The wind was quite strong overnight, and was the cause of a certain amount of irritation. Obviously, sitting on my backside in Flyco, I have to plan ahead, and when the Met section forecast a wind of about twenty-five knots from the east, and the ship’s intended course is west, the idea of aft-facing landings is obviously worth considering. Basically, if you have a 25 knot wind from behind the ship, and the ship is doing ten knots, the net result is that you effectively have a wind of fifteen knots from astern, and it is quite easy to land aircraft on facing the stern. With less than about twenty-five knots it isn’t possible, as the ship will begin to lose some steerage way (and hence not be able to precisely maintain direction) below ten knots, and fifteen knots is the minimum wind speed for a maximum-weight Sea King to launch.
So, the Officer of the Watch and I did our sums together, decided it was ‘on’, and I accordingly briefed the Air Director, the Squadron and Air Operations. Twenty minutes later, the first aircraft arrived; the ship altered course, and we found that we could manage to get exactly four knots from astern, with the ship virtually stopped in the water! The damn wind had decayed from twenty-five knots to six knots in about fifteen minutes. Not impressed. After that we stuck to forward-facing landings for the rest of the night, and the wind, of course, immediately leapt back up to twenty-five knots, but we were no longer interested in playing.
Then we had a fire in the MCO (Main Communication Office) right in the centre of the ship. This turned out to be a little less dramatic than it sounds, as the fire in fact was an over-heating cabinet which had started smoking, but it still produced a certain amount of running at speed in all directions, as a fire at sea can be very nasty indeed. The offending cabinet was secured, switched off, cooled or whatever the Chaps That Know About These Things decided was the correct course of action, and the emergency was over.
Round about dawn we had a couple of visitors – the Lynx from Sirius, which has apparently sustained some sort of panel damage, and which was coming to us, as the nearest garage, so to speak, to have it all fixed. That will probably remain on board for at least the rest of the day, depending upon how long the damage takes to repair.
The other visitor was ‘No Rush Floyd’, the RFA Resource Wessex, bringing some radar parts from the UK (which we presume they collected from Gibraltar, though we’re not too sure exactly where Resource has been for the last few days), and some mail. The latter was a good deal more welcome than the former.
We have also been watching the signal traffic with interest over the last few days. We are, as usual, going to have a cocktail party in Palma when we get there (on the Monday evening, in fact), and obviously the question of rig has raised its head. Our normal CTP rig, when wearing blue uniform, is 5s – the double-breasted blue suit effort – but as we are in the Mediterranean, in summer, we expected to wear white Mess Undress, with blue trousers and white mess jackets. However, we will, as ever, follow the lead of the Spanish Navy, and they, apparently, are still in blues, and may not change until after our arrival in Palma.
And then a wild card entered the fray with a signal from BritNavAt Madrid (British Naval Attaché Madrid), saying that he thought either ice-cream suits (the sort of thing Dr No was wont to wear in the first of the James Bond films, but in dazzling white) or white bush jackets would be a good idea. We’ve all got these, of course, tossed into the bottom of little-used drawers and, in most cases, a delicate shade of yellow. We have, in consequence, sent back a signal to him, suggesting that we think it’s an extremely bad idea to wear ice-cream suits or bush jackets (how would the laundry on board cope?), and suggesting that we stick to our original intentions. We now sit back and wait, with bated breath.
Wednesday 16th May 1984
The last night of the exercise, thankfully, and fairly painless, with a Ripple 3 throughout, and with an extremely friendly wind, necessitating turning the ship hardly at all for any evolutions on the flight deck. It was, though, jolly nice when it all finished.
Thursday 17th May 1984
Asleep all morning, as usual, but for the last time, and then fairly hard at it for the rest of the day, as I’ve been lumbered with doing a ship’s investigation into an MOR (Mandatory Occurrence Report) concerning three Sea Harriers under the control of the ship, and a civilian aircraft in airway Amber 25 in April this year. Unfortunately, because of the lapse of time between the incident and the report arriving on board the ship, memories are now fairly hazy about what actually happened, and this has produced rather differing statements of actions. In fact, it is all rather turning into a can of worms and, as the old naval adage has it, when you open a can of worms you normally find another one inside it. I trust that this will not be the case in this instance, but I am by no means certain. We (I am doing the investigation with Angus Somerville, the PWO(A)) are hoping to get it out of the way tomorrow, as the day after that we arrive in Palma, and neither of us have the slightest interest of working on it then. At least today we got all the interviews out of the way, so we have obtained the facts – we now have to sift them and write the report.
As a break in the evening, after our Chinese meal, I watched Smokey and the Bandit for about the tenth time. Good, lightweight, entertaining stuff. And then to bed.
Friday 18th May 1984
One of those days that are better in retrospect than in reality. Angus and I were closeted together for the entire day, apart from, literally, about forty-five minutes in all for meals, getting the blasted investigation completed. The cans of worms we have, we hope, successfully resealed, and the report has now gone to the Captain’s Secretary for approval (approval, that is, of the format and layout) and hence for typing as soon as possible. Once it’s signed by us, I hope that will be the end of the matter, at least from my point of view.
Saturday 19th May 1984
A rather blustery, blowy day, with a choppy sea. Fortunately it wasn’t so windy that we couldn’t get alongside, though it was, by all accounts, a fairly close-run thing. We went to Procedure Alpha (best bib and tucker, but in blues, fortunately) at about 0930, for a 1000 arrival alongside. The arrival seemed to take forever, probably because of the wind (unless, of course, it was the pilot not being able to make up his mind), and we weren’t secured alongside at Dique Oeste until about 1030. Rather a prolonged period to stand on the upper deck, really, and it wasn’t helped in my case because I drew the short straw and had to stand directly underneath one of the main engine uptakes, which was rather like standing adjacent to a Jumbo Jet – extremely noisy. The only bonus was that the 21-gun salute (which is a damn sight noisier) sounded slightly moderated because of the constant nerve-numbing roar in the background.
Palma was basking in brilliant sunshine, despite the wind, and looked very much as I remembered it, only more so, with considerable numbers of obviously new buildings, but with the hills still green and unsullied, rising behind the coastal strip. Not a bad place for a final ‘run ashore’, really.
Saturday 19th May 1984 – Thursday 24th May 1984
With Sara, for a mini-holiday. We hired a car, explored the remoter areas of the island, and ate too much and too well. A good time.
Thursday 24th May 1984
Back on the ship, but with the important difference that I had to start sharing my office with my relief, Jan Smithson. From my point of view, an excellent arrangement, though I am not quite so sure that he is as convinced as I am that this is a good idea, as he seems to be steadily submerging in the inevitable mountain of paperwork. After two years, though, the feeling of relief to be finally shedding the damn job is inexpressibly pleasant!
We sailed as we had arrived, in Procedure Alpha, but with the two advantages that the wind was pushing us off the wall, so the departure wasn’t so prolonged as the arrival, and that we fired no salute – you only salute going in, not coming out, as the actress said to the bishop. Although it was still fairly windy, it was warm, and I managed to get a place up on 2 deck near the forward aircraft lift, which meant that I could hea
r the band – helped to pass the time as we slipped away.
Once clear of Palma, we increased speed, as there’s still quite a lot to do and a long way to go before Portsmouth on the 30th. Some flying was carried out, mainly by the Sea Harriers, and I took Jan up to Flyco to watch the evolutions and to give him a ‘feel’ for the way that Flyco works, as it is rather different to normal controlling at an Air Station. We also flew some Sea King sorties, including one which went off to take some pretty pictures of The Threat – in this case the aircraft carrier Kiev, which was discovered (after prompting from Intelligence) heading east from Gibraltar by a Sea Harrier earlier in the day. She is apparently in company with a tanker, and had spent last night fuelling – unlike the USN and RN, the Russians haven’t quite got the knack of fuelling on the move, and consequently have to actually stop in the water in order to take on fuel. Hardly efficient or tactical, and it would make both the tanker and the recipient ship a splendid target in hostilities.
One of the most pleasant aspects of the ‘don’t see me, see my relief’ attitude I am currently fostering is that I very rarely these days get telephone calls instructing me to do things at ridiculously short notice – Jan fields them all, and I just help him out and point him in the right direction as required. This meant that I was able to sit down in some comfort and watch the evening film – Fear Is the Key from the book by Alistair MacLean. Not a great film, but not a bad film either. I have some hopes of seeing all the evening films on the way home.
Friday 25th May 1984
A busy day for the ship; a quiet day for me. Jan has now taken over everything more or less totally, and all I’m left with is the odd spell up in Flyco relieving Mickey Brock as required, and not even that was needed today. I was, however, summoned to see the Captain for my ‘sorry to see you go, best of luck in your new job’ interview first thing in the afternoon, but as he gave me a very nice report, that was a pleasant interlude.
The evening video was Blade Runner with Harrison Ford, which proved to be quite a reasonable film, and which was watched by a more or less full house in the Wardroom. During the evening the ship passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, and we are now out into the eastern Atlantic Ocean, getting ready for the high seas firing which will take place over the next few days.
Saturday 26th May 1984
Another quiet day – the pattern, I hope, until we return to Portsmouth on Wednesday – though there was a fair amount of flying activity. I spent the morning showing a couple of Phantom pilots (one RAF, one German) round the ship, including a brief visit to Flyco, and spent the afternoon finally completing my long-delayed Service Paper on CVS Air Department manning.
I will be forwarding that to the Captain as soon as I’ve proof-read it and copied it.
The evening video was Flashdance, but as I really can’t take the idea of a singing and dancing female welder terribly seriously, I didn’t bother watching it.
Sunday 27th May 1984
Up at the ungodly hour of 0400 in order to control the first launch of the day at 0500. This was a surface search effort by a pair of Sea Kings, the first step towards clearing the range for our intended firing of a brace of Sea Dart missiles during the day, and went off fairly well, though after a rather shaky start when one Sea King went U/S on deck with hydraulic problems, and we had to use the spare aircraft. The search was a success, in that there were virtually no ships around, and the two missiles were successfully fired at the targets – pilotless drones – during the morning (when I had retired to bed to recover my lost four hours of sleep). The firings were completed when Don Sigournay took up his Sea Harrier and splashed the final drone after the second Sea Dart launch, destroying it with a Sidewinder AIM 9L missile.
Today, typically, wasn’t really a Sunday, and flying continued until darkness finally fell, and I ended the day as I had started, sitting up in Flyco watching a solitary Sea King bimble round the sky, this time on a Check Test Flight. That stopped me getting to see the Wardroom video, but it apparently wasn’t all that good a film, so I don’t really think I missed much.
Monday 28th May 1984
With all the Check Test Flights successfully completed, in early preparation for Staff College Sea Days which start early next week (if my memory serves me correctly, today was decreed as a non-flying day, enabling the flight deck to be opened for recreation throughout). The ship is still moving slowly north, up the west coast of Portugal, as there is unfortunately no way in which we can arrive at Portsmouth early – it would just take too much organising all round – and so we are to a great extent just cooling our heels and waiting to arrive at the Outer Spit Buoy at 1330 on Wednesday. The Fish-heads were kept busy by a series of machinery breakdown drills, but the Air Department just loafed.
A pleasant evening playing bridge – Jan Smithson plays quite a mean game, though perhaps a little too serious for our tastes. We’ll have to introduce him to the delights of tendency bidding, suicide bidding and so on. Or, to be specific, someone else will have to, as I now have less than forty-eight hours left at sea.
Tuesday 29th May 1984
A pleasant start to the day, with a champagne breakfast in the Admiral’s dining cabin, given by Jack Cant and Geoff Davies, both of whom are leaving the ship in the very near future (Geoff at the same time as I am, in fact). Neither wanted to give an RPC (Request the Pleasure of Your Company), as I didn’t, but still wanted an occasion of some sort to mark their departure. In contrast, I propose to slip away quietly, with the minimum of fuss and commotion…
This intention was only slightly frustrated by a vin d’honneur given in the Wardroom in the early evening. This was a sort of ‘farewell’ effort by the Mess to say goodbye to a whole bunch of leavers, and was relatively painless, as I was able to drink coffee and talk to a selected bunch of chums, rather than get embroiled in the centre of the rabble. Then dinner, a game of bridge (which we finished rather earlier than usual, as it was ‘Channel Night’ and hence extremely noisy in the Wardroom, with ribald songs and generally hysterical hilarity) and then bed.
Wednesday 30th May 1984
Final day. A swift interview with Commander (Air) started the day, and I spent the remainder of the morning completing my packing, and producing in the process a positively vast pile of bags and boxes, as well as getting things like travel warrants sorted out. Importantly, too, I got my Duty Free entitlement from the bar, and went round saying farewell to all those people I’ve worked with over the last two years. I’m not sorry to be going, but I do wonder how many of these guys I’ll see again.
And then Portsmouth, and home for good.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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Copyright © James Barrington, 2019
The moral right of James Barrington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788633253
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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