Friday 23rd March 1984
A quiet day, just on passage to Bergen; though the afternoon was again disrupted by a launch of the Alert Sea Harriers to intercept some more of our Soviet playmates. We have this wonderful device in the Operations Room called the UAA1, which is basically a radar and radio frequency analyser. It ‘listens’ within a pre-set bracket, and the moment it ‘hears’ a radar, for example, it provides a detailed analysis of the characteristics of that radar, thus identifying it. This of course is also the reason the Russians are always following us about the place – they are recording our radar emissions as well, so that in the event of war they can positively identify this ship.
We have accurate parameters for most Russian radar sets, ship-borne and air-borne, and this afternoon we detected Big Bulge. That isn’t what the Russians call it, but it is our code name for it, and that particular radar lives under the chin of a Bear bomber. So we pushed the Sea Harriers up aloft. They did very well, in fact, getting airborne in twenty-three minutes, despite being at Alert 45 when the scramble was called.
The Wardroom was a scene of some devastation tonight, with human wreckage all over the place, as it was a Mess Dinner night for 814. The rest of us ate early, to give them a clear field in the Wardroom, and I played bridge until they erupted back into the Anteroom, when I retired to bed, for safety.
Saturday 24th March 1984
We arrived at Bergen about mid-morning – a beautiful clear day, but very cold. Bergen, from the ship, looks small and not too interesting, though the scenery around the place is as spectacular as Norway usually is. I hope to be able to get ashore for a walk perhaps tomorrow, though a lot depends upon my success or otherwise in reducing the size of my In-tray.
To comprehensively foul up my plans for Bergen, the new Commander (Air) (the Kipper will be departing the ship upon arrival back in Portsmouth) arrived on board today, two days earlier than we had anticipated, so all the work I have been given to do ready for his arrival on the 26th will now have to be done as soon as possible, so it looks as if a brief walk is about all I am likely to be able to manage here. Unfortunately, the Kipper gave me a bloody great pile of things which needed bringing up to date, weeding and so on, and there really is a good two days’ work there, but no two days in which to do it. If he’d given it to me a week ago, it would have been no real problem.
The new Commander (Air) seems, upon a first impression, to be a most likeable chap – I gave him a very rapid tour of the ship just after he arrived, and as well as being pleasant, he also demonstrated a depth of knowledge and interest not so far exhibited by the Kipper, so I get the definite feeling that my last few weeks on this ship might be a lot more enjoyable and interesting than the previous two years have been. Of course, first impressions aren’t everything, but at least the signs are good.
I think, too, that there might well be a good many changes about the place – he seemed quite appalled that I worked in Flyco all night and Mickey Brock worked there all day. We’ll see.
A few of the chaps nipped off ashore today, and came back telling dire tales of the prices – three postcards and stamps for £1-50; a pint of lager for £2-50, and so on – and as a result the Wardroom was absolutely packed tonight, as it’s the only place anyone can afford to drink round here. I had a game of bridge, and then retired to bed early, as we motor the clocks forward an hour tonight, and tomorrow looks like being a long day, getting everything sorted out for Commander Quarrie.
Sunday 25th March 1984
A quiet day, from my point of view, as both the Commander (Air)s had vanished into the middle distance – the Kipper apparently to go skiing, judging by the blue romper number he was wearing in the Wardroom just before lunch. I’m now getting on top of the hand-over work, and I do have some vague hopes of being able to get ashore in the near future myself, with a bit of luck.
The ship itself was fairly busy, as we were open to visitors, which meant a seemingly never-ending stream of Norwegians rolling up the gangways to look around, and a large proportion of the ship’s company was employed to keep an eye on them all. The weather was not good – not actually snowing, but certainly trying to most of the time – and I think this may have caused a rather larger number of visitors to appear than expected, as there wasn’t much else to do in Bergen on a grey Sunday afternoon. I’m not convinced that there is much else to do in Bergen even on a sunny Sunday afternoon, in fact, but I may be maligning the place unjustly.
Monday 26th March 1984
Another relatively busy day, still getting things sorted out for the new Commander (Air), though I am now more or less on top of the work. I had hoped to be able to go ashore this afternoon for a walk (it was a fairly bright and relatively warm day), but a series of last-minute hitches very effectively prevented me.
This evening the Wardroom held its official reception effort, which was fortunately on a volunteer basis, and so I was not involved, and four of us retired to one of the Admiral’s Offices up on 3 deck and played a few hands of bridge before retiring to the Wardroom at about 2050, when the ‘do’ had finished, in order to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. Despite the fact that I’ve seen the film numerous times, I still find it most enjoyable.
Tuesday 27th March 1984
And today I finally managed to get ashore, for about three hours. I had a swift lunch, and then went walkies. The shops were much as I had expected, though the prices didn’t seem to me to be quite as high as I had been anticipating, though a lot depended upon what you were looking for.
Certainly I could find nothing here priced either cheaper, or as cheap as, Britain, and drink prices were through the roof – even with my limited knowledge of the subject that was obvious.
Bergen turned out to be rather bigger than I expected, with quite large areas of the town completely hidden from view from the harbour where, by the way, we have now been joined by the USS Mount Whitney, one of the US Navy’s very specialised Command and Control vessels. The traffic was very heavy, and the very characteristic hum of studded tyres was quite obvious from virtually every vehicle with the exception of motorcycles.
After walking round the harbour and doing my swift shopex, I then paid over 15 kroner (a little under £1-50, and my sole expense in Norway), and ascended the funicular railway called the Fløibanen to the Bergen national park area, situated some 320 metres above sea level and directly overlooking the entire town of Bergen. The trip up only takes about five minutes, and was itself quite interesting, looking at the different views of Bergen as the funicular ascended.
Once at the top station, the views were really spectacular, and it was just a pity that it was a slightly hazy day, and the mountains surrounding Bergen (all seven of them) were not in clear view. The two things that most struck me about the park though were the snow and ice – it was very slippery indeed – and the utter silence. After the noises on the ship and the roar of traffic in Bergen itself, it really was deafeningly quiet. Hardly a soul about, either, and I had a very pleasant walk through the woods in the crisp snow, staying clear of the paths as much as possible, and just revelling in the peace and quiet.
A very pleasant end to the afternoon.
Wednesday 28th March 1984
Another day, a bit more work and our final departure from a foreign port on this trip. All very low-key, really, as we slipped and proceeded at about 1750, heading out of the harbour at Bergen and through the fairly narrow channels towards the open sea. It really is very pleasant to be at sea again, now that we are finally heading for home at last.
The Kipper said farewell to the entire Air Department in the hangar this evening. It wasn’t the most exciting of farewell speeches, by a very substantial margin, but it did at least have the merit of being short – a good thing, we all thought, as it was fairly parky there.
Thursday 29th March 1984
A very busy day for me, running round doing the ‘in with the new, out with the old’ routine – getting things finalised for the old Commander (Air) a
nd getting things started for the new Commander (Air). My feet touched the ground in spots, and only infrequently.
In the evening, we had a final Air Department dinner, with the Kipper presiding, which was actually quite pleasant, with none of the drama and general blood-letting I had been expecting. Afterwards, a prolonged evening of bridge followed, while the ship blasted south at about twenty-two knots for Portsmouth.
Friday 30th March 1984
Home at last. The morning was apparently enlivened by an assault on the ship by the SBS (Special Boat Service), as a training run for them, but by the time I emerged it was all over. A final burst of running round, for the Kipper, of course, who still seems quite incapable of doing anything at all for himself, and then leave. Delightful.
A Mediterranean Spring
Wednesday 25th April 1984
After a leave that was all too brief, Illustrious slipped and proceeded a little after 1000, rounding the Isle of Wight and then heading south-west in order to embark the Air Group. The early afternoon was considerably enlivened by a small fire in a transformer on 2 deck,
which produced a certain amount of running at speed in all directions, but which was, fortunately, extinguished without causing any damage – apart from that already caused to the transformer, of course.
The Air Group duly arrived; the Sea Harriers from Yeovilton first, followed by the Sea Kings from Culdrose, though not without some aggravation, as we only recovered four of the planned five Sea Harriers – the Senior Pilot’s aircraft had failed to start for some complicated electrical reason, and so he remained stuck on shore until the early evening.
We had our usual crowd of visitors, including some representatives of Mr Egon Ronay, who were presumably on board to make sure that we were eating enough greens. They all flew ashore in late afternoon in 814 NAS Sea Kings, and these aircraft recovered to the ship at about 2100, when I had taken over in Flyco from Mickey Brock. The recovery was interesting, as we were already behind schedule, and had to cover distance at a quite remarkable rate of knots in order to make some sort of rendezvous thing in the early hours of the morning, so we were not able to turn the ship into wind to land them on. As a result, we dropped them (one at a time) onto the after end of the flight deck, landing them across-deck, facing port after an approach from starboard. All most interesting to watch from the safety of Flyco.
The Wardroom video was Firefox, which is, by a very substantial margin, not the best film Clint Eastwood has ever made, and since I sat and suffered through it in the past, I retired to bed with a good book.
Thursday 26th April 1984
A splendid day from the point of view of the weather, and pretty good in most other ways as well, though Flyco was fairly busy with the vast (and quite inevitable) number of DLP sorties required. DLPs (Deck Landing Practice) are always essential after even quite a short period ashore, just to get the aircrew back into the habit of landing on a bit of steel plate heaving about in the ocean, rather than a nice stable piece of concrete in darkest Cornwall. No obvious problems, though, and a fairly gentle introduction to the delights of the exercises to come.
We held the pre-exercise briefings on board Illustrious this afternoon, which meant that we were visited by a selection of different aircraft carrying the Commanding Officers of the other ships in company with us – we had a Lynx from Danae, a Wessex 5 from Resource and a Wasp from Achilles, and we should have had another Lynx from Sirius, but this aircraft didn’t turn up (perhaps they forgot about it).
One slightly odd feature about this particular exercise is that we are the enemy – we are simulating a Soviet Kiev-class aircraft carrier – and we will be attacking the good guys in due course. We expect that as we are the aggressors we will have a rather quieter exercise than usual, but events may well prove us wrong (they have frequently in the past).
We held a practise Emergency Stations this morning, which involved walking to the hangar and standing there in clumps for a seemingly interminable length of time. Not the most inspiring of exercises, and I hope we never do it for real, because if we do it means that a swimming session is more or less compulsory, and imminent.
Showing a marked improvement in taste, the evening video was called The In-laws, with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, and a highly enjoyable film it was. I was only able to watch it courtesy of the Met forecaster, who had obligingly told dire tales of fog forming, with the result that the scheduled night flying was cancelled.
Friday 27th April 1984
The exercise started today, which at least meant an end to the DLP circuits on the flight deck, as we started punching both the Sea Kings and Sea Harriers off into the middle distance to seek out the ‘enemy’, and with some success. We haven’t, as far as I know, actually engaged any other vessels yet, but I understand that we have succeeded in identifying a few juicy capitalist targets.
The action, such as it is, is all taking place in the eastern Atlantic – since leaving Britain we have been heading south-west and then south, and we are now in quite warm waters somewhere between the Azores and the coasts of Portugal and Morocco. I gather that our intention is to harass and sink ships of a Western convoy running into the Mediterranean from the United States. What fun.
A fairly quiet day, overall, and a fairly early finish as well, because instead of fruitlessly pursuing non-existent submarines about the place, we reverted to an Alert posture after the final bunch of Sea Harriers and a lone Sea King had recovered on board at about 2200. I stayed up (having grabbed a brief sleep this afternoon) to try to get into the right frame of mind for watch-keeping (if there is a right frame of mind for it) and took the opportunity to try to get a bit of the inevitable paperwork out of the way.
Saturday 28th April 1984
Up all night, as the Sea Kings remained at Alert 30 overnight, which is precisely calculated to ensure that if you go to bed you won’t be able to get up and get dressed in time to launch them, but the time was of value to me as I got a considerable amount of typing out of the way. In fact, it rather locks as if we will not be doing a great deal of night flying as we are an Orange vessel, so I think a quiet exercise is the order of the day.
After sleeping all morning, I returned to Flyco for the afternoon, to get properly into the swing of handling Sea Harriers, though we still have to decide exactly what watch-keeping system we are going to end up working. All should become clear over the next day or so.
Back up into Flyco for the evening push (of a mere two aircraft), and after that it all ground to a halt, with the Sea Kings and the Sea Harriers at very low Alert states – very gratifying, because it meant a night in bed rather than a night wandering round the ship working.
Sunday 29th April 1984
It really is rather enjoyable, being the enemy, as again we had a nice quiet day, just waiting for the chance to mount an attack as we got within striking distance of the Blue forces, once hostilities had actually broken out – up to now we have been only in the tension phase. I spent most of the morning up in Flyco, and then retired to bed in the afternoon, as the plan at that stage was to Ripple 2 Sea Kings throughout the night.
In fact, this intention turned rapidly to worms, and once the final Sea King had recovered on board at 2130, we reverted again to an Alert posture. I stayed up, though, as the Sea Kings were at Alert 30, and I had a fair amount of work to get through as well. Also, by staying up overnight, I get to sleep tomorrow morning, and that’s when the ship is holding a major NBCDX, and I think sleeping through things like that is a far better bet than actually taking part in them.
I did get to see the majority of the Wardroom video – Dirty Harry – which I thoroughly enjoyed (again). We seem to be getting a rather better deal with regard to videos on this trip than the last few times out, but I don’t suppose that will last too long.
Monday 30th April 1984
After the long night, the long sleep. Of course, not too long, as I kept on getting woken up by odd pipes (some very odd indeed) and the sound of Sea Har
riers taking off and so on, but a pretty good sleep for all that. Again I spent most of the afternoon up in Flyco, and again it was fairly quiet, with a minimum of air activity, bearing in mind the fact that we are in the middle of an exercise.
One point of interest about the ship is that we are now limited to three engines, rather than four, as one of our Olympus engines has suffered a fairly major mechanical failure, and has to be replaced. This operation is going to be carried out while at sea – only the second time it has ever been done. The first time was on Invincible when she was in the South Atlantic during the Falklands conflict. It will, though, be our second engine change, as we swapped one when in Portsmouth some time ago. The ship actually carries two spare engines, one in each of the two engine rooms, and the replacement is a fairly simple, though quite lengthy, task.
Back up to Flyco for the evening, and the early secure I had expected (the two Sea Kings on task returned on board at 2030) turned to worms when we launched a further pair from Alert 30 at just after 2100. These also returned, having failed to find the submarine, at midnight, and there was a proposal to send them back out again immediately, mainly because the extremely sneaky submarine captain obviously waited until the helicopters had left the area, and then attacked the ships. However, it was decided not to bother, because by the time the Sea Kings could have returned to the scene of the submarine’s depredations, either the escort ships would have sunk it, or they wouldn’t have, and it would be long gone. So, we went back to Alert 30, thankfully.
H.M.S. Illustrious Page 24