After each change, he has to get an acknowledgement from each position, and last evening his patter went ‘Bridge acknowledge’ – ‘Bridge’; ‘Flyco’ – ‘Flyco’; ‘Number 1 Briefing Room’ – ‘Number 1’; ‘Number 2’ – ‘Number 2’; ‘Air Director’ – ‘Air Director’; ‘ACR’ – ‘ACR’. That’s the normal list.
This time he added ‘Ship’s Cat’, but instead of the silence he was expecting, one person acknowledged as ‘Ship’s Cat’, and two other people went ‘Miaow’.
May the Russians tremble.
Tuesday 28th February 1984
Our route so far has taken us from Norfolk to the south-east, and then east, across to the Azores, and yesterday we were as close to them as we were going to get, being a mere 200 miles to the south of the group of islands. This easterly track is the reason that we have been winding on hours as rapidly as we have, but now we are going to start tracking north, and fairly quickly. Our future route, roughly, is that we continue north to the west coast of Scotland (we have a mail collection scheduled for Stornoway) before going north-west through the Iceland/Faroes Gap, and from there up into the Arctic Circle, to the vicinity of the Lofoten Islands, before reversing south for Bergen. It’s going to be cold and rough for the month of March, by the looks of things.
Mail has been a bit of a headache, particularly over the last few days, as we had organised a pick-up from the Azores which would have brought us right up to date with mail from home. Due to a quite horrendous cock-up by the Americans, all thirty-eight bags of mail for Illustrious, and all the mail for the rest of the group, was put into the USS Saipan in the Azores, and she, by some bizarre quirk of fate, then left the area at full speed, destination Portsmouth, of all places.
She will be met on arrival by an angry member of FOF3’s staff, who will accompany the mail directly to Stornoway, where we will pick it up on the 5th of March. As can be imagined, there are a lot of very irritated people on board at the moment, and I don’t somehow think that the crew of the USS Saipan are the top of anyone’s list. Apart from a hit list, of course.
The night passed without interest or incident, and was an hour shorter than last night – we have now caught up with UK time – though this bonus was neatly eliminated when I had to return to Flyco to relieve Mickey Brock for breakfast, and I ended up staying in Flyco for a little over thirteen hours in total.
On the other hand, I was fortunate enough to see daylight at the end of my watch – the only time I have since leaving Norfolk, with the exception of my infrequent constitutionals on the quarterdeck after breakfast. Nice to know that the sun is still shining.
Wednesday 29th February 1984
A lousy night – I felt dreadful, and went straight to bed when I came off watch.
Thursday 1st March 1984
The mixture as before. I got through the night, and then went straight to bed, but at about 1600, when I woke up, I realised that there was no way I was going to be able to make it to Flyco, so I stayed in bed and asked Peter Glew to come and give me a once-over.
My temperature, he found, was 39.5° C, which is, he said only half a degree below the point at which he would stick me in a cold bath and start giving me injections to try to bring it down. I will not be in Flyco for some time.
He informed the PMO, who in turn informed Commander (Air) and Lieutenant Commander (Flying), and the upshot was that Paul Harvey was dragged up to Flyco to deputise for me, and allowed to go solo after a ten minute session with Wings sitting behind him.
Friday 2nd March, 1984
In bed, swallowing tablets, drinking fruit juice and not eating. Not nice at all.
Saturday 3rd March 1984
Still in bed. No improvement.
Sunday 4th March 1984
Still in bed. Without any doubt, the worst bout of ‘flu, or whatever the hell it is, that I have ever had.
Monday 5th March 1984
In bed. The good news is that we anchored off Stornoway and finally received in the ship all the mail that we had whisked from our grasp in the Azores.
Tuesday 6th March 1984
Starting to feel a little better, though honestly not much. I did eat a little, though, for the first time for a week, so I’m obviously on the mend, albeit slowly.
Wednesday 7th March 1984
Feeling rather better. I stayed in bed for most of the day, just getting up and pottering about the cabin, tidying some of the mess up, and bringing this diary up to date. I hope to be able to get up and get dressed tomorrow, and probably work tomorrow night, but we’ll see how it goes.
Thursday 8th March 1984
Well, I got up, still feeling about strong enough to punch my way out of a wet paper bag, though slowly, and probably with help, and got things sorted out in my cabin during the day, having a very small lunch and dinner to get my stomach used to food again. Then up to Flyco, where a busy night followed.
The excitement started rather earlier, though, with a Submiss signal. All submarines make regular signalled reports to their operating authorities, just to confirm that all is well, and if signals are not received, then the worst is assumed until any other indication is found.
In this case, U26 had missed its signal, and as a result the exercise was temporarily suspended, and all available units were despatched at full speed to the submarine’s operating area, while all other submarines in the area were instructed to surface. The latter is an obvious precaution – if you find a submerged object, you want to be fairly certain it’s the one you’re looking for, and not just some other submarine still playing cowboys and indians. Fortunately, in this case, the submarine turned up, after having had some sort of engine trouble, so all was well, and we returned to our blasted exercise.
We were Rippling 3, just for a change, to provide us with the maximum amount of ASW cover possible, as we were in a ‘breakout’ phase – trying to escape from an area through a very narrow channel (in oceanographic terms).
This meant going along at full speed, about twenty-nine knots, doing a very rapid zig-zag, and generally trying to act like a frigate. We went silent on all radars and radios, as these would have been a dead giveaway (we had earlier detected a Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine on the surface by detecting its radar emissions), and the USS Kidd was acting as a pseudo-carrier some thirty miles away, with our helicopters flying round her. Obviously we were still launching and recovering aircraft, but in totally silent conditions. In fact, it all worked quite well, despite the intensity of the programme, with only one sortie being lost, due to the ship simply not being able to provide a suitable wind for the launch – as usual, we were going east, and the wind was westerly. A very successful night, really.
The other excitement was a hangar fire – or what we thought was a hangar fire. Fortunately it simply turned out to be some hot and smoking wiring in the battery compartment of a Sea King in the centre of the hangar. Just as well, as the hangar was absolutely full of aircraft, and shifting them to get at the offending Sea King could have been extremely difficult at best.
As well as embarking mail on the 5th, we had also embarked an enhanced Air Group, and as well as our five 800 NAS Sea Harriers and nine 814 NAS Sea Kings, we also now have five Sea Harriers of 899 NAS on board (making ten in all), and three Sea Kings of 810 NAS (a total of twelve). That gives us twenty-two aircraft on board in all, and for a ship designed originally to operate a mere fourteen aircraft, it’s a bit of a squeeze.
Friday 9th March, 1984
A very quiet night indeed, from a flying point of view, as there wasn’t any. Not by intent, though, but simply because the dreaded fog came down and it was simply impossible to recover aircraft in the kind of visibility we had. Launching would have been no problem, but getting the aircraft back on board was definitely looking rather shaky.
So, I watched the Wardroom film in the evening – a rather peculiar kind of gangster effort with Richard Harris, of all people, in the leading role. It had its moments, but it was definitely one of those fi
lms worth seeing, but not worth going to see – and spent the rest of the time down in the Office getting abreast of the signal situation.
Saturday 10th March 1984
Not so quiet, as there was a bright moon, high winds and not a trace of fog. Things started off normally, with a standard Ripple 3 programme, then reduced to a Ripple 2, and as soon as we had got that running well, back to a Ripple 3 again. And, of course, by that time I had the deck full of Sea Harriers in preparation for the morning maxi-push, and so it turned into a busy night, one way and another.
The last straw was a Sea King which appeared on deck at around midnight for an engaged ground run (a check run with its rotors turning), and which was then unable to fold again. The maintainers spent nearly five hours trying to persuade the thing to play, with no success, and they finally removed both the offending rotor blades – or, at least, that was what they were trying to do when I handed over to Lt Cdr ‘f’ and departed the fix.
Sunday 11th March 1984
Tonight should have been fairly busy, as the Sea Kings were Rippling 4, but everything went very smoothly, and it really was extremely painless.
A beautiful night, too, with bright moonlight and a very early dawn – the sun didn’t rise until a little after 0600, by which time I had departed Flyco for my bed, but it was just about light enough to read by 0500.
Nil wind and a flat calm sea made it all really most attractive-looking, but it is bloody cold out there at the moment, as we get further and further north.
Monday 12th March 1984
The nights, from my point of view, are getting progressively shorter, as I am still relieving Lieutenant Commander (Flying) as soon as the Sea Harriers stop flying – usually at about 1930 – and he relieves me just before the first fixed wing launch of the morning – about 0530. A good deal for me, but not quite so good for him.
A couple of small snippets concerning our Soviet comrades. As I’ve mentioned before, the moment any Western navy warship or warships put to sea, a Russian escort appears close behind (or sometimes actually in the fleet formation) and stays with them until they re-enter home waters. We’ve gone through quite a selection of vessels, starting with the usual intelligence-gathering ‘trawlers’ when we were in the mid-Atlantic phase of the exercise, and we are now being offered a selection of rather more interesting vessels, like Kashin-class destroyers, and so on. One of the things the Soviets have always been very impressed with are our methods of RAS (Replenishment At Sea) with the ships alongside.
They RAS as well, of course, but almost invariably by the astern method – the donor vessel floating the RAS hose astern until it can be picked up by the recipient ship – but this is a lot slower and less efficient than our method. Hence their interest. I am given to understand that yesterday a Russian ship (I think a Krivak) popped up close to a pair of American ships which were RASing, and promptly burst into flames.
That’s a slight exaggeration, perhaps, but the flames were sufficiently large to be seen from both the US Navy ships, and as the fire, more or less by definition, had to have started from within the ship, that’s quite a big fire. Another American vessel pitched up alongside and asked if they required any assistance – this offer was declined with the usual icy politeness and a certain amount of embarrassment, and the Russian turned gently away and departed, still smoking heavily. We just hope he’s now got his problems sorted out, though the worst of his difficulties will probably start when he gets back home.
Then there is the Russian Delta-class submarine making its way back home on the surface. We have no reason to suspect that it has any major problem, forcing it to remain surfaced, but it has been away from port since July 1983, and we suspect that it probably stinks a bit inside by now. I think our submariners have a pretty raw deal when it comes to time at sea and time alongside, but they really do have an easy life compared to the Russians. We know they left Russia in July, as all Soviet submarine movements are tracked using all available aids – satellite photography and intelligence-gathering devices, as well as other submarines, surface vessels and arrays of passive listening devices on the seabed – and we also know where and when they put into port, and this one quite definitely hasn’t.
The definite high-spot of the night, though, was my first sight of the Aurora Borealis, that peculiarly beautiful and little-understood phenomenon of the polar regions (the southern Aurora is properly called the Aurora Australis). I was rapidly putting myself outside my midnight snack when Mike Vine, the Met forecaster, popped his head round the door and requested that we let him know if the Aurora got any brighter. As I hadn’t even noticed the thing, I finished eating fairly rapidly, and then legged it back up to Flyco (I eat at midnight in the Bridge Mess, two decks below Flyco).
And there, high in the sky, were a series of faintly luminous streamers of light, in the general form of a ribbon, or perhaps the bottom of a curtain. As we watched, they rapidly changed colour and shape, altering almost as if affected by the wind, though they weren’t, of course. The predominant colour was green, I suppose, though the display was really quite faint and it was not possible to see too clearly. Very beautiful, though, and I am now rather looking forward to going on watch again (a virtual heresy to say that), in case I see the same sort of thing again.
Tuesday 13th March 1984
A rather dull and overcast night, and with not an Aurora in sight. The Sea Kings were, as usual, Rippling 4 throughout the night, and there were no problems with the exception of the usual very minor unserviceabilities.
A funny or two occurred, though. In a probably vain attempt to be ‘tactical’, we virtually never pass ranges or bearings in clear on radio nets – instead we rely on both RAMROD and COVEC. COVEC, to start at the end, is simply a specified distance and bearing which are either added to or subtracted from the bearing and distance you wish to pass over the net. To explain that perhaps confusing statement, if the COVEC is + 20 and - 10 nm, and you want to pass a ship’s position to the controller, and that ship’s position is, say, 180 degrees and 45 nm from Illustrious, then using COVEC you add 20 degrees and subtract 10 nm, passing the position as 200 degrees and 35 nm. The controller then simply does the same sum in reverse, hopefully ending up with the figure that you started with. The COVEC is changed every twenty-four hours, of course.
As an alternative, you can use RAMROD. This is simply the numbers 0 to 9 being represented by a simple ten-letter words or words, again being changed every twenty-four hours. Sample words and phrases are WRNSLOVEIT and PILOTSWANK – the Royal Navy’s preoccupation with sex being very much apparent, though quite seriously it has been found that aircrew have a rather better chance of remembering what the RAMROD code is if it’s either filthy or funny, or, better still, both. Using the RAMROD code PILOTSWANK, you pass a range, say, as RAMROD Sierra, and the controller then decodes this as five miles.
Just recently we’ve had a small spate of both pilots and controllers doing it all wrong – coming up and saying ‘RAMROD Sierra’ and the controller replying ‘Ah, five miles, roger’ and so on. And in one case the pilot passed his range as ‘RAMROD five’, which must have confused the enemy, because it certainly confused us. All good fun.
The latest little irritation in Flyco is that Commander (Air), now known almost universally as the Kipper Fillet (two-faced, no brains, guts or backbone) has decided, after prompting, that Lieutenant Commander (Flying) was working too long in Flyco. Mickey Brock and I got together and thought that the most sensible option would be for us to simply work a straight twelve hours about each, with the changeover time being 0730 and 1950. That would give us both a reasonable amount of sleep, and the opportunity to get on with our other work.
That, of course, proved to be far too simple, and the solution being worked at present is that I have to get up at lunchtime and relieve Mickey Brock for about an hour. This has, quite obviously, achieved a good deal less than nothing, as now neither of us are going to get an uninterrupted sleep, and Mickey Brock’s day is ju
st as long as it was before. The reason for this non-decision is that it apparently, by some mechanism which is not clear to me, makes a substantial difference to one’s ability to launch Sea Harriers if one has attended an early morning briefing on the tactical situation. That makes as much sense as saying that you need to know the exact passenger list in order to successfully give take-off clearance to the New York Concorde at Heathrow. I give up. I will, however, be taking this matter further.
Wednesday 14th March 1984
Defying the odds, I got up at lunchtime to relieve Mickey Brock. And, even more against the odds, I managed to launch a pair of Sea Harriers despite having not the slightest knowledge of what they were getting airborne to do. They seemed to get off the deck very much the same way as normal, but presumably if I’d known they were going off on CAP they would have taken off quicker. Or slower. Or with a shorter deck run or something.
Of course, having been in Flyco for an hour or so, it was quite impossible for me to then get back to sleep again, so I was quite tired when I finally went back on watch in the evening after dinner. Fortunately, it was a quiet night, enlivened only by us being sunk twice, once as I was taking over Flyco from Mickey Brock, when the green grenade was fired from about two miles on our port side, and once in the early hours of the morning, when it was fired from about half a mile directly astern. As at least two submarines have clearly penetrated our ASW defences (and I have a feeling there was another green grenade earlier in the day), our only form of counter is now the Operations Officer, who will attempt to ‘talk us out’ of the situation, and show that although the submarine got into a suitable firing position undetected and was able to launch a weapon at us, for some reason the torpedo would have malfunctioned. Or missed. Or run out of fuel. Or self-destructed. Or something.
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