He spent some time figuring out how he wanted to work with the XO and me, as well as lead the chief petty officers in being the real deck-plate role models and leaders on the ship. As the leading master chief on the ship, he had to assert himself not only in making sure the chiefs were doing their jobs and staying active with the crew, but in creating a bond with the chiefs so that they would approach him to confidentially relay any difficulties they were having up the chain of command. As good a ship as USS Cole was, crews always have a few folks who don’t quite embrace the tempo of the organization and resist moving along as fast as they should. The command master chief’s job is to keep those people and the chiefs supervising them motivated. Master Chief Parlier did just that by walking all around the ship and talking with the crew, on watch or down in their berthing compartments, rather than by sticking close to his office. He had his finger on the pulse of the crew’s morale, and his insights were of priceless value to me.
The last change to the command team came in December 1999, when John was relieved as the executive officer by Lieutenant Commander John Christopher Peterschmidt. “Chris” Peterschmidt was an intense and extremely focused officer. We quickly hit it off and he seemed destined to be a perfect match for the ship. As we got to know each other better over the next few months, each of us realized that we had previously met in the Pentagon, where he had worked for the admiral in charge of the Navy’s Surface Warfare directorate, which was responsible for the manning, training, and equipping of Navy ships and crews, while I was working for the secretary of the Navy.
As Chris and I continued to prepare the ship for deployment, we came to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and, with the command master chief, worked to make Cole the best ship on the Norfolk waterfront. Steady progress became our hallmark. There was about a 3 percent turnover of the crew every month, normal for the Navy, but we wanted to achieve something unprecedented in its scope and impact. Over the next few months, we wanted to qualify all enlisted crew members to man each of the watch stations on the sea and anchor detail—the stations that have to be manned when the ship is entering or leaving port. We hoped to qualify members of the crew who were not officers to be certified to perform every one of those duties by the time the ship’s combat-ready deployment started, including positions normally filled only by experienced officers—officer of the deck, helm safety officer, after steering helm safety officer, and conning officer.
While filling these four critical roles may seem relatively easy, it actually took a great deal of coordination between the watch teams to free up the needed senior petty officers or chief petty officers to allow them the time and experience in the watch station to earn their added qualifications. This often resulted in extra work by other crew members standing additional watches normally filled by these personnel, but they accepted it with a professional poise that had become their hallmark. This goal would have far-reaching consequences for the rest of the crew in the not too distant future.
As part of the nuclear-powered USS George Washington aircraft carrier battle group, USS Cole was to be deployed to the Mediterranean and Middle East along with USS Normandy, an Aegis guided-missile cruiser; USS Donald Cook, like Cole an Aegis guided-missile destroyer; USS Simpson and USS Hawes, both guided-missile frigates; USS Pittsburgh and USS Albany, nuclear-powered attack submarines; and USS Seattle, a fast combat logistics ship. The battle group’s aircraft wing was Carrier Air Wing 17, which consisted of various fighter, attack, electronic warfare, and surveillance aircraft, as well as helicopters.
Over the next several months, the ship completed the last two phases of training to be certified as combat ready. Throughout this entire period, the emphasis on damage control drills—exercises to prepare the crew to repair damage and handle casualties in the event of hostilities—continued unabated both in port and underway. Cole’s damage control assistant, Lieutenant (junior grade) Nathaniel Fogg, had spent the last year pushing, prodding, and leading the crew to become experts in damage control techniques and capability. In retrospect, he cast the die for success in saving the ship after the attack that was to come.
2
Deployment to the Middle East
THE FINAL PHASE OF TRAINING included force protection measures—security precautions—to be taken against unauthorized approach or boarding of the ship. The only contingency we trained for while based in Norfolk was a threat from ashore—unauthorized boarding by intruders coming from the pier while the ship was tied up in port. Although a broad spectrum of threats existed, especially in this new era of terrorist attacks, with limited resources and time the Navy had not incorporated how to defend against them into the training and intelligence programs for battle groups and ships preparing for deployment.
Prior to deployment of the battle group, the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet scheduled an anti-terrorism/force-protection exercise for May 3 to 5, 2000. The primary objective was to train shore and afloat commanders and personnel to operate and deploy forces under any threat condition. Specifically, the drill was “not designed as an inspection but rather an opportunity for commands to practice . . . procedures and assess capabilities to provide adequate protection for personnel, facilities and assets.” During the exercise, we learned, unauthorized persons would try to get aboard every ship at least once during the week. How and when this would occur we were not told, putting everyone on edge, prepared for the worst. Typical for this type of exercise, the ships almost all focused on countering any incursion that might be made over their in-port quarterdeck, the position on the main deck at about the middle of the ship, between the two superstructures where the watch team was normally stationed.
Throughout the week, crews from each ship in the battle group were assigned to try to penetrate the security perimeter of others in the squadron by pretending to be crew members, or bluffing that they had been authorized to do work on board. Most of these amateur penetrations failed. But when ships faced more sophisticated types of intrusions carried out by Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) agents acting on behalf of the Atlantic Fleet staff, failure was the standard for almost every one of them.
In USS Cole’s case, the NCIS agents demanded access to the pier by showing an arrest warrant for the ship’s navigator, Lieutenant Ann Chamberlain. When the watchstander responsible for maintaining security on the pier questioned their credentials or the validity of the warrant, the agents threatened arrest for interference with a criminal investigation and were allowed onto the pier. When questioned again at the bottom of the brow by Cole’s security watch, they again flashed credentials and threatened to have the watchstander arrested. Ultimately, they gained access to the quarterdeck area—which meant that the ship failed the intrusion exercise.
While this showed how vulnerable a ship could be to unauthorized access by a convincingly trained agent, that scenario seemed more akin to what ships might have faced from the KGB or the Soviet navy during the Cold War. As an exercise designed to train shipboard personnel to deal with terrorists, who would likely be armed with weapons or explosives, the drill was hardly realistic.
Notably, there was no training on how to respond to a suicide bomber entering the ship or using a car to ram through onto the pier and attack us by blowing it up. And at no time were any of the ships trained or prepared to defend against assault from the sea. There was no training in how to anticipate or respond to an attack by a boat in the harbor; all threats in the exercise were land based. By the end of the week, every ship had suffered one form or another of security breach and held training to teach the crew how to counter the perceived threat. At the conclusion of the exercise, the commander, Second Fleet, Admiral William J. Fallon, sent out a message to all twenty Second Fleet ships that had participated, specifically mentioning seven for “noteworthy performance.” USS Cole was one of those ships. With the exercise complete and the lessons incorporated into our operating procedures, we looked forward to deployment with a sense of confidence that un
wittingly set in place the circumstances for a tragedy.
As the date for the battle group’s six-month deployment in late June approached, the commander, Rear Admiral Gary Roughead, had to select two ships from the squadron as “late deployers,” leaving six weeks after the rest. That was because when it came time for the group to move from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf, different types of ships would have to stagger their departures and arrivals to mesh with the operational requirements of the Sixth Fleet and European Command in the Mediterranean, and Fifth Fleet and Central Command in the Middle East, where the tasks included inspections of ships entering and leaving Iraq, and readiness for contingency operations against Saddam Hussein’s regime. Admiral Roughead chose USS Cole and USS Simpson as the late deployers.
We left about six weeks after the rest of the battle group, on August 8, 2000. As expected, it was an emotionally charged morning, with more than a few tears shed by the crew as well as by the loved ones they were leaving behind. When all the lines were pulled in from the pier, the ship sounded a four-to-six-second prolonged whistle blast, and, finally, USS Cole was underway with a fully qualified, all-enlisted crew manning every watch position—a new milestone in the Navy’s history. Little did we know how soon and how much we would need these added skills.
The Atlantic was calm and sunny during our crossing, and we soon passed through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. Because of our outstanding performance in preparatory exercises we had been cleared to make port visits in Barcelona, Spain, Villefranche, France, Valetta, Malta, and Koper, Slovenia, in the Adriatic, before proceeding to the eastern Mediterranean to pass through the Suez Canal on our way to the Middle East. Now we were under the operational control of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Commander, Sixth Fleet. Sixth Fleet rules allowed each ship to make its own determination of how many people should remain on board while in port. We decided to err on the side of caution and keep a third of the crew on duty at all times. Everybody else was permitted to enjoy liberty and see the world—which is after all why most had joined the Navy in the first place.
An additional requirement that had crept into the lexicon of overseas port visits was threat conditions. The Navy now had four threat conditions—Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta—with Alpha requiring the lowest level of protection, similar to what the ship would have had in Norfolk, and increasing degrees of security for the next three conditions up to Delta, the highest level of security to guard against an expected imminent attack. In the Mediterranean, Cole operated under Threat Condition Alpha Plus, which required increased security around the pier where the ship was moored and in the vicinity of the fleet landing, where the crew left the pier area and went into town on liberty. All measures were coordinated with local police in each port.
Everywhere we went, many of the crew understood how lucky they were to be Americans and wanted to give something to the community. Usually, about twenty to thirty crew members volunteered for community works projects, helping to clean up an orphanage, restore a local playground, or similar activities. They would always have a great time playing with the kids and more often than not they would play a soccer game at the end of the day. It was our way of quietly showing the U.S. Navy to be good ambassadors for the United States. We all also took advantage of the other ways of enjoying ourselves offered by a Mediterranean deployment. At each port visit, arrangements were made to eat at one of the best local restaurants or visit a winery for a tasting. The crew was also allowed to bring local wine and liquors onto the ship for storage in a cool space until we returned home.
Following a last port visit to Slovenia in early September, USS Cole conducted so-called presence operations in the Adriatic aimed at the government of Serbia, which had retained the name Federal Republic of Yugoslavia even though that country had dissolved in a brutal civil war that had seen the worst atrocities of “ethnic cleansing” in Europe since World War II. The Serbian regime, led by Slobodan Milošević, was still in the process of recovering from a NATO bombing campaign from March through June of 1999 that had halted the brutal repression of ethnic Albanians who had declared the independence of the province of Kosovo. Milošević had been warned that if any of his country’s naval vessels entered the Adriatic, even within their territorial waters, their actions might be considered hostile and the United States would take appropriate defensive action to eliminate any perceived threat.
For the first time on our deployment, the crew was conducting real-world operations in support of U.S. strategic objectives. While we had certainly enjoyed being U.S. Navy diplomats during port visits, the crew now had a sense that this was what we had really been training for during the past year.
The tone of the ship immediately grew more serious and calm. We uploaded ammunition into the five-inch gun, readied surface-to-air missiles for immediate arming and firing, loaded torpedoes into the launching tubes, and charged their high-pressure air flasks to be ready for attachment on a moment’s notice. Tomahawk cruise missiles were readied for launch on short notice. For several days we operated within areas designated for that purpose, downloading updates for the Tomahawk guidance systems with the most recent priority targets for any such emergency contingencies. With the primary mission of being air defense commander for all Navy ships in the area, USS Cole refueled at sea every few days. The ship was on a combat footing, ready for action.
Underway operations continued for the next two weeks, until early October. European Command had been reluctant to release Cole until the last minute in order to maintain a large number of Tomahawk missiles in theater to support all possible contingency requirements, in the Balkans or elsewhere. It was finally decided that Cole would pass from the operational control of Sixth Fleet and Naval Forces Europe to Fifth Fleet and Central Command on October 9. George Washington and Normandy departed Fifth Fleet and Central Command early, reporting into the European theater of operations to support the expanding pace of operations in the Adriatic and had arrived several days previously in preparation for Cole’s imminent departure. Normandy, which had been with the George Washington battle group that had left for the Middle East six weeks before us, assumed the air defense duties from us on October 6. That afternoon, we conducted our last underway replenishment in the Mediterranean from the USNS John Lenthall, which had transited the Atlantic with Cole and Simpson two months earlier. Upon completion, Cole was detached by the commander of the battle group. Our orders were to proceed, alone, through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea and then report for a briefing on our new duties with Naval Forces Central Command/Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
Under normal conditions, a ship tries to sail at a speed that conserves fuel as much as possible. In Cole’s case, the best economical speed was around 14 knots. However, because of the delay in making the operational decision about when we would shift from one theater to the next, the timing of our arrival now required a high-speed transit of 25 knots, covering approximately 5,000 miles, and significantly increasing our fuel consumption. In order to keep our fuel reserves above the required minimum of 50 percent, we would need fuel even before we could reach Bahrain. Since the Navy was undergoing a decline in the number of active ships from just shy of 600 in 1986 to only 315 by 2000, there was only one oiler available for an at-sea refueling in the entire 2.5 million square miles of ocean in the Central Command’s area of responsibility, and it was up in the Arabian Gulf. So a brief stop for fuel in a local port became our only recourse. Aden, at the southern tip of Yemen, and Djibouti, across the Strait of Bab el Mandeb in Africa, were the only two options. Naval Forces Central Command chose Aden because the intelligence available deemed the threat of terrorism in Djibouti greater than it was in Aden. Besides, Navy ships that refueled in Djibouti did not receive any priority to refuel and were put in rotating order with commercial vessels, sometimes sitting vulnerably at anchor for over twenty-four hours.
We were ordered by Fifth Fleet to conduct a “Brief Stop for Fuel”—as the Navy officia
lly calls it—in Aden on October 12.
After racing across the eastern Mediterranean at 25 knots, USS Cole arrived on October 8 off Port Said, Egypt, the entry point for the Suez Canal the next morning. This also marked the transition to the Central Command area of operations, and our force protection security requirements changed. Where we had been under Threat Condition Alpha Plus, we were now moving up to the next step, Threat Condition Bravo. No one was about to take any chances as the ship went through the Suez Canal.
Most of the officers and crew, like me, had never made a deployment to the Middle East; consequently, we needed to be ready for anything that might happen. With that in mind, I had the crew set up our self-defense weapons. As we swung on the end of our anchor and waited to be called into the line of ships to enter the canal, the gunner’s mates mounted four .50-caliber machine guns, two forward on the bow and two aft on the fantail and helicopter flight deck area. We also mounted two 7.62 mm machine guns on each of the bridge wings. The MK-38 25 mm chain gun on the starboard side of the ship near the quarterdeck area was similarly readied for action. Ammunition was placed in the small ready-service magazines near each weapon, locked up but available for immediate use. And the crew loaded twenty rounds of five-inch ammunition—artillery rounds five inches in diameter—into the ready-service magazine for the five-inch gun system on the bow. We also unlocked and readied a number of surface-to-air missiles in the vertical launcher tubes, forward and aft, and placed them in a condition that allowed the tactical action officer in the ship’s combat information center to immediately insert a key and turn a switch to arm and launch them. To support missiles in flight, the fire control team would have to keep the AN/SPY-1D three-dimensional air-search radar operating despite the closeness to land.
Front Burner Page 5