H.M.S. Illustrious

by HMS Illustrious (retail) (epub)

  Our Operations Officer seems to place great store on this bizarre method of anti-submarine defence – I have noticeably less faith.

  Much the same attitude prevails from the Ops staff during air attacks. I remember doing something on another ship – I think it was the Invincible – and within the exercise the vessel was attacked by six Buccaneers, three of which got close enough and low enough to allow members of the ship’s company to virtually count the rivets in the wings. At the Ops Officer’s debrief, it was blithely stated that three of the attacking aircraft had been engaged and shot down by our CAP Harriers – which is certainly believable – while the other three were shot down using the Sea Dart missile system – which is not. Sea Dart is very good at engaging high-flying non-manoeuvring targets – such as civil airliners – and almost completely useless at engaging low-level, high-speed manoeuvring targets like Buccaneers. I was in the ship’s Wardroom when this announcement was made over the broadcast system, and to a man, every officer in the place simply laughed out loud.

  Thursday 15th March 1984

  A change today, as I managed to persuade Mickey Brock to drag Paul Harvey up to Flyco to relieve him at lunchtime. This is a much better bet than dragging me out of bed, for several reasons – Paul enjoys doing it; it gives him a welcome break from Air Operations; he’s already awake, and so on. It still isn’t as desirable as Mickey Brock and I working a straight twelve hours each, but it’s a step in the right direction. We will, I think, be mounting a concerted attack on the new Commander (Air) once he is in the chair permanently.

  The weather has been getting progressively colder (not too surprising) as we have ventured further north, and we have been increasingly meeting snow showers, but only today has the show started to settle on the flight deck, along with a certain amount of ice formation. Today two Naval Airmen very competently demonstrated exactly how not to shift a small patch of ice – they poured a bucket of hot water over it. The result was a solid sheet of ice three times the size of the one they’d started with, and the only way to shift that was to start up a Sea Harrier on top of it, and use the jet efflux to burn it away. Funny to watch, though.

  The night was rather more eventful that usual, as we had a fairly classic case of Command over-reaction round about midnight, when the ship entered a fairly heavy snow shower, giving us much diminished visibility all round, though it was clear from radar observations that it wasn’t all that large a shower. Despite the fact that all four helicopters we had out on task had substantial endurance, the minimum being an hour, they nevertheless decided to drag all of them back, and by PVA or ELVA. A PVA (Poor Visibility Approach), which has recently been renamed ELVA (Emergency Low Visibility Approach) for reasons quite beyond any form of rational explanation, is an approach to the ship when the visibility is less than the aircraft pilot’s Limiting Visibility. His LV is based upon his instrument-flying rating, and in the case of all P1s (first pilots) on board is 0.25 nm.

  The technique is simple – the ship steams straight into wind, at high speed, thus generating a large wake astern. The aircraft is homed on radar to the centreline, where he will hopefully see the wake some distance out, and is then descended to fifty feet above sea level, and slowed right down as he closes the ship to the ship’s speed plus ten knots. When the aircraft reaches 1 nm, a smoke float is dropped over the side, with further smoke floats following every thirty seconds (according to Commander (Air)), but every twenty seconds if it’s being done properly. As a final refinement, the splash target is streamed astern at half a mile (if time permits – ours was already streamed), and all available lighting is turned up to a high, though not full brilliance – dazzling the pilot is not much help. And the pilot, hopefully, using all the visual cues, will be able to land on quite successfully. As, indeed, all four of them did.

  Command then went away and argued with itself, and by the time this process was completed, about twenty minutes later, there was not the slightest sign of a snow shower anyway, and we had unlimited visibility, so we launched them all again. Now that is what I call a truly pointless evolution.

  Further excitement occurred just as I was handing over the reins to Mickey Brock this morning, when a fire was reported in the engine bay of a Sea King on deck, but this turned out to be simply an anti-icing circuit which had been inadvertently left switched on, and which had duly burnt out.

  Friday 16th March 1984

  I was woken at about 0700 by the ship’s broadcast system, with Commander (Air) at the helm, announcing that a Sea Harrier had crashed into the sea. Further pipes followed, indicating that the aircraft was, not surprisingly, a total loss, but that the pilot was safe. Once I got up, just after lunch, more details were available.

  It seems that the pilot, Lieutenant Commander Watson (the same name, though he is no relation, as the pilot who landed his Sea Harrier on the Alraigo last year – perhaps pilots called Watson shouldn’t be allowed to fly from this ship), had been going downwind after his early morning sortie, and had in fact just checked in with Flyco to confirm that the aircraft was serviceable, when he simply said ‘Mayday’. This was followed by a bang as he ejected, and the aircraft hit the sea, flopping down on its underside. And it all happened just about as quickly as that, as it often seems to do in terminal situations.

  The ship turned towards him, the sea boat was launched, and the three airborne aircraft were pulled back to assist, and one of them in fact picked the pilot up out of the sea; we had him back on board in just eleven minutes after his ejection, which was quite good going, though speed, of course, is of the essence in these waters, as they are so cold.

  The pilot had managed to climb into his dinghy which is attached to his parachute pack, and so his survival time was obviously greatly improved over him not having managed to get into his dinghy. The one used by Harrier pilots inflates by the use of a compressed air bottle, and once inside the pilot can also inflate the floor and top-cover, in order to conserve his body heat as best he can, and it really is quite effective, as the dinghy is only just larger than his body – his worst problem is seasickness, as the thing inevitably rides over every wave crest.

  The pilot’s only injuries were to his face, which had been burned by the ignition of the MDC (Miniature Detonating Cord), which disintegrates the cockpit canopy as the first stage of the ejection process. All pilots flying fast jets are supposed to wear their clear visors down at all times, to protect their faces from precisely this injury, but inevitably the rules get ‘bent’ from time to time. The pilot said that the reason for his ejection was a total loss of power from the engine, followed by a ‘graunching’ noise, so it rather looks as if something was ingested by it – perhaps a seabird, though the vast Pegasus engine usually just chews these up and spits them out again – but if I was a betting man I’d put my money on one of the suction doors from around the engine intake.

  This would be the second time this had occurred, as we also had one ingested by a Sea Harrier on our way back from the South Atlantic after the Falklands War, but as the aircraft is now lying in over 1,000 fathoms of water (over 6,000 feet), there is no way this can be proved one way or the other.

  After this, of course, the night was all anti-climax, with the old Sea Kings continuing with their Ripple 4 programme, and the only item of note was that we were ‘buzzed’ twice by a low-flying, but unidentified, jet aircraft, which looked to me like a Corsair (which would suggest it was from the USS Independence, which is certainly within flying range), though I could not be positive as to its type. It got very close, but fortunately not when we were actually launching or recovering aircraft.

  Saturday 17th March 1984

  Another fairly quiet night, with the by now standard Ripple 4 Sea King flying programme. Met had forecasted that we would enter a major area of snow showers today, but in the event the front they had expected to hit us veered away, and it was a beautiful, clear night. The high-spot was undoubtedly the Aurora Borealis, which, as if on cue, produced a most spectacula
r display, covering large areas of the sky, and forming, dissolving and reforming with great rapidity. Very attractive to watch, though the old hands say that it’s a bit on the boring side at the moment, as it is a more or less standard delicate green in colour, and apparently the most impressive displays are not only bright enough to read a book by, but also show the primary colours – reds, blues and so on. That I would like to see, but it rather looks as if it’s a bit too late in the year now.

  Sunday 18th March 1984

  The mixture as before, the only change being that the Sea Kings were Rippling 2, rather than 4, due to our close proximity to the Norwegian coast – the Norwegian Armed Forces are governed by civilian rules and are run by unions, believe it or not, and hence do not work in the evenings or at weekends, so we had to keep outside territorial waters both with the ship and with the aircraft, as we were continuing to play our silly games. The Sea Kings, therefore, were flying as a pair, within about ten miles of the ship, but just to make things a bit more interesting, we were also arming them with torpedoes, so they were recovering every two hours for a refuel and arm or disarm evolution, so the workload in Flyco was much the same as ever. A quite pleasant night, though.

  Monday 19th March 1984

  The weather was not too good today, with a fairly high wind and quite large waves, though nothing like as bad as we experienced on the passage from Portsmouth to the Azores, for example. Nevertheless, it was quite sufficient to send the entire US Fleet running for cover in the fjords. We, of course, being British, adopted the stiff upper lip and stayed out in it, flying.

  I think we’re trying to make a point, but I’m not sure what the point actually is. In honesty the weather wasn’t all that bad, and our flying operations proceeded almost without a hitch, except when it was necessary to work on aircraft on deck, when we had to either turn the ship downwind (to reduce the wind speed over the deck) or to put the aircraft on one of the lifts and take it down into the hangar – the wind speed over the deck was reaching about forty-five knots and working on an aircraft in that sort of wind velocity is bloody dangerous, particularly if the rotors are either spread or engaged. That apart, no problems during the night.

  The days are rather more interesting than the nights at the moment, by all accounts, as there is still a healthy Russian presence in the area, and the ship is frequently buzzed by a variety of Soviet aircraft, including Bear, Badger and Coot types, as well as being approached closely by their surface units. And, of course, there is a lot of wildlife up here, puffins being fairly often seen, and a sperm whale came very close to the ship a day or two ago, which I wish I’d seen.

  I rounded off the night by doing two CCAs for the early push Sea Harriers, my first for a long time.

  Tuesday 20th March 1984

  We lost another Sea Harrier today, though only on a temporary basis, fortunately. An aircraft which had recently had an engine change on board was sent up for a check test flight (CTF), and during the course of that, the engine surged, over-heated and then flamed-out at about 40,000 feet.

  The pilot put out a Pan call, but successfully re-lit the engine at about 20,000 feet. However, he then very sensibly elected to divert ashore to the Royal Norwegian Air Force base at Andoya, where he could carry out a running landing on reduced power, rather than return to the ship, where he would be committed to using full power in a hover landing. He landed safely, and we then flew a downbird team of maintainers ashore by Sea King to check the aircraft over. The aircraft returned to the ship at about 2000 in the evening, just after I’d taken over the watch in Flyco, so I got Mickey Brock to come back up to relieve me while I went down to the Operations Room to do my third CCA of the day.

  A fairly quiet night, after that, with only a single Pan call to relieve the monotony. This was for a Sea King with a tail rotor gearbox transmission chip warning. This is one of the familiar magnetic plugs which triggers a warning if anything metallic bridges the gap between two contacts, but in the case of the tail rotor gearbox, it is taken rather more seriously than the same warnings in the main gearbox, as there is no secondary information or confirmation available. In other words, whereas in the main gearbox you also have an oil temperature gauge which might support the warning, in the tail rotor gearbox, there’s just the caption, so you have no idea whether it’s been triggered by a piece of swarf or a complete gear-wheel.

  So, we turned the ship towards him at full speed, the world appeared in Flyco to offer the usual gratuitous advice, and he landed with a total lack of drama about ten minutes after the Pan call. The only person who didn’t appear in Flyco was Mickey Brock, and he apologised for not turning up when he relieved me in the morning. As there is absolutely no point in anyone appearing in Flyco for Precautionary Landings, with the possible exception of the Squadron Senior Pilot, I agreed with him that if he didn’t get up for my Pan calls, I wouldn’t get up for his. And some fell on stony ground.

  Wednesday 21st March 1984

  I got up at lunchtime today to give Mickey Brock a short relief, as it was almost the end of the exercise, and there are good prospects for sleeping normally in the future. Actually, I was glad I did, as my short session in Flyco gave me my first actual sighting in the flesh, to coin a phrase, of Soviet aircraft. Previously I’ve only seen them in photographs or on radar and on radar one aircraft looks very much like any other, not surprisingly.

  Today, though, a pair of Badgers (these are jet bombers, and quite large aircraft) flew within about a mile of the ship, accompanied by one of our Sea Harriers and an American F15 fighter. They just did a single low pass, and then departed, but it was interesting to see the threat, as it were.

  Back up in Flyco overnight, for the final stage of the exercise, and a fairly standard sort of evening, with quite a few unserviceabilities, but with the Ripple 3 programme being fairly well maintained. The evening was somewhat enlivened by an Operation Thimblehunt, following a report from the lifebuoy sentry on the quarterdeck that he had heard a splash from the port side of the ship. It could have simply been a gash sack (which it almost certainly was), but, equally, it could have been someone out for a final midnight stroll.

  Thimblehunt is a rapid head count of the entire ship’s company, including all visitors, and we accomplished it in a very reasonable fifteen minutes or so. Each department counts its own members, and then the Departmental Co-ordinator reports the findings to the Bridge.

  While all this was going on, we had recalled the Sea Kings to the ship, and they were busy back-tracking our wake to see if anything could be seen. Of course, nothing was, fortunately, but in view of the sea temperature it is most unlikely that they would have recovered anything other than a body.

  The northern lights gave us a spectacular display, as a kind of finale to the exercise, and we were kept enthralled for about three hours by the swirling waves and ribbons above the ship. Really most impressive, and, as I’ve said before, about the only compensation for sitting up in Flyco all night, every night.

  Thursday 22nd March 1984

  Endex (End of Exercise) has to be one of the most delightful words in the English language. It’s so nice when it all stops, and it has now all stopped. I got up today at about 1200, just so that I would have a fighting chance of getting to sleep tonight, and started attacking the backlog of work in the office. This noble endeavour was rudely interrupted when we scrambled the two Alert Sea Harriers to intercept a pair of Badgers which were closing our position, and I was required up in Flyco. In fact, one of the Badgers, complete with escorting Sea Harrier, flew within about a quarter of a mile of the ship, going south, and then returned about half an hour later, still with the Harrier, but also with an American F14 from the USS Independence in company. Shortly afterwards we recovered the Sea Harriers, as the Badgers had departed the area.

  We hear that the American Admiral on the Independence is rather less than delighted that we beat them to the interception, bearing in mind that we have ten aircraft, and they have over seventy, and they
are responsible for long-range defence of the fleet. In fact, throughout this exercise we have consistently got more aircraft into the air more often than the Independence, which possibly proves something or other. The only trouble with the Sea Harrier is that it is slow (about 0.9 Mach, as compared to well over Mach 2 for the F14), with short endurance and a limited weapons fit. The F14, for example, has an onboard computer system which includes an attack computer capable of acquiring and then engaging up to nine targets simultaneously, and the aircraft carries a large enough weapons load to make such sophistication usable, including missiles of the ‘fire and forget’ type which can be launched from about eighty miles out. The Harrier has manual aiming, and has to get within about ten miles of the target before weapon release with the AIM 9L Sidewinder missile. It is, though, a good aircraft, bearing in mind the obvious size limitations of this class of ship.

  The dinner with the Kipper in the evening wasn’t too bloody, mainly because I managed to sit well away from him, and it was followed by a most rowdy night in the Mess, with 814 Squadron taking on all-comers at mess rugby – a peculiar game, owing some basic characteristics to the well-known game of rugby union, but not actually requiring a ball. We had a ball, but it was a matter of total indifference whether or not it was in play. Or even in the Wardroom. A good time, I think, was had by all.