H.M.S. Illustrious
Page 15
Back into Flyco at eleven thirty, following the recovery of the last of the Sea Harriers, for a very brief period indeed, as the final Sea King recovery was at midnight.
Thursday 10th November 1983
I stayed up and awake, obviously, to avoid spoiling my work routine, and continued with paperwork and so on until four in the morning, when Sea King flying started again. Back in Flyco to watch the dawn, such as it was, and then off to bed again.
A slightly more disturbed day, though, as I had to get up at three to go and relieve the brace of f’s in Flyco at 1600, at the finish of the Sea Harrier sorties, and I stayed there until a little after 1900, when the two f’s came back to cover the Sea Harrier Alert phase. And a very easy evening for me followed, as we moved out of Phase One of the exercise at 2200, with a complete halt to all flying operations until 0600 tomorrow morning. So I had a very relaxing evening, watching the Wardroom film – Time Bandits – and then spent the night in the Air Office, sorting out the backlog of signals which had accumulated, and continuing with the inevitable paperwork.
Friday 11th November 1983
The only item to disturb my evening yesterday was the arrival of a Casevac (Casualty Evacuation) from Ariadne. First of all it was coming; then it definitely wasn’t; then it definitely was; and finally it did. All very irritating, with me running up and down to Flyco trying to find out what was going on. He finally pitched up on deck at a little after 2300, courtesy of Ariadne’s Wasp, after which I continued with work as I had intended.
The morning briefing for the first sortie of the day was at 0445, and I went along to that, and launched the three Sea Kings at 0600, but I was then relieved by the two f’s, as the Sea Harriers went to Alert at the same time.
And a splendid long sleep ensued, broken only by the sound of the rest of the ship going to Action Stations at about 1300 – I don’t mind Action Stations if all I have to do is turn over and go back to sleep, but I get a bit fed up when I have to wear these extraordinary white mask numbers and take an active part in the proceedings.
My Naval Airman, Patching, fresh from the Greek slammer, arrived back on board yesterday, and I was able to have a chat with him today about his experiences in Athens. Quite interesting. He was obviously the victim of circumstances – of being in the wrong place at the wrong time – and was set upon by a crowd of angry Greeks, and his only crime, such as it was, was that he defended himself from the beating he took and succeeded in clocking one of the taxi drivers quite hard. The fact that he was beaten badly enough to need hospital treatment apparently escaped the notice of the police who subsequently arrested him.
The Greek jail was a novel enough experience, too. Apart from anything else, you have to buy your own food, so presumably if you have no money you finally starve to death, and facilities are basic, to say the least. The Greek judicial system is interesting, too: you can wait years, literally, for your case to come to trial, and none of that time served in prison counts towards the sentence you are finally awarded. You often go before the courts twice – the first time is the trial at which sentence is passed (and it sounds as if they work on the time-honoured tradition of ‘wheel the guilty bastard in’, so if you go before the courts you are extremely unlikely to be found not guilty). But there is then a second court appearance at which the sentence may well be reviewed (which practically means shortened), after the majority of the sentence has been served. The length of the sentence, too, is variable. If you simply sit in prison, you serve the term specified (less any subsequent reduction at the second court appearance), but if you are prepared to work while in jail, each day you work counts as two days served, so a two-year term can be reduced to one year by working. It is also apparently possible to ‘buy off’ your prison term – a day in the slammer costs between £2 and £3, and in some cases a cash sum will be accepted in lieu of serving the sentence, though details of this procedure are slightly vague.
In the case of Patching, there is apparently a slight possibility that it might be possible to buy off the prosecution witness (who has so far consistently lied through his teeth – if he’s happy with perjury, which seems to be one of the cornerstones of the Greek legal system, he will no doubt find bribery eminently to his taste) by all three of the defendants from Illustrious paying him a cash sum to simply forget the case and tell the police he won’t continue to press charges. That, however, will obviously have to be approached in a very circumspect manner if a further charge is to be avoided, but if he’s prepared to play ball it might well be the easiest, and cheapest, solution, bearing in mind that all three defendants have had to pay their own fares home from Greece, and will also have to pay to go out there again for their court appearance, plus home again after sentence is served, plus food while in the slammer, plus loss of naval salary while in prison, plus ‘buying-off’ the sentence if possible, and so on. We can now only wait and see.
Back in Flyco at 2100, for a Ripple 3 programme throughout the night – a rather tiresome proceedings only enlivened by the fact that the ship was being thrown about all over the place, trying to avoid torpedoes. Quite sneaky, really: we were following a zig-zag course, north-west and south-west, with the submarines all waiting in clumps at the northern and southern ends of our path. This way, a submarine incident was more or less guaranteed every two hours or so, and we were certainly ‘fired at’ at least three times while I was on watch. In fact, I actually saw one of the green grenades which was fired about three miles on our port beam, so I think that was more or less a definite ‘hit’, despite our immediate and violent evasive action.
Saturday 12th November 1983
John Lamb reappeared in Flyco at a little before 0500 this morning in time for the Sea Harrier Alert phase, so I was able to slip away, though not to bed, just in case they launched them and they required a CCA when they returned. In fact, no launches were carried out, so I just waited until it was more or less daylight and Paul Harvey was up, and then retired to my cabin.
Back into Flyco at a little after 2000, and a most confusing night it was, with 814 Squadron Sea Kings going unserviceable at all the most inconvenient times throughout the period. The good news, I suppose, was that I was relieved early, at 0400, by Mickey Brock, and could escape to bed.
Sunday 13th November 1983
Not a good day. I hadn’t felt all that sharp when I left Flyco, and things came to a head, in the heads, as these nautical chaps say, in the morning, when I had a fairly severe dose of the runs – I think I must have got a bout of food poisoning or something, particularly as I wasn’t the only one so affected. Oddly enough, though, I haven’t eaten anything recently that I don’t normally eat, with no ill effects, so I suppose something must have been ‘off’. Once I was able to, I retired to bed again, only getting up when I had to, to go on watch in Flyco, at 1945.
The ship hadn’t had a terribly good day, either, as the Sea Dart High Seas Firings, scheduled for either yesterday or today, had both failed to work, for a variety of complicated, electric-string type reasons. The Sea Dart is a little more complex than most pieces of rocketry – it certainly isn’t a case of simply lighting the blue touch paper and then retiring a discreet distance. Our next scheduled firing, I believe, is next May, so that does at least give the greenies plenty of time to get their act together.
Also, we were torpedoed during the afternoon – the pipes ruined what sleep I had been trying to get – and this sparked off a major NBCDX involving virtually the whole ship. The technique for fixing the hole in the side I thought was quite cute – once the fires and so on were under control, they flooded some deep compartments on the opposite side of the ship to the damage, thus lifting the hole itself out of the water to enable repairs to be carried out. Neat.
And back up to Flyco again.
Monday 14th November 1983
For obvious reasons I haven’t been eating, and though I felt pretty lousy when I started in Flyco last night, I felt rather better by the end of the long night. I went to bed
immediately, and when I woke up in the early afternoon I was feeling back on line again, though still without much of an appetite.
A very rough night indeed, with the winds running at about Gale Force 8 and a very deep swell. For the first time since the South Atlantic we had waves breaking over the flight deck (fifty-eight feet above the waterline), and spray was lashing the Flyco windows quite frequently (and Flyco is almost a hundred feet above the sea). The wind was so strong, in fact, that we had to recover the Sea Kings steaming downwind, and with the aircraft facing aft. With a ship’s speed of about ten knots, that still gave us twenty knots of wind at least, and this was a far more comfortable option than settling for well over forty knots into wind. Very bumpy, though, until about 0400, when the ship’s MLA (Mean Line of Advance) was altered to west, which was also the downwind heading, when things got a lot quieter and more comfortable.
Tuesday 15th November 1983
I was relieved at about five in Flyco by John Lamb, now very much on his RDP (Run-Down Period) and looking forward to leaving the ship once we get back into Plymouth, and I immediately retired to bed, though leaving my telephone number in case the Harriers launched and needed recovery by CCA, in which case I would do them, rather than wake Paul.
I set the alarm for 1400, and then got up to watch Condorman, the Michael Crawford spoof James Bond film, which was quite entertaining, though what they did to five Porsches and an immaculate Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud 3 doesn’t bear repeating.
A very bouncy morning, still, and I didn’t have my usual undisturbed slumber. The sea state was so rough that all Sea Harrier flying was cancelled during the afternoon, though the Sea Kings continued to operate as usual – it takes a hell of a lot to stop them flying – and so it was a fairly full, though not busy, night. The aircraft were Rippling 3, as usual, but were passive rather than active (meaning that they were hunting for submarines by dropping sonobuoys and then listening for submarine noise, rather than by dunking their sonar body and radiating – the active mode). The practical difference between the two modes, from the point of view of the ship, is that although both sortie lengths will normally be about three to four hours, if the aircraft are active, they return on board halfway through for a suck of fuel: if they’re passive they don’t. I was quite glad that deck movements were so few, because although the sea was gradually moderating as the wind dropped, it was still sufficiently bouncy to mean that the flight deck crews were using eight lashings (twice the usual number) on all Sea Kings, and this made any deck moves quite time-consuming, and particularly so in view of the fact that the ship was having to alter course repeatedly to avoid the ever-present submarine danger.
Oh, and we finally and officially went to war late in the evening. Funny, I thought we’d been fighting all the way through, but apparently not…
Wednesday 16th November 1983
An early relief this morning, as Sea Harriers returned to Alert with the by now moderated sea state at five. A slightly disturbed morning again, listening to the rest of the ship going to Action Stations, Shelter Stations and all manner of other nautical-sounding exercises. All jolly good stuff, and by far best enjoyed, in my opinion, from one’s scratcher.
And a rather tiresome night in Flyco followed, with the Sea Kings now active, with all the refuelling stops and other mucking about that this statement implies. A fair number of unserviceabilities acted as spice to this mixture, and I was really quite glad when I was relieved.
Thursday 17th November 1983
And the mixture as before – the Flypros (daily flying programmes) are almost identical these days, even the time the Sea Harriers going to alert very rarely altering at all – which, of course, makes it even more difficult to tell one day from the next, though today, as you might well expect, there is a very definite feeling of ‘Endex’ about the ship. When you can count the hours to the end of an exercise or to the arrival in port, everyone cheers up to a very high degree.
Back to Flyco at 1930, and an average sort of night followed, with no more than the normal number of aircraft unserviceabilities. The good thing was that the ship’s track was steadily north-east – towards Plymouth – and so time passed (relatively) quickly.
Friday 18th November 1983
I was relieved just after five, as usual, and retired to bed almost straight away, after doing a bit of typing in the Air Office – a little bit of work that Commander (Air) wanted doing immediately (how unusual) – and got up again at 1200 for John Lamb’s RPC and lunch. That was painless enough, and John seemed pleased with the present we had all clubbed together to buy him – a decanter – and also pleased to be leaving, for which I can’t blame him. This has been a very tiring exercise, and none of us are looking forward to five weeks’ worth of the same at the early part of next year.
We berthed at Plymouth at about 1600, and the ship was immediately deserted by everyone that could get away. It must have looked a bit as if the ship was on fire, because the moment the gangways were down there was a mass exodus, with everyone heading for the station/taxi rank/car hire firms. I had a leisurely bath and strolled ashore once the rush had died away, heading for the flat for the weekend.
Monday 21st November 1983
Back on board after the weekend, to find no problems, oddly enough – things usually turn to worms at the weekends, in my experience. We sailed from Plymouth in late afternoon, just after 1700, for Hamburg, though not, of course, direct. That would be Too Easy. No, first of all we had to shovel a clump (or whatever the appropriate generic noun is) of MPs on board. They are supposed to be on a fact-finding mission, but I personally suspect that they are primarily borne for drinking duties.
Then, as we were steadily pottering along the south coast of Britain, heading east, we got ourselves involved in a Smashex. This is an exercise in which a submarine pretends to be sunk or missing (the codewords if it’s for real are Submiss or Subsunk), and it really is extremely tiresome. I think the real intention in this case was to show those MPs who were still a) awake and b) sober, just how quickly we could get aircraft into the sky on a search and rescue mission.
If this was the object, it was not entirely successful, as the aircraft have not been all that serviceable just lately, and aircrew are not allowed to fly at night unless they have flown in daylight within the previous seventy-two hours, and are also not allowed to fly within eight hours after consuming alcohol. Finding any sort of a crew proved to be extremely difficult, but to everyone’s surprise we finally did get two Sea Kings into the air, in nice time for the exercise to be terminated.
Tuesday 22nd November 1983
A rather bitty day. We spent the majority of it steaming up and down in a de-gaussing range off Portland, in quite beautiful weather. Boring, but nice. The MPs watched a flying display by both Sea Kings (814 NAS are still on board) and Sea Harriers (three 800 NAS aircraft flew on board this afternoon) with a total lack of comprehension, as far as I could see – and then we gratefully got rid of them ashore to Lee-on-Solent by Sea King, after which we were able to continue on our way to Hamburg.
The Sods Opera rehearsal was held this afternoon in the hangar, and a total disaster it was, too. However, in my limited experience this was entirely typical, and I would have been greatly surprised (and worried) if it had been anything else. As Denis Norden says: ‘It’ll be all right on the night.’ Which is tonight.
And, oddly enough, it was all right. In fact, it was very good. I hadn’t realised just how much talent there was around on this ship, but we had a most enjoyable evening. I did the compering along with Leading Regulator West, who did a very convincing impersonation of Sid Snot, the character created by Kenny Everett, and we alternated between acts. Actually the show had just about everything, from a mime to a band, and from a purely humorous sketch (the one I wrote for the Wardroom was very well received, I was pleased to see) to a kind of folk singer – but you’d never believe the words of the songs! Very good value.
Wednesday 23rd November 1983
A final word on the MPs. The only one carrying a handbag (Miss Janet Fookes) managed to leave it behind when she left by helicopter for Lee. The operating costs of a Sea King helicopter run out at about £5,000 per hour overall, but it was nevertheless decided that her handbag was so important that an aircraft was launched for Lee carrying it and nothing else. And we always thought that HDS stood for Helicopter Despatch Service, not Handbag Delivery Service…
An evening of bridge, interspersed by a certain amount of sneezing and coughing, rounded off our last full day at sea for a while, as the ship went to flying stations to launch a Sea King to collect the pilot for the transit of the Elbe, just before midnight.
Thursday 24th November 1983
The long passage of the Elbe took most of the morning, and went according to plan except that we arrived about an hour earlier than expected. This was due to us being followed up the Elbe by a large tanker, which was maintaining a rather higher speed than Illustrious had intended, and to avoid him catching us from behind, to coin a phrase, we had to match his speed.