H.M.S. Illustrious

by HMS Illustrious (retail) (epub)

  Monday 30th January 1984

  A very long day, after an equally long night. I couldn’t go to bed, which is what I would have dearly loved to do, because I had too many things to do which couldn’t be either cancelled or delayed. All the morning I was stuck down in the CCTV studio, getting things ready for the Command Performance of Commander (Air) – the long-awaited TV briefing on Flight Safety which I had drafted for him last week. Although the actual broadcast was only of about fifteen minutes’ duration, it was surprising just how long the preparations took. Apart from the actual organisation of the studio itself, there was a cost chart (a list of the prices of aircraft and components) to prepare – my Naval Airman did that, and it took about three hours – as well as suitable videos to be chosen, cued and recorded. We decided to use the standard ‘Flight Safety’ introduction sequence, followed immediately by a four-minute clip of film of American origin showing a series of helicopter crashes. Then Commander (Air) did his bit, and we rounded things off with another clip showing fixed-wing aircraft crashes.

  That may sound a rather gory type of thing to show, but as far as the Navy is concerned, Flight Safety is a very serious subject, involving vast expense – as an example, a Sea Harrier with pilot costs a total of £10 million, and a Sea King with a crew of four works out at £12 million (these figures include the training costs of the aircrew) – and anything at all we can do to draw the subject to people’s attention we do. It is, perhaps, a sad fact of life that people will watch crashes avidly, but it is true that as an attention-getter, such film is unrivalled. We just hope that the message has percolated through.

  After a swift lunch, I had to sit through a Flight Safety Meeting in the afternoon. These are held at regular intervals, and all major departments in the ship are represented, with the intention of thrashing out any problems or difficulties relating to the safety of aircraft. There were, I’m pleased to say, no real problems, and the meeting wound up fairly quickly, enabling me to get to bed at last.

  I got up again just after dinner, in order to have a game of bridge, and to ensure that I got some sleep in the coming night. A pleasant end to a long day.

  Tuesday 31st January 1984

  The flying programme has now diminished to a very considerable extent, and as a result I was only up in Flyco for very brief periods – at lunchtime and dinnertime – to relieve Mickey Brock, and I was able to spend the rest of the day catching up on work. Just as well, really, as with Commander (Air)’s departure imminent (the end of March), he’s looking round the place and seeing all sorts of little jobs that he was going to do ages ago but forgot about, and he now wants them done at once. Or yesterday, ideally. There is, therefore, a good deal of work to be done.

  The Wardroom film this evening was Royal Flash, once of the films about the Flashman character, and most entertaining it was, with just the right amount of comedy and (tongue in cheek) violence.

  Wednesday 1st February 1984

  I was up before six this morning, in order to cover the first launch of the day – a very important sortie in to Bermuda to collect and deliver mail – which was due off the ship at 0645. With the aircraft despatched en route (the ship was about a hundred miles off Bermuda), I handed over the reins to Mickey Brock, and retired to continue with the paperwork mountain. Sometimes when I get into the office and look at my ‘In’ tray, I think that a set of climbing irons might be a more appropriate way of getting over it than a typewriter.

  Mail, a substantial amount of it too, duly arrived on board with the returning pair of Sea Kings, and the mood of the ship improved as a direct ratio to the number of bags unloaded. Once we had the aircraft back, we turned north-west and continued our passage directly towards New York, where we are programmed to arrive on Friday. Flying continued throughout the day, with the Sea Harriers doing their bit on the splash target streamed astern, and the Sea Kings practising HIFR (Helicopter In Flight Refuelling) on the flight deck. I relieved Mickey Brock for lunch, as usual, and that was about all the flying I saw, but the noise of the Sea Harriers’ Aden guns quite clearly penetrated the cabin. Fortunately, the

  shells didn’t.

  A slight funny that has occurred recently concerns our Bosun, Richard Hawking. On the ship we have a total of four lifebelts, held in housings on either side of the quarterdeck and midships port and starboard. They are released either by the Bridge (all four or any of them) or by the Lifebelt Sentry (quarterdeck ones only) whenever anyone is seen to fall overboard. As part of standard Bridge procedures, these are checked by a rating physically holding each lifebelt in turn, while the Bridge presses the appropriate release button, to check that the release mechanism is working correctly.

  Poor Richard has now jettisoned three of these lifebelts since we sailed from Portsmouth, by simply pressing the wrong buttons every time a check is done, although he does, he says, take considerable trouble to make sure he’s pressing the correct button each time. In fact, we are thinking of amending the procedures so that every time he does a check, we have a rating on each lifebelt, just in case. We have calculated that with the number of Bridge watches remaining for Richard, and with the number of spare lifebelts in store (as we weren’t, for operational reasons, able to pick up every one dropped), we are OK until New York – after that, he may well be banned from the Bridge.

  Thursday 2nd February 1984

  A non-flying day as the ship continued north-west on passage to New York, and most people took the opportunity to use the flight deck for recreation, or simply slept. The weather was quite distinctly colder than it has been over the last week, a sure sign that we are getting closer to New York, though the temperature there is a damn sight colder than it was here – apparently they have temperatures well below freezing and snow, so it could be a chilly visit.

  We had a sort of Air Department dinner in the Wardroom this evening, partly to say goodbye to the old Ops 1 (Operations Officer), and partly because Cdr Air thought it was a good idea. Not everyone agreed, but it wasn’t too painful, in truth.

  Friday 3rd February 1984

  Arrival day. Unlike previous visits, when we have all mustered on the upper deck like a colony of penguins, we all stayed below in the warm today for our arrival – the weather was certainly clear and quite cold, but the main reason was, I think, simply the time that we would have had to stay on deck in Procedure Alpha. New York is a very large city, which I’m sure isn’t news to anyone, but it did take a long time to get the ship alongside. We are berthed on the west side of Manhattan Island, which is deep in the heart of the city, and we embarked the pilot at 0750, but didn’t actually get alongside until 1100, giving some idea of the size of the place.

  New York is divided up into five boroughs – Bronx (in the north), Queens (to the east), Brooklyn (south) and Manhattan (west), with the fifth (Staten Island) out to the south-west. Manhattan is undeniably the cultural centre of the city, and is in fact an island in its own right, and is where all the ‘familiar’ place names associated with New York are to be found – Central Park, Broadway, Madison Square Garden, Greenwich Village and so on. Shortly after we arrived, we had a CCTV briefing on New York from a wheel in the Embassy, followed by a very much more interesting (and amusing) briefing from one of New York’s finest – a detective from one of the local precincts. He advised that there was no particular point in going off Manhattan Island, because whatever you wanted, Manhattan had it, and to watch out for the local taxi drivers.

  Apparently a favourite trick over here is to start the meter on the taxi, and then charge each person carried that fare, pretending that it is the correct charging system. Glad to hear that the age of capitalism is not yet dead, nor are the cons. Talking of cons, there were also warnings about getting caught up in street gambling – a kind of variation of the three-card trick, as far as I could gather – as you always lose, often heavily. There is both a drugs scene and a good deal of prostitution here, both, of course, quite illegal, and both of which were rigorously policed. Prosecutio
ns are, apparently, almost invariably brought, and a good deal of trouble could well result from any contact with either of the sub-cultures, both with the New York police, and with the Royal Naval authorities afterwards. Let us hope that the ship’s company take the message to heart. Quite apart from the risk of catching herpes, AIDS, and all the other sexually-transmitted diseases from the Ladies of the Night around Broadway and Times Square, there is another risk from the very high number of female impersonators who apparently thrive in New York – perhaps it’s something in the water – and the detective advised anyone who did get involved with any ‘female’ to check the whole thing (if you see what I mean) out very carefully before getting undressed. And particularly before turning their backs. As the detective said – ‘You’d better not drop the soap anywhere in front of these guys.’

  The final, and most predictable, warning was about the obvious dangers of doing anything, or going anywhere, in New York by yourself or at night. Mugging is a daily occurrence, and anyone alone is a more or less certain target. And the muggers here don’t mess about – if you give them any trouble, they’re as likely to knife you or shoot you as not.

  And on that slightly sombre note, we went into the official reception in the hangar. This was slightly less nauseating than usual, as some quite pleasant people turned up, though of course, with FOF3 as the major host there was a very pronounced emphasis in the more senior ranks, and a lot of the visitors were service or service-related, which means you tend to degenerate into ‘shop’ talk very quickly. The high-spot of the evening, without a doubt, was the finale of the reception, when FOF3’s Bootie Band did their bit. They are, of course, professional musicians, and it showed in the expert and polished performance they gave for the ‘Last Post’ and Sunset ceremony. They had been performing, in a very small way, earlier on as well, when a four-piece combo entertained with light music during the actual reception.

  That was in contrast to the Americans (who I really don’t understand, as a nation), some of whom had turned up in kilts, for reasons quite beyond any form of rational explanation, and had even brought a man with bagpipes! He pumped wind into them and started haranguing the people near the entrance to the hangar for the first few minutes of the reception, and despite mutterings from the other end about calling in the RSPCA, because there was a cat in pain somewhere, continued for some time. With the band, the whole thing ground to a halt, as usual, and I slipped quietly away to my cabin.

  One of the best things about America, as far as I am concerned, is the radio stations. There are dozens of them, and they are very good, very professional and slick, and play my kind of music. I tuned in to station WYNY, which seems to offer a diet of more or less non-stop rock ‘n’ roll, and predominately British, music. Like most stations here, it’s on the air twenty-four hours a day, and it makes any British station look amateurish beyond belief.

  I didn’t stay in my cabin for the duration, as Mike Vine appeared at about nine, and we organised a bridge four, playing up in the Guest Room until nearly midnight, by which time most of the private guests who had been invited to stay on after the reception had also been poured over the side. All in all, not too painful an evening.

  Saturday 4th February 1984

  There are a selection of sore heads and red eyes in the Wardroom this morning, indicating that several people enjoyed themselves, one way or the other (mainly, I think, the other) after the reception. By all accounts the ship’s company had a good time as well, and did at least prove that what the detective said yesterday was exactly true. I don’t quite know why it is, but if you tell the average sailor that for the good of his health he is not to do a certain thing or go to a certain place, that is the first thing he does or the first place he goes. Two of our number are unhurt, but substantially poorer, by walking round the city by themselves late last night and meeting the inevitable muggers. And I’ve heard that there are even a couple of the keep-fit buffoons who went for a run in Central Park early this morning – that makes about as much sense as going for a jog through Woburn Safari Park an hour before the lions get fed. Fortunately, both were untouched (presumably the muggers couldn’t catch them), but they are both lucky. Last night, according to the radio this morning, was quiet in New York, with only three murders. I suppose in a city of about 5 million people that is a fairly small number, but it is still a frightening statistic, and I really don’t think New York is a place I’d want to stay for very long.

  Though I really have staggeringly little enthusiasm for New York, I did decide to have a look at the city, and so I had booked myself onto a tour for the afternoon, which left the ship at 1500. Although the weather was rather better than we had been expecting – fine but cold – I did wrap up well for the trip. The coach was a single-decker, air-conditioned and with smoked-g1ass windows, driven by a not-too-sharp American with a US Navy petty officer acting as the tour guide.

  The driver worried me. Apart from his habit of driving around with the hazard-warning flashers on, which I’m sure didn’t endear him to other drivers, particularly when turning left, he also showed little or no clutch control or anticipation, so we lurched about the city either under hard acceleration or equally hard braking, accompanied by groans of protest from the much-abused gearbox. We didn’t hit anything, but I lost count of the near-misses. The roads in New York are bloody awful: I have driven on roads in many parts of the world, but I honestly cannot ever recall roads in poorer shape than those in Manhattan. They are full of potholes, some of which were so deep that the coach actually bottomed its suspension, and for an American coach, that is quite difficult, even with our driver. Lots of the surfaces are basically cobbled, with a thin layer of tarmac over the top, but no matter which area of the city we were in, from Park Avenue to the dock area, the potholes were there, and we were in them.

  From the ship’s berth, we drove under the much-photographed arches through which Gene Hackman pursued the French drugs pusher in the classic film The French Connection, making our way through the dockland area towards the south end of Manhattan Island. The guide warned us that the docks are a fairly unhealthy area to walk in (particularly at night, of course), and very strongly suggested that we avoid the bars there, as they are, almost without exception, male only, with all that that implies. As he said, ‘They may be wearing skirts and look like women, but pick anything up in those places, and you’ll end up having an experience you won’t forget in a hurry.’ The dockland area is very run-down, with derelict and gutted buildings and warehouses, collapsed piers and jetties, and, of course, roads like a tank-testing ground.

  Illustrious is tied to the wall at Pier 90, and from the docks area we followed the West Side Highway, then running into West Street, south to the World Trade Center, which is located almost at the southern tip of Manhattan. There are two buildings, in fact, and we stopped at Building Two. It was the first time I’d really looked up at an American skyscraper, and it really is quite an experience. It is over 1,200 feet high, made the more impressive because of its narrow vertical windows and stainless steel exterior. Figures tend to become rather mind-blowing when considering a building of this size – the foundations involved the removal of 1.5 million cubic yards of material, and there are 600,000 square feet of glass in the windows – but it is impressive. We only had about fifteen minutes there, which wasn’t enough time to go up to the top, but we went inside and had a look round – even that was vast enough, with a huge ground floor on which you could quite easily play a couple of football matches. The sheer scale of a building like that takes a lot of appreciating.

  We then drove round the south end of the island, past Battery Park, where the English settlers first set up home, and continued up South Street on the east side to the South Street Seaport, which is where one of the old fish-markets is located, along with a couple of old sailing ships moored as permanent museum exhibits. Looking north we could see the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge, with the Williamsburg Bridge some distance further away. The n
oise of the traffic was an ever-present loud hum, particularly audible from the direction of the bridges. The guide pointed out that the Statue of Liberty (which was visible from Battery Park) was still green in colour, due to its copper construction, but that work was going to start on renovating it in the very near future, when its greenish hue would vanish forever, so that unless we returned to New York in the very near future, we would never see it looking quite the same way again.

  After another fifteen-minute stop at the Seaport, we climbed back into the coach and headed for the Empire State Building. Our route took us through Chinatown, which looked like a very pleasant area indeed, full of Chinese restaurants and food shops, and where the celebrations for the Chinese New Year (this is the Year of the Mouse) were still in full swing, firecrackers going off at intervals. We then went through Little Italy and SoHo before entering Greenwich Village, which our guide praised as being one of the most pleasant parts of the city, particularly for an evening out. It did looking rather charming, with all sorts of interesting shops and restaurants, and it was, of course, one of the trendiest areas in the world in the sixties, haunted by the likes of Dylan, and Simon and Garfunkel. Indeed, I think it was Dylan who produced either a single or an album entitled ‘Bleecker Street’ (down which the coach drove) which runs right through the centre of the Village.

  The Empire State Building was frankly disappointing. Whenever you think of a building as famous as that, you tend (or I tend anyway) to think of it somehow isolated and unmistakable, like the Tower of London or the Houses of Parliament, but in fact the Empire State Building is stuck in the middle of a perfectly ordinary shopping street (not far from Macey’s), and if you didn’t spot the tiny plaque on the outside of the building, you’d miss it altogether. Unfortunately, there still wasn’t time to go right to the top to look at the view. Perhaps, just looking back on what I’ve written, I’ve been a little unkind in describing Fifth Avenue (upon which the Empire State Building is located) as ‘a perfectly ordinary shopping street’, but I really don’t think that it can in any way compare with Oxford Street or Bond Street in London.