by Dan Pedersen
My great challenge came later in 1978 when the Wichita headed to the shipyard at Hunters Point, San Francisco, to undergo a refit and modernization. Aside from Candlestick Park, home of the 2–14 49ers that year, Hunters Point is a legendarily bad neighborhood, riddled with crime and drugs. We were slated to be at the shipyard for nine months. Our first problem: Where to billet the crew? I didn’t want them to live aboard ship while it was being dry docked and overhauled, so I set off in search of suitable housing. A floating barracks ship was not available. We settled on an unused nice four-story building on the shipyard grounds, which the owner allowed us to convert into land-based crew quarters for the duration. We filled it with beds, televisions, and a keg of beer every afternoon at 5:30. The crew hung a sign out front reading “The Wichita Hilton.” It made a nice hotel and my crew were out of the dirt and noise of a ship in overhaul.
In a weird, urban farm sort of twist, the shipyard owner allowed a number of barnyard animals to roam the place at random. I’d see pheasants, chickens, and even guinea hens scuttling about the vegetation along the bay in the shadow of the 49ers’ stadium. Well, the crew saw them too, and we had a number of cooks who caught those little buggers and served them to our sailors. The shipyard owner only complained after one of his prize goats went missing the morning after the crew held a raucous barbecue. The goat, my boys swore, was last seen swimming the bay, heading toward Alameda.
It was here that I began to learn the biggest challenge every skipper faced in the Carter-era Navy: personnel issues. In the post-Vietnam years, with the draft ending and the birth of the all-volunteer military, we faced a lot of shortages in specialized areas, as I discovered when my new ship’s doctor arrived at Hunters Point.
The fleet suffered a significant shortage of physicians back then. The Wichita wasn’t supposed to be allotted a doctor, but I made a stink about that and was able to pry one loose. I think they gave me Dr. Jack Methner as punishment for shaking the tree.
He showed up in a new Porsche 911 convertible, which he drove right up to the gangway and parked in my slot. He jumped out, and we got our first look at his long, flowing white hair, chest full of ribbons, and a gaudy disco-era gold chain around his neck. He wore a tropical white uniform that looked out of place against our uniform of the day, khakis.
I found out later that the service was so short of doctors that he went straight to the fleet without any indoctrination training. This made his four rows of ribbons more than suspect. When asked, he shrugged, and with a Cheshire Cat smile said, “My recruiter told me to go get them.”
He would be a project I never fully was able to tame. Jack was taken belowdecks by my executive officer and ordered to remove the ribbons and get a haircut. His first attempt at the latter turned out to be little more than a trim to his daring mane, so the XO sent him back to get a true high and tight. It never happened. Only a nice trim. I suppose they knew he was going to be the one giving them physicals.
Dr. Jack may have been a project, but he meant well and was a fine doctor and became a treasured friend when we left the service. He signed up with the Navy to see the world after becoming both a general practitioner and a psychiatrist. He had such an active mind (and libido) that I think he just got bored back in Texas and lit off for some high adventure in uniform.
The issues we faced as a Navy included racial tensions and a lot of drug use. It was a difficult time, stretching back to the Vietnam War, when a full-fledged race riot broke out aboard USS Kitty Hawk, resulting in dozens of injuries. Fortunately, as the Navy became more integrated, efforts were made to ensure better treatment for our African-American sailors. Gradually, such measures worked to overcome the most significant problems.
Drugs were another matter entirely. For many ships at sea, everything from angel dust to heroin, pot, and cocaine proved to be readily available. Some sailors took to making money on the side by dealing to their buddies. They received regular shipments through the U.S. Postal Service. We were not allowed to screen or censor incoming packages, so the flow from stateside drug dealers to those aboard ship could not be interdicted or shut off. The Navy’s criminal investigation service was caught completely unprepared for the influx of narcotics into the fleet, and it would be years before they caught up. Our only hope was to catch the dealers actually making transactions, something that happened infrequently at best simply because we lacked the means to do it.
I saw only a few of these cases among the Wichita’s crew. The vast majority of my sailors were dedicated and hardworking professionals. In fact, we convinced our chain of command to let our ship’s chiefs oversee and manage the overhaul. I figured nobody was more dedicated than our chiefs, and nobody knew the ship as well as they did. Why not let them take the lead? It turned out to be a great success. We completed the work two months early and came in two million dollars under budget, something that had never happened before.
One night, as we were getting ready to take the Wichita out to sea after the overhaul, I was working late. My ten-year-old son, Chris, got ahold of my ship-to-shore number and called my cabin. I picked up and heard him crying.
“Dad, you can’t leave.”
I thought about all the goodbyes since 1968. Time after time, he’d seen me fly out of his life at the controls of an F-4.
“I have to, Chris.”
“Everyone else at school has a dad. I don’t. You can’t leave.”
I thought of that barbecue in ’73 when the phone call came telling me of Harley’s disappearance and how my little guy clung to me as I said goodbye.
Navy life dictates an episodic family life. It is sometimes cruel and always hard. That night, all my accolades and promotions meant nothing. In that moment, I wasn’t a ship’s captain preparing to go to sea. I was just a dad who chose a career that would take me away from my son yet again. Nothing I could say could stem his tears. We sailed the next morning.
Given my own family experience, I always tried to be sensitive to my sailors. The best we could do was focus on the job at hand and look forward to mail calls and a few moments on the phone in port somewhere.
In April 1979, our sea trials went flawlessly, and we returned to the Far East to support our supercarriers out there. The Wichita received the Battle “E,” the Pacific Fleet’s award for most efficient ship in our type.
During the Wichita’s adventures in the Pacific, Doc Jack’s inexperience with Navy tradition bubbled to the surface again. He was unused to the ocean, and being cooped up on our forty-thousand-ton floating home started to get to him. As we returned to Pearl Harbor from WestPac after about a month at sea, I could see the good doc’s morale starting to suffer. I called him to my cabin and gave him a special mission. He would fly a helicopter to Honolulu, then on to Fort DeRussy to set up liberty accommodations at the Navy R&R center. And I asked him to plan a dinner reception for all the officers the night we got into Pearl.
When we docked at Ford Island a day later, I peered down from the bridge to see Doc Jack racing up to the berth in a convertible Mercedes-Benz, three gorgeous women in back and beside him. He waved to the crew lined up along the main deck. The crew stared in utter astonishment at the spectacle. Of course, right at that moment the base admiral rolled up in his sedan to make the traditional welcoming call. We’d been ready for him and extended our amidships officers’ brow to bring him aboard.
Doc, clueless as ever to protocol, ignored the admiral completely, grabbed his three dates and scampered up the brow, and saluted the ensign ahead of our visiting dignitary. This sort of breach of naval propriety could cause havoc to careers and ships’ companies if the admiral so wished. We saw it happen and dreaded the fallout.
The admiral came aboard a few minutes later. As per custom, I hurried to go meet him in my cabin, where we would drink coffee and talk shop.
I rushed down to the cabin to discover not just the admiral waiting for me, but Doc Jack and the three gorgeous women he’d somehow met in one night ashore. For a split second, I sa
w my career flash before my eyes. Then the admiral gave me a sideways glance, a half-smile, and I realized he was thoroughly enjoying the company. Doc’s party that night was a shot in the arm for our ship’s officers. Weeks at sea can wear out any man no matter how much he loves the smell of salt air and the ocean spray on his face.
We had another kind of morale boost later on, one that affected the entire crew and remains one of the most meaningful moments in my own career.
One beautiful day, south of Baja, Mexico, after sailing from Hawaii, Wichita was awaiting a rendezvous with the USS Constellation battle group in four days. We were killing time, but my crew was tired and needed a break, so I requested a visit at Mazatlán for a night or two of R&R. There was a storm to the south, but it looked okay for a short visit.
We enjoyed the food and beverages at Señor Frog’s. Then the storm started to move north, so we got underway early and headed for Cabo San Lucas. A couple of sailors missed the ship’s movement, and I left instructions with our liaison in Mazatlán to send them via slow bus to Tijuana for the shore patrol. That evolved into a weeklong trek, often stopping for food and water. Next time, those lads sailed with the rest of us.
I fell asleep on the bridge wing about daylight and slept for a couple of hours. When I woke I went in the bridge to listen to the radio. I caught an unusual change in the channel, and heard two men in two sailboats discussing their plight. One was a cardiologist and his wife whose boat was dead in the water. It was the Infinity’s maiden voyage, and she had run with too much sail during the night, lost the mast, and fouled the running gear. The other boat contained a dentist and his family with five children. They were both lost, but the dentist could still sail.
Immediately we got our two helicopters searching even as I noticed two big cumulus cloud formations or thunderstorms over Baja. I took a bearing to each, which we triangulated, and asked both boats to do the same. They passed their bearings to us so we could chart them.
After confirming his position, the dentist departed for port in Magdalena Bay. Then I sent the helicopters to locate the Infinity. We found the boat just about dark and tried to pass a towline, but it washed overboard twice before we got a hookup. We took the Infinity in tow for about ten hours, brought it to the entrance to Magdalena Bay, and handed her off to the Mexican coast guard.
During the night I learned that the doctor was recovering from open-heart surgery, and his wife conned that beautiful sailboat in our wake. It was not the typical Navy service to the fleet, but it was the right thing to do. Plus, the impact it had on my crew was substantial. A typical American wants to help, wants to do right by Emerson’s admonishment to leave the world a little better place than he found it. This was one of those moments for all of us. Late that night, as we churned north, running from the storm, I looked aft to see almost all my off-duty sailors lining the stern railing. They were keeping the couple aboard the Infinity company, reassuring them that the Wichita would take good care of them. They took turns talking to the surgeon’s wife as she stood at the wheel, cracking jokes and keeping her relaxed. The heart on display that night is a memory I will always cherish.
We reached Magdalena Bay safely, said goodbye, and departed to join up with the Constellation. But after I reported the rescue, an admiral in San Diego wanted to see me. He threatened to court-martial me for endangering my ship. My master chief, who came with me to see him, spoke up right then. “Our actions were safe and in the proudest traditions of the naval service at sea, which includes helping and protecting those in danger,” he told the admiral. He added that the press would not react well to the court-martialing of a ship’s captain who had just saved American lives. The admiral dropped the matter.
The Navy is an up-or-out organization. If you do not continue to achieve at a high level, you don’t make the next selection board list on the command ladder. In the fall of 1980, after two years with the Wichita, I received new orders. It was a major moment in my career. It would determine if I went to a staff post ashore, or was entrusted with a new command at sea.
I opened my orders, hopeful and confident. I thought we did a great job with the Wichita, but that admiral could make trouble.
I unfolded the orders and read them. Then read them again.
The Navy was giving me an aircraft carrier.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE BEST AND THE LAST
Somewhere in the Indian Ocean
November 1980
The tropical sun beat down on the flight-deck crew of USS Ranger as they choreographed the morning launch cycle. Tomcats first. Sidewinders and Sparrows mounted and armed, the big birds taxied one by one to the catapults, where the nose gear was attached to the piston. As the aircraft was put “in tension” with the catapult, the catapult officer signaled the pilot to push the throttles to full power and select afterburners. One last check of his instruments, and the pilot gave the salute for “All go” (or turned his lights on if it was at night). The cat officer snapped a salute to the pilot, then touched his wand to the deck, pointed toward the bow. This was the signal, “Launch ’em!” and the big piston hauled the Tomcat down the deck. Trailing two long tongues of flame, she took to the sky as another pair of Tomcats taxied to the catapults. Going from zero to 150 knots in two seconds was a real kick in the ass.
The Ranger was my ship now. Perched on the bridge, seated in a barber chair with “Skipper” stenciled on its back, I watched the bustle of the flight deck from the best seat in the house. I was forty-six, still wearing the Ray-Bans I bought in Pensacola and the Star of David chain around my neck. My little mouse from North Island was tucked away in the captain’s cabin a few yards aft from this chair. My three talismans served every day as a reminder of who I was and where I came from since first climbing into a cockpit in Pensacola.
It was here that I learned why it is so important for an aviator to command a supercarrier. That ballet on the flight deck? We all had seen it from the cockpit of our Phantoms back in the day. But when we were coming aboard, it was just us and the landing signal officer working together to get our wheels back on the deck. There was another component to that which was largely invisible to the guys in the cockpit. The landing signal officer, the air boss, and the captain communicated constantly, asking for course and speed alterations depending on the velocity of the wind over the deck and how the seas were running. That coordination becomes crucial in bad weather or at night. The planes don’t just line up on the carrier—the carrier lines up and maintains course perfectly for the planes.
Once I had six A-6 Intruders in the landing pattern with a thunderstorm bearing down on us. I was in constant contact with the air boss and landing signal officer, who confirmed what they needed. As the winds became more erratic, we altered course to keep the wind coming over the angled deck, where the planes landed. By the time we brought home all six birds, we had turned that big ship a full sixty degrees. Without the nuanced understanding of what the men in the cockpit were experiencing, there was no way a captain of a carrier could do his job to greatest effect in such moments.
I took command of the Ranger and its five thousand sailors at Subic Bay on October 20, 1980. I relieved former Topgun CO Roger Box, who had taken the ship the previous year after the Ranger collided at night with a tanker near the Straits of Malacca, one of the busiest sea lanes in the world. The tanker almost sank, and the carrier suffered heavy damage to its bow and two fuel tanks. After temporary repairs at Subic, the carrier steamed to Japan to complete the work. As a result of the incident, the skipper was relieved of command and Box given the ship.
Consecutive commanders of Topgun now took the Ranger to sea. After eleven years of classes, Topgun’s graduates, instructors, and skippers had spread throughout the fleet, energizing it with our ethos and leadership style. We had never thought this far down the road about where our careers would take us into surface commands. Still, the values and leadership methods we used could be equally applied here on the Ranger’s bridge, and I made
a point of doing so.
I addressed my whole crew daily so that everyone felt a part of the team. Twice a day, my master chief and I toured different decks and compartments, getting to know the sailors. In some spaces far belowdecks, the men not only never saw sunlight while at sea, but they’d never seen a captain come through their compartments. The Ranger displaced more than eighty thousand tons. She was over a thousand feet long and divided into more than two thousand spaces. With our five thousand–plus sailors aboard, we were a small-sized, nautically mobile American city. Trying to get into every space and compartment was akin to trying to do the same in a comparable-sized town in the heartland. I visited as many as I could, usually with our master chief, Dave Hobbs.
On those twice-a-day trips belowdecks, I could get to know our sailors. The majority of these nineteen-and twenty-year-olds were aboard for the right reasons. They wanted to serve their country, learn a trade or skill, or go to college after their stint at sea. Others saw the Navy as their career, wanting to rise through the enlisted ranks like Master Chief Hobbs had. But a troublesome few, perhaps about 4 percent of the Ranger’s crew, had fallen into the cycle of drugs and crime. A kid on angel dust was capable of anything. It was a hideous and totally unexpected problem. Until I held my first shipboard command, I hadn’t had contact with drugs or drug users. Naval aviators were insulated from them. You can’t drop acid and work on a carrier flight deck at night.
In the first months on the Ranger, we faced drug-related issues on a daily basis. When our investigators finally caught one of the most notorious dealers, we made sure he got a bad-conduct discharge. We tossed out another one not long after. It felt like throwing bricks into the Grand Canyon. Somebody else took their place and the flow of drugs remained a problem.
Sabotage was an issue as well. Draftees opposed to the war carried out more than two dozen acts of sabotage aboard the Ranger alone. Before I took command, one sailor caused millions of dollars of damage by dropping a paint scraper into some critical rotating machinery. It delayed the Ranger’s redeployment to WestPac for months. It was hard to track down the culprits. My predecessor, Roger Box, had to deal with a saboteur who crept into the hangar deck and activated the firefighting system. The chemical foam from pressured lines made a huge mess. When it happened to me, the whole hangar deck got doused while it was full of aircraft. The air wing was furious, but an investigation turned up no suspects.