantial revenue for the Casino, but I still think they should be in an amusement arcade somewhere.
There were rooms set aside for ‘proper’ gambling – roulette, blackjack, chemin de fer and so on – and in one of these we espied Jon and the doc engrossed in the spin of the wheel, so we left them to it and retired to sit in the sun for a while.
When we finally met the pair again, and asked about the Seal System, he said that in future he was going to cover red, not black, so I assume that he had not been entirely successful. I had to lend him ten francs to buy a paper, in fact.
The coach collected us outside the Casino again at 1630, and we arrived back at the ship, after a very enjoyable day indeed, at a little after 1900.
Wednesday 26th October 1983
A morning of working, and an afternoon of walking. A small pile of typing was waiting for me in the Air Office this morning, so I had to slave away over a hot keyboard to get that out of the way before lunch. After lunch, the doc and I decided to sample the delights of Genoa, and so walked ashore just after 1300, accompanied by Paul Harvey (the ATCO 2), Jon Seal (again) and Ted Taylor (the Captain’s Assistant Secretary).
Not very impressed, really. Genoa is obviously very old, with very large buildings around which run tiny little narrow streets, most of which were a bit on the grubby side, and there is a general air of neglect about the place. There are unsuspected beauties as well, though, with archways beyond which are fountains, statues and so on, and I suppose to be fair we were not looking at the best area of the city, being near the docks and so on. Paul (who went off with Jon and Ted) said he found a very attractive area indeed, with some excellent shops and facilities – even marble inlaid pavements.
The doc and I walked around for a bit, then headed for the funicular, a sort of railway effort running up to Righi, a hilltop community. Unfortunately, we walked right past the first station, and continued uphill quite a way before realising our mistake and finding an up-line station. The ‘train’, when it arrived, was a single carriage, on a slope, as it were, as the line ascends at an angle of about fifteen degrees up the hill, and the thing works, obviously, by the weight of the descending car dragging the ascending car up the hill, with some sort of power assistance, presumably, overcoming frictional losses and weight differences. Very efficient, though, and free, which was even better.
The view from the top was certainly worth the effort, as we could see both out over the harbour area and behind Genoa into the hills to the north of the city. Unfortunately, the air pollution mentioned earlier was still very much in evidence, and the view in both directions was very hazy indeed – I suspect that the citizens of this area suffer a good deal from respiratory tract disorders.
Thursday 27th October 1983
I had a very late night last night, not getting to bed until about 0300, thanks entirely to Commander (Air) who insisted that certain letters and other papers which had been drafted for him to sign had to be redrafted. As I have so far understood it, the system with letters is really quite simple – he tells me what he wants to say; I go away and draft it, double spaced, for his approval; he approves it after any alterations; I type it, and he signs it. Unfortunately, things don’t quite work out that way. In fact, everything works as indicated up to the point where I said ‘he signs it’, because what usually happens is that he then decides he doesn’t like what he’s already approved, and makes me draft the whole thing a second (and sometimes third) time. Not very impressed.
It seems that if this ship visits many more places in the European mainland we soon won’t have any ship’s company left – two more lads are in the slammer now. Glad it’s nothing trivial though; a good hefty helping of ‘robbery with violence’ by all accounts, so it will be interesting to see when (if?) they rejoin the ship. Also, one of the lads who works for me nearly got himself shot – he got involved in an argument over something very trivial (a disputed taxi fare or something), and a passing Italian drew a gun on him. At that stage the lad decided that anywhere else was a good place to be, and legged it. He wasn’t the only one, either.
A squadron petty officer was in plain clothes, taking photographs of the ship (as he is quite entitled to do) when a squad of plain-clothes police turned up. They shouted for him to stop. He saw a bunch of thugs advancing towards him, thought ‘I’m going to get mugged’ and he legged it. They saw him run, and thought ‘That proves he’s a Russian spy’, and started blasting away with the well-known 9mm equalisers. None hit him, fortunately, though if they were using Brownings that was no surprise. The Browning 9mm pistol, in my opinion, is ideally suited for close-quarters fighting – say in a telephone box – but at a range of much over fifteen feet you’re likely to be more accurate and effective throwing rocks.
We sailed in Procedure Alpha at 1000, and a very long and boring process it was, too, as we had to wait around while a liner made its way into the harbour before we could slip and proceed, so we were standing around like a bunch of penguins for about an hour and a half altogether.
The ship is now on fast passage to Gibraltar, where we are due to arrive at 1800 on Saturday. We had a fairly full flying display, as we had a party of Italian Navy VIPs on board, and the British Government is trying to persuade Italy to buy Sea Harriers for their new carrier, the Garibaldi. By all accounts it went very well, until the Italian Sea King helicopters arrived to return the VIPs to their homeland, when only two aircraft (instead of the three we had expected them to send) turned up, and they didn’t have enough survival equipment on board to take the right number of passengers. So we turned the ship round and headed back towards Genoa, and one of the Sea Kings made two trips. Quite a shambles, but at least it was nothing to do with us.
Friday 28th October 1983
The fast passage to Gibraltar continues, and a fairly full flying programme was scheduled, occupying all afternoon and most of the evening. This, however, turned rapidly to worms when the Sea Harriers fell over one by one during the afternoon, and so the fixed wing programme was scrubbed, just leaving a few Sea King sorties, which finished at ten fifteen in the evening. I was up in Flyco from about 1930 onwards, so that John Lamb could nip down to see the Wardroom film Chariots of Fire. He was less than impressed to find out that this film was on last night, not tonight!
Saturday 29th October 1983
And the mixture as before really, with flying finishing just after lunch and Gibraltar appearing hesitantly out of the mist in the late afternoon. We were not, fortunately, scheduled to play any silly games like coming in on the weather decks in Procedure Alpha, so the docking was a most painless operation all round.
Gibraltar looked much as I always remembered it – rocky, mainly – but the harbour showed rather more activity than usual, with several ships there making final port-calls before heading off into the South Atlantic for a tour of duty. This clearly might have led to a certain degree of sensitivity, as we are on our way back to the United Kingdom, and so the Commander went on the main broadcast system this afternoon to point out that the practice of leaving sailors scattered round the Mediterranean ports is to cease forthwith, and further warning that he would have little, if any, sympathy wit
h anyone who got into trouble ashore, and particularly with the crews of the south-bound ships. And when Big John says things like that, people usually listen, so it will be interesting to see what our ship’s company numbers when we finally leave here.
The official reception was a fairly low-key affair – an informal cocktail party, in fact – held on the quarterdeck, and most of the guests were either service or very closely related to it. Not the most inspiring of company, but at least they all spoke English, which was a distinct improvement over the last couple of dos on board. Afterwards we had an Italian-style buffet supper, which was extremely good, as ever.
We have, by the way, been trying a variety of different feeding methods on official reception days. The old system was that we fed early, at about five or five thirty, before the thing started, and the only disadvantage with that was that people weren’t really hungry at that time, and it also meant that getting ready was a bit of a rush afterwards. The last few times we have been eating after it’s all over, but this has proved to have several major problems, the first of which is that most officers are so famished by the time the reception actually starts that they descend on the small eats like a plague of locusts, leaving little more than a few plates of crumbs for the guests when they roll up. However, even if extreme self-control is exercised during the reception, further problems arise when trying to eat afterwards.
For those officers who manage, in naval parlance, to ‘trap’ at the reception, are faced with the agonising choice of either eating (which means leaving the prey to the tender mercies of the rest of the Wardroom, which in practice means he’ll never see her again) or going without. And, if they go without, they might actually have to buy food on shore, and possibly for the girl as well, thus greatly increasing the net cost of the evening’s entertainment. Tonight we had a compromise – we ate afterwards, but guests were invited to the meal as well.
This might well seem like the best of all worlds, but unfortunately the guests have to be paid for, and so we each pay a share of the total cost of the entertainment, which suits those who do ‘trap’, I suppose, but irritates everyone else, because we’re paying for people we’ve never even spoken to. I think we’ll shortly be reverting to eating beforehand – there are fewer arguments that way!
Sunday 30th October 1983
A surprise start to the day when I was invited to a champagne breakfast in the Admiral’s dining cabin by John Lamb, as a member of a star-studded cast including the Captain, the Commander, and most of the other influential ‘wheels’ on the ship. I say surprise, because although I knew it was happening, and had been expecting an invitation (it was John Lamb’s birthday treat/leaving the ship final fling), I hadn’t received one. The mystery deepened when I saw John this morning, because he insisted that he had put the invitation on my desk himself, but I never saw it. However, it was a convivial little gathering, and a good meal too, including steak, and a pleasant start to the day – much better than going down to the Air Office, anyway.
I was Air Officer of the Day, which was irritating in that I had to go away during the afternoon to supervise a Sea Harrier ground run, but quite useful because it gave me a perfectly legitimate and inviolable reason for not going ashore on a Controllers’ run this evening. There are few things I enjoy less than following a bunch of hairy men from pub to pub, particularly when I could be doing something useful, like sleeping, and it is rare that I have such a perfect reason for not going – normally I have to plead a prior engagement/work to do/sickening for an obscure disease or something.
Monday 31st October 1983
A bit of a non-day, really, with a certain amount of running about in circles getting various bits of paperwork sorted out, while the ship started on its steady way to the north, up the coast of Portugal, and while a fairly full flying programme went ahead for most of the day. I got lumbered with doing no less than six radar recoveries for the Sea Harriers in the evening. That was the biggest single bunch of recoveries I’ve done for a long time.
Tuesday 1st November 1983
We were still making steady progress to the north, the air and sea temperatures dropping from the balmy warmth of the Mediterranean areas to a rather more familiar winter sort of crisp cold. It wasn’t too cold to go out on deck in shirt sleeves, but you could tell that the moment for wrapping up warmly wasn’t all that far away.
Because only Sea Kings were flying for most of the day, John Lamb kindly let me sit up in Flyco from about nine to four in the afternoon, which I really appreciated, especially as I was trying to put together a CCTV show with Peter Lavis for the evening CCTV programme. I finally got away from Flyco at a little before five, and spent a very hectic hour writing and then duplicating a script for our joint effort, ready for the broadcast at six thirty. It was quite well received, by all accounts, though there were one or two requests
for rather more tit and bum than we were showing.
Jerry Newall, the 814 Squadron Helicopter Controller, is presently languishing in the Sick Bay with a twisted ankle, and consequently Paul Harvey is having to act as an HC watch and watch about with the ship’s HC, and that is leaving me to do a fair number of the CCAs – I did another three this evening – so I hope Jerry is up and about again very soon, because CCAs are extremely boring, at best.
Wednesday 2nd November 1983
The fast passage continued, though with a lot more ship motion than we had been experiencing recently, as we made our way across the Bay of Biscay, where there was the usual heavy swell. Flying continued too, with another small number of CCAs for me to do to justify earning my corn.
A light-hearted mood in the Wardroom, though, as we are spending our last night at sea before home (or Plymouth anyway, which is almost as good). A distinct touch of ‘Channel Night’ fever.
Thursday 3rd November 1983
Up at the crack of dawn to go to a briefing for the first two helicopter trips of the day, both running in to HMS Drake to collect mail and newspapers (by far the most important items), as well as a certain number of VIPs, including FOF2 (Flag Officer Second Flotilla), Rear Admiral Grove, who is out for a brief visit to the ship. I felt quite at home as I sat there bleary-eyed in Flyco, peering out at the mist and drizzle. Even with British weather, it’s good to be back home.
We had to wait for the right tide before we could get in, so as a small diversion for us during the day we flew a series of Sea Harrier sorties, and also had a ‘Committal to the Deep’ number, sending the ashes of the 814 Squadron chief petty officer who died on board over the side. We were finally laced securely to the wall, as these naval chappies say, at about 1700, where we’ll be staying for the next five days.
Tuesday 8th November 1983
An early start today for most of the ship, with shakes at 0500. Fortunately, as I will be working throughout the night, as we settle down into the old twenty-four-hour flying routine, I was exempted from the requirement to get up and play silly games, and stayed in bed until the relatively late hour of 0800. The ship sailed at 0700, already in Actions Stations, and trickled out of the Plymouth Harbour area through an exercise minefield and a variety of other nasties. Flying with the Sea Harriers started at 1100, and with the Sea Kings three quarters of an hour later, setting the pattern for the rest of the exercise.
There are three phases-to this little number. Phase One is a work-up phase in the Plymouth Exercise Areas, and that will run from 0700 today until 2200 on the 10th of November. Phase Two is a planned track phase, which means we will be preparing for war, and this will run from 0600 on the 11th to 2400 on the 13th of November. The final phase, Phase Three, is a war phase, where we can react as we wish to counter the threat, and that will run from 0001 on the 14th to 1200 on the 18th of November. What fun.
I stayed up all morning, getting things squared off in the office, and then retired to my pit after lunch, with the intention of sleeping until the early evening, in preparation for the long night ahead. I was only partially successful in this, as I kept
on waking up, usually when Sea Harriers were carrying out high-power ground runs directly above my head. I gave up the unequal struggle about five, had an early dinner, and then went up to Flyco at about nine.
A long, but trouble and event free night followed, with the Sea Kings Rippling 2 throughout the period.
Wednesday 9th November 1983
I was relieved at about seven thirty not only by John Lamb, but also by his relief, Lt Cdr Brock, who is steadily learning the trade, and I retired to bed almost at once. A relatively undisturbed day – I was awake only once, at one o’clock – and I finally staggered forth at a little after five. My Naval Airman in the Office has now taken to calling me ‘Count’ after the Lord Dracula, in view of the vampire-like existence I am leading, and he’s not too far off the mark, as I never seem to see the sun these days.
A brief stint in Flyco followed, from 1800 (when the last pair of Sea Harriers recovered on board) to 2000, when the two Lt Cdr f’s arrived to take over for the Sea Harrier alert phase, so I took the opportunity to return to my cabin to catch up on a bit of paperwork. I have at present a script to write for the Sods Opera (a kind of amateur dramatics effort which will be performed on the way to Hamburg later this month), as well as two reports, one for the Fleet Air Arm Officers’ Association, and the other for the publication Flight Deck.
H.M.S. Illustrious Page 14