Flyco was rather busier than usual, as the Sea Kings were Rippling 3, and coming back to refuel during each sortie as well, so there really were very few breaks of any length in the programme. I even had to eat my midnight feast in Flyco, which is not the usual routine at all.
No problems, though, apart from the usual sonar unserviceabilities we get whenever the Sea Kings go active and start ‘pinging’.
Sunday 19th February 1984
The days seem to get shorter as the nights get longer, but I think that feeling might just be because I had a lot of trouble getting off to sleep today, mainly because I didn’t actually make it into bed until almost lunchtime, and I was up again five hours later. The night, as a result, seemed very long indeed. Fortunately, the traffic loading was light, and there were no problems.
Monday 20th February 1984
I’m fairly well settled into the slightly odd routine I have to work now, and I’m sleeping quite well during the day, despite the sound of Sea Harriers lurching off the deck above my head at intervals. The night was one hour shorter, as well, which eased the pain more than somewhat, because we put the clocks forward one hour (we are now a mere four hours behind the United Kingdom).
The general boredom of a quiet night in Flyco was greatly enlivened by an incident at about 0400, when we had a Sea King recovering on board. We are at present adopting an Emcon silent posture, which means the minimum use of radios, and no radars are switched on. Practically speaking, this results in what is termed ‘Silent and Darkened’ recovery procedures, as we also use the deck lights as little as possible. An aircraft is given the ship’s position by me before getting airborne, and he knows the intended course and speed, so the Observer can work out where we should be upon his return. The procedure then is that he calls up Homer (the radar position in the Operations Room), and announces that he is on his way back to us.
Homer, without radar, as already explained, simply tells the aircraft to call at range five miles. Homer advises me, and I get the flight deck ready to receive him. At five miles, as advised by the Observer, Homer calls me, I tell the Officer of the Watch to turn the ship onto a flying course, and we switch on the ‘redtop’ (a pair of occulting red lights at the masthead) which serves to identify us positively. We hope. That stays on for thirty seconds, and then goes off. When we are steady on the flying course, I switch on all the deck lights, and the aircraft, having called visual with the ship sometime inside the five miles range that we reckon is reasonable to visually acquire us, lands on board, all without me saying a word, as I’m ‘zip-lip’ on my radio frequency. Nine times out of ten this procedure works perfectly well. This was obviously the tenth time.
The aircraft called up normally, and everything went apparently very smoothly, with the Observer announcing that they were visual, the ship getting briskly onto a flying course, the deck all ready, and so on, except that no aircraft appeared. I wasn’t unduly worried, as it was a very dark night, and more than one previous aircraft had emerged out of the gloom on short finals. However, when nobody could see any sign of him anywhere, I broke radio silence and asked him to switch on his anti-cols (anti-collision lights). I was rather tersely informed that he had switched them on ten minutes ago, which gave me pause for thought, as you can normally see these very bright flashing red lights for well over ten miles.
Where exactly, I asked him, are you? Another rather terse reply – he was in a port orbit, within one mile of the ship, waiting for us to turn onto the flying course.
But we were on the flying course, and had been for some minutes. Are you, I said, sure you’ve got the right ship? Pause. Ah, mis-ident. Do you require radar assistance? Yes. Roger, back to Homer.
We finally found him about twenty miles away, in a tight orbit round a no doubt puzzled Broadsword. Could happen to anyone, of course, but what is rather entertaining about this one is that it happened to the Senior Observer on the squadron. Chuckle, chuckle.
And then all hell broke loose when we were informed that a pair of Bear aircraft (Russian long-range bombers) had taken off from Cuba and were heading towards us. The Command, perhaps unwisely, decided to immediately launch the Alert Sea Harrier to intercept.
This involved a good deal of pandemonium on deck, as I had a helicopter about to start up in the middle of the runway, so we had to push him out of the way to get the runway clear. I say ‘unwisely’, because no one apparently worked out how far away the Bears were, and it turned out to be 900 miles, which meant that the Sea Harrier pilots could almost afford to have lunch before taking off to intercept them.
So, after sanity prevailed over panic, the Sea Harriers were stood down, and launched about an hour later, after I had gone off watch, and after, as a matter of interest, the Bears had turned away from us anyway.
An entertaining night.
Tuesday 21st February 1984
A quiet and trouble-free night, the only difficulty being that the direction the ship wished to head was diametrically opposed to the direction I wanted it to head to fly my helicopters, resulting in a good deal of discussion, if that’s the word I want, and the landings all being aft-facing.
The latter caused some of the aircrew some palpitations, and I had one Observer come all the way up to Flyco to apologise for his pilot’s performance. Was it, I asked, wind sheer? Heavens, no, he replied (or similar expletive), he’s just a complete turkey, only most turkeys fly better.
Thank you, and good night.
During the day on Tuesday, rather than during my day, which is really night, if you see what I mean, I heard of a rather interesting incident involving the frigate Sirius. One of the latest bits of electronic jiggery-pokery carried by her is a thing called a Towed Array. This device is a sonar set, basically, but represents a considerable advance over the old hull-mounted sonar outfits, as you can lower it to a pre-determined depth in the sea, and gets resulting approaching (though not quite equalling) those obtainable from the Sea King helicopter’s dunking sonar. Without going too deeply into oceanography, on the grounds that I don’t really understand it myself, you get layers (thermoclines and the like) in the sea, under, above or in which submarines can ‘hide’, as sound simply will not penetrate them. In order to spot a lurking submarine, therefore, you have to be able to physically lower your transponder to the appropriate depth before you can successfully start listening. Anyway, that’s the basic theory.
Sirius has had her TA out for most of the exercise so far, but today it suddenly stopped working. When the crew hauled it in, they found that it was fairly badly chewed. That’s chewed as in chewed with teeth. Large teeth. Large shark’s teeth, to be absolutely accurate, and they know that because the former owner left one of his teeth embedded in the rubber covering of the TA. The size of the tooth indicated that the shark was, as Sirius put it, of a Substantial Size – a smidgeon larger than the number from Jaws, I gather. Gulp. I suppose they’re lucky it wasn’t still hanging on when they hauled the TA in, otherwise we might be a frigate short by now.
The story (which I promise is true) would have been made if the sonar operators on Sirius had actually heard chewing noises before the set ceased working, but I regret to report that they didn’t.
Wednesday 22nd February 1984
Another short night, as we again motored the clocks forward one hour, and quite entertaining, with mega-crumbles all over the place as the Sea Kings switched from Active to Passive operations at the drop of a hat. Or drop of an aircrew helmet, to be more in keeping. The aircraft are usually quite reliable, once they get established in doing a particular kind of ASW operation, but switching modes tend to make sonars and radars topple with monotonous regularity. We were supposed to be Rippling 3, but on one occasion we had only one aircraft airborne, and he was on his way back with a duff bit of kit, and the deck was full of wheezing and broken helicopters.
Finally got it all together, only to have one call a ‘Pan’ with a single transmission chip warning in the main gearbox (that’s a tiny magnetic pl
ug which triggers a warning light caption if the two poles of the magnet are bridged by a piece of metal – usually a piece of swarf, but on the one thousandth time it might be a piece of gearwheel, which is why we do take it quite seriously).
The broadcast I made produced Commander (Air) in his spotted pyjamas, which is not a sight I want to see again in a hurry, but fortunately he retired back to bed as soon as the aircraft landed on safely.
Thursday 23rd February 1984
A busy, busy night, with aircraft falling apart all over the deck with considerable rapidity, degrading the intended Ripple 3 programme to a Ripple 1 at one point, though as the night wore on things gradually got better. We weren’t helped, though, by the failure of a static voltage converter somewhere in the wiring system for the SINS (Ship’s Inertial Navigation System), which caused not only our anemometers (wind speed and direction indicators) to topple, but also dragged down most other gyro-stabilised equipment with it, such as the LSO (Landing Safety Officer) sight and some of our approach lighting. Most problems were fixed quite quickly, but it took about three hours to sort out the anemometer, and in the interval we had to have a chap wandering about on deck with a hand-held item, and a torch to look at the flag and see which way the wind was blowing, as well as just reading the speed off the dial.
Friday 24th February 1984
Another night, as usual. Rippling 3, as usual. Another hour gained, not quite as usual. That’s it.
Saturday 25th February 1984
Breakfast, which more or less equates to dinner for me, was somewhat enlivened by reports of a fire in the after lift well, but these reports proved to be greatly exaggerated, and the fire turned out to be simply a good deal of smoke surrounding an over-heating electric motor. But with all the hydraulic fluid around the lifts it was a nasty moment.
The night was lively too, with a Sea King calling a Pan with an auxiliary hydraulics failure when about fifty miles to the east of us.
This is a relatively serious emergency, as flying any helicopter (with the exception of the very smallest versions) without hydraulic assistance to the flying controls is extremely difficult, if not impossible, as the loading on the controls is so high – the Wessex 5, for example, cannot be flown in manual.
The Sea King has two systems, a primary and auxiliary, and the failure of either is serious, as if the second system follows the first and topples, the aircraft has only a slim chance of getting home in one piece. So, we turned the ship towards him, said ‘sod the submarines’ (and the sleeping members of the ship’s company – which was most of them at 0400 in the morning) and steamed at full speed towards him. There was a helicopter on task with him, so he dropped everything to follow on, while on deck we cleared all the unwanted aircraft out of the way, to prepare for a running landing on board if required, and got a Sea King about to go on task fuelled up, stuck a diver in, and pointed him at the Pan aircraft too.
After that, of course, it was all anti-climax, with the aircraft making a faultless landing on board about thirty minutes later, to the evident delight of the Captain, Commander (Air), CO 814, SP 814, Lt Cdr ‘f’, ship’s cat, etc, all of whom were by that stage sitting on my shoulders watching.
It’s incredible how impending disaster brings them all crawling out of the woodwork. The only one of them I actually wanted to see was the Senior Pilot of 814, to tell me exactly what the pilot would require from the point of view of wind strength and direction, and the type of landing required. And all that I had guessed myself, and could have asked the pilot of the Pan aircraft for confirmation of anyway. A quiet night then ensued.
Sunday 26th February 1984
Another short night, as we wound the clocks forward another hour, this change putting us only one hour behind GMT; we will pick up the final hour I think at the end of February. A quiet night, too, with the Sea Kings going from a Ripple 3 to a Ripple 2 about halfway through, meaning that we had a burst of activity lasting around twenty minutes as an aircraft landed on, fuelled and changed crews, and then launched, followed by a period of a little over two hours when nothing happened, after which the other aircraft would do the same thing. As a bonus, the wind was right in the east, and the ship was heading east, so there were only very small alterations to the ship’s heading for each evolution.
The quiet bit finished at just after five, when it was decided to bring another Sea Harrier up on deck and to Alert 30 (we already had one at Alert 45 on deck), when it was discovered that the forward aircraft lift wouldn’t work – the hydraulically-driven keeps wouldn’t disengage – leading to acrimonious discussions and various attempts to find ways round the problem. Fortunately, though, the problem was cured, and deck moves were then able to be carried out.
Then we brought the Alert 30 aircraft to Alert 5, and almost immediately after that we were told to launch it as soon as possible. And, while all that was going on, a lurid green light on the port beam seemed to indicate that a submarine had found us an over-tempting target, so we took the usual violent evasive action. Then they (in this case ‘they’ is one of the American ships in company, which is in charge of our fixed wing aircraft at the moment) decided not to launch the Sea Harriers after all. At that juncture, Mickey Brock appeared with Commander (Air) in tow and I retired gratefully to my cabin – particularly gratefully as I had been feeling fairly rough for most of the night, and the prospect of even lying down for a few minutes was extremely attractive.
Monday 27th February 1984
Quite a busy night, though not particularly from a flying point of view. We had been scheduled to carry out a RAS with the USS Truckee more or less at first light, but we ran into her, metaphorically speaking, in the late evening, and the decision was taken to carry out the RAS as soon as possible to get it out of the way. Pipes were accordingly made, and the whole world fell in on the Bridge, the place knee-deep in Commanders.
The RAS went off without any hitches, and actually made my job rather easier, as the RAS course (the course that both Illustrious and the Truckee would steer) was also the flying course. It had to be, of course, as what you don’t really want to do is weave about all over the ocean when the two ships are linked up, but it meant that recoveries and launches went rather smoother than usual. Once the RAS finished, of course, we were back to the usual wrangling over courses, with the added spice that the RAS had taken us some distance out of our ‘box,’ and so we had to make up as much ground as we could. The ‘box’ referred to there is part of our anti-submarine defence system. Basically, every ship in the force is allocated a sector
or part of a box to stay within, and within which the ship is required to steam in a zig-zag or other defensive pattern, while at the same time moving forward (as does the box or screen) at a pre-determined speed. To further complicate things, each ship will also be limited as to its maximum speed – the faster you go, the more noise you make, and the more likely submarines are to find you.
So, typically, the ship might be required to sail at no more than eighteen knots; the box might be moving east at fourteen knots, and the flying course is due west at ten knots. There you have the problem that if you’re doing a standard six-minute zig-zag, at eighteen knots, your speed of advance is probably only about fifteen to sixteen knots, and the moment you turn to the flying course, all the ground that you’ve made up goes straight out of the window. Quite literally, turning to launch one helicopter (and I make it a point of professional pride to ensure that I can launch with the ship on the flying course for no more than ten seconds) loses the ship about five track miles. It’s one of the problems for which there really is no solution, except to be as slick and efficient as possible.
Talking of submarines, we’re not doing too badly in the battle at the moment, though about a week ago the USS Skipjack’s periscope was observed astern of us by a Naval Airman talking the air on the quarterdeck – it was some consolation to discover that she had been ‘sunk’ three times already. However, luck has played a very considerable part in our effort
s so far: one of our Sea Kings was pottering off on task when a submarine fired a green grenade almost directly underneath it (indicating that the submarine had fired at a ship target). The Sea King immediately dropped down to the hover and ‘sank’ it forthwith. Then another helicopter, which had brought an American casualty to Illustrious, spotted a periscope on its way back home, called in the cavalry, and we despatched that one as well.
Then an MPA (Maritime Patrol Aircraft – an American P3 Orion) misread his co-ordinates, and laid a sonobuoy barrier (a line of passive listening devices) one degree out, and again found that he was almost directly on top of a submarine. All, in short, found by luck, not judgement. I did suggest to one of our anti-submarine experts that this run of success might well mean that we ought to keep dice, a crystal ball and some chicken bones in the Operations Room, so that at the crucial moment of the hunt we could roll the dice, toss the bones, or whatever, and get some inspired guidance as to the direction the hunt should take. Rather worryingly, he thought it a pretty reasonable suggestion.
You can tell that this exercise is getting to people now. Paul Harvey, the other ATCO on board, spends his working hours down in Air Operations, sorting out the Flypro (Flying Programme), and at frequent intervals his voice can be heard over the Air Department broadcast saying ‘All positions, Air Ops, stand by Flypro change’ as it all turns to worms about his ears.
H.M.S. Illustrious Page 21