Front Burner

by Kirk S. Lippold

  In this first meeting, under obviously challenging circumstances, I tried to gain insight into their perspectives. While it seemed as if Cole was almost cut off from contact with the outside world, information flow, while as good as the circumstances allowed, came mostly from the excellent updates provided by Captain Hanna and from the few calls I received on the cell phone I was still carrying. It was good to spend some time listening to their views and asking a lot of questions.

  Obviously, my first question to them was how they had found out we had been attacked. Each told me that their watch teams had heard some background radio communications that there had been an explosion on a ship in Aden, USS Cole. Not knowing the situation and deciding not to wait for direction from either the Abraham Lincoln battle group staff, Destroyer Squadron 50, or Fifth Fleet, Scott, as the CO of Hawes and the senior officer between the two ships, took tactical command of Donald Cook and ordered both ships to proceed south toward Aden at best speed. During the course of the transit, both ships were updated on Cole’s status, undoubtedly from my voice reports and later from an assessment provided by Captain Hanna.

  En route, Scott and Matt discussed how each ship must now be prepared for any situation, including the potential for further hostile action. After several minutes discussing their readiness, I took them privately aside to give them a status brief. I told Chris that he could update the other individual team members from their respective ships but I was going to give the COs a separate and more detailed update and tour.

  The three of us had become good friends and squadron mates in the months prior to deployment. I knew that I needed to be candid and up front with them about what had happened to the Cole and her crew. I was also aware, however, that I did not want to paint too grim a picture and risk them misinterpreting the outstanding job the crew had done and how well they had adjusted to their circumstances following the attack. As the commanding officer, I felt obligated to directly share my insight into how the ship and crew had performed throughout the event.

  Slowly and methodically, we walked the standard route I had developed for anyone coming aboard the ship. Both Scott and Matt received a detailed account of what had happened before, during, and after the explosion. They were surprised at the depth of detail I knew regarding support flowing into the region—more than they had learned from message traffic and e-mail.

  It gave me a sense of confidence that Captain Hanna had done a great job in letting me know what was going on, which I then freely shared with the crew. We discussed my meeting with the ambassador and the Fifth Fleet commander the previous day. They also considered those meetings to be the most important things I had done, since they would directly impact the breadth and depth of support USS Cole could expect in the coming days. I also let them know that the Royal Navy had beaten the United States to the punch in coming to our aid earlier that day.

  They were amazed at the amount of debris covering the ship and the conditions the crew were working and living in. They understood why we had to sleep outside of the ship and how important it was for the crew to continue with mechanical and electrical systems restoration efforts. They also completely understood the need to keep the crew on board and not allow them to leave the ship to stay in local hotels, and why this effort would prove critical in the days to come. Also emphasized was the need to avoid disturbing as much of the explosion detritus as possible, since it was considered evidence and the FBI would need it for their criminal investigation.

  Finally, we entered the darkness of the ship. Using my flashlight to initially light the way, we slowly made our way into the forward port side passageway near the chiefs’ mess. The up-and-over lights had been strung in the passageways but they only provided a minimum amount of light. I needed flashlights to show them key areas of damage, including the interior of the chiefs’ mess, the entrance to main engine room 1, and the folded-up deck of the port side passageway that backed up to the galley.

  They spoke very little and were clearly taken aback by the extent of the damage. They understood their responsibility to their own ships and crews, but walking around USS Cole gave them a whole new outlook and sense of accountability.

  We continued up forward and crossed by Repair 2. Standing outside the locker, we paused to discuss in detail the reaction by the crew to the attack and how the damage control organization had been affected by the loss of ship-wide communications. The benchmark of how the U.S. Navy had performed against kamikaze attacks in the Pacific during World War II had quickly become our new operating standard within minutes after being attacked. The crew had fallen back on time-tested methods of communication. As the minutes had progressed, they reestablished not only communication between the repair lockers and the central control station but also between the teams of investigators going out and checking for damage throughout the ship.

  Slowly, Scott, Matt, and I made our way down the starboard passageway after stopping into the combat information center. The three of us paused at the access to radio central and auxiliary machinery room 1 and a detailed explanation ensued about how the loss of power in the forward part of the ship had impacted our ability to contact Fifth Fleet. The discussion also naturally led to the decision to rig casualty power cables, how that decision had come about, and the process we had followed to ensure there was some form of power now being supplied in the forward part of the ship.

  Walking on, we came to the most challenging part of their briefing, the mess line and mess decks. In greater detail and at a much slower pace, Scott and Matt learned about the heroism of the crew and what they had done in those first few dramatic minutes. Damage control, lifesaving measures, rescue efforts, evacuation of wounded, and communications were all covered and discussed. Lastly, I pointed out the challenge that we faced in how the crew was going to have to find a way to locate, recover, identify, and transfer the remains of the twelve sailors missing in the ship.

  Walking the exact same route that I had traced the day of the attack, we made our way through the main medical treatment area, across the debris-littered mess decks, and into the port side passageway just aft of the blast area. As Ambassador Bodine and Admiral Moore had been, Scott and Matt were taken aback by the sight of the bodies in the wreckage. As we stood at the edge of the blast area itself, the briefing continued, but they had grown silent, each deep in thought about what the crew must have experienced and still had to face.

  Quiet and somber, the three of us crossed back through the mess decks and walked out the back of the starboard passageway into the heat and humidity of the day. As the three of us neared the area next to the brow and quarterdeck, both Scott and Matt promised that whatever assistance USS Cole and her crew needed, we could count on them.

  Since each had already discussed their respective ship’s contributions, the first order of business was to get food prepared by Hawes to Cole’s crew. We had had our fill of food from Yemen’s Aden Mövenpick Hotel. Of course, we appreciated that they had been kind enough to prepare healthy meals for us, but everyone looked forward to an American-made meal. Both COs knew this would be an important morale booster. They also started preparations for a rotation of watch standers to supplement our damage control and engineering watch teams. Together, the coordination between us was unsaid but clearly understood.

  Early in the afternoon, the Yemeni port authority notified Cole that a large barge with two tugs maneuvering it would be crossing the harbor and coming out to the refueling pier where the ship was docked. Captain Jim Hanna had made arrangements to deliver a 250-kilowatt diesel generator to the pier as an emergency backup to our only operating gas turbine generator. With our gas turbine generator 3 still running, but slowly deteriorating internally, and gas turbine generator 2 not yet operating, this diesel generator would become a critical backup should we lose power.

  Gently and ever so slowly, the tug maneuvered around the mooring lines to dock along the eastern edge of the refueling pier off Cole’s stern. Lifting cables were hastily attached
to the generator. Carefully, they lifted the generator from the barge and swung it onto the pier near the middle of the ship. In the event we would need to operate it, this location was the shortest run for the cables to provide power to us.

  With the generator in place, the ship’s engineers worked with the Yemeni company’s operators to get it running. Despite language difficulties, they were able to understand how to start and safely operate the generator. With the universal language of mechanics, they showed the engineers how to connect and energize the cables that would provide electricity to the switchboards and equipment. Jim was on board to oversee the entire operation and once complete, he again went back ashore to continue coordination work for the myriad groups that had started to arrive in support of Cole.

  Later that afternoon, Hawes informed us that the U.S. ships had worked out an arrangement to start sending in replacement damage control team members as soon as we were ready to take them on board. That was an easy decision and within an hour, the first teams arrived. These sailors would provide a welcome relief to some of the crew, many of whom were exhausted from the stress and tension that still gripped the ship.

  That evening, when dinner arrived, I don’t think I had ever seen the crew look as relieved and hungry since the beginning of this whole ordeal. Hawes had prepared a standard Navy meal that many sailors consider the ultimate in shipboard comfort food—chili mac. Cole’s crew dived into this concoction of elbow macaroni, hamburger, tomato sauce, and spices as if they hadn’t eaten in days. Some of them in fact had probably only eaten enough Yemeni-prepared food to keep themselves from starving. This chili mac was real food, cooked by real sailors, and served up in familiar big stainless steel chafing pans. Watching them, it was clear to everyone that this one meal did more to boost morale on the ship than anything else over the past two days.

  All had seemed to be going well, until about 2100 Saturday night when a new emergency brought all of our considerable progress to a screeching halt. The ship’s engineers had managed to restore the main drainage system, capable of pumping out up to 1,200 gallons of floodwater per minute. The biggest leak that they still faced was the damaged seal that surrounded the starboard propeller shaft, where it passed through the bulkhead between the main engine room 2 and the flooded auxiliary machinery room 2. That leak had so far been staunched the way sailors have dealt with battle damage since time immemorial—with wooden wedges and a tar-soaked rope fiber called oakum, forcefully pounded into place around the shaft by the damage control teams. There was also the threat that the pressure of the floodwater on the bulkhead could cause it to buckle and collapse, flooding still other compartments, and so all the bulkheads around the flooded spaces were braced with wooden four-by-four beams, and later with steel ones.

  We had been successfully dewatering the flooded auxiliary machine room for some time, and by late Saturday the water level had gone down almost to the point where we would be able to get into the space and seal the places where water was getting in. With no more than two or three inches of water over the deckplates, damage control personnel could go in safely with repair equipment.

  But now, for reasons we did not yet know, the water level had started to rise again. Bringing on one and then two extra pumps did not succeed in bringing it down. To some extent, we were the victims of our own success. Decreasing the flow of water coming through the propeller shaft seal and the cracks in the bulkhead had reduced the pressure on the wooden wedges and oakum, and they had loosened. Now that the machinery room was filling with water again, however, they were being forced out of position, and main engine room 2 also began filling with water at a much faster rate than before. After midnight, around 0130 Sunday, the situation had grown so serious that Chris and Debbie had gone down to the mess decks and the emergency escape trunk to auxiliary machinery room 2, to personally monitor the status of the pumps and the floodwater. As they were standing there, something in the machinery room gave way. There was a loud whoosh of air from inside the space, and suddenly, the floodwaters began rising rapidly. Nobody knew if a bulkhead had collapsed, a pipe had ruptured, or something even worse had happened.

  With the waters slowly rising in main engine room 2, the engineers started another pump to help stem the flow of water, but with little effect. Around 0230, Chris briefed me that the machinery room had been lost to the floodwaters. He had ordered the emergency escape trunk door from it to be shut, dogged closed, and not opened again. In the engine room, water was now flowing in at a very worrisome rate—over twenty gallons per minute, by his estimate.

  Sensing disaster, I ordered Chris to immediately wake the crew, man the repair lockers, and put the ship back on emergency footing. Everyone sprang into action, but suddenly the ship was thrust into darkness when gas turbine generator 3, the only source of the electric power we had, tripped offline. It was 0305 and main engine room 2 was flooding. In darkness, USS Cole started to sink next to the pier.

  The generator had been running since our arrival in Aden. There was no way to get fuel to the tanks of gas turbine generator 1 up forward in auxiliary machinery room 1, and the engineers were still trying to figure out why number 2, in main engine room 2, would not run. But the number 3 generator’s inner workings had not been left undamaged by the explosion. Metal particles and shavings found in its lubricating oil showed that, while the generator had kept running so far, it was only a matter of time before it would seize up. Now we thought that moment had come. The failure left the main drainage system incapable of pumping out floodwater, and if main engine room 2 flooded, as main engine room 1 and the other spaces had earlier, the ship was going to go down to the bottom of the harbor.

  We were enveloped in darkness. Flashlight beams bounced off the bulkheads and decks as people yelled back and forth. I made my way to the central control station, and heard from Debbie that the engineers had found that the generator had simply run out of fuel, burning more than it should have because of the damage it had sustained.

  But the ship’s gas turbine engines and generators required high-pressure air, at 3,000 psi, to start. We now had no power to operate the high-pressure air compressors on the ship even if they were usable. But there was enough high-pressure air stored in air flasks in the ship to give the engineers three chances to restart the generator.

  Half an hour after the shutdown, they made their first attempt. It failed. An hour later, a second try: failure again. Water was flowing almost unabated into main engine room 2, endangering the very fuel-oil transfer and purification units we needed to keep the generator running. If they became submerged, nobody knew whether they would keep operating.

  The damage control teams rushed into action with an alternative: P-100 diesel-operated portable pumps, rigged up to pump water out of the lower level of the engine room up to the first discharge port in the side of the ship that a hose could reach. Failure again. The pump, set up in the starboard passageway, was not powerful enough to lift water from the lower flooded levels to the passageway. As the leading uninjured damage control expert on the ship, Damage Controlman First Class Robert Morger thought the engineers could overcome that shortcoming by connecting two P-100 pumps in series, one from the bilges to the engine room’s midlevel and the second from there to the discharge port. Yet again, failure. Our $1 billion ship was in mortal peril for the lack of a spare part that probably would have cost only a few dollars—a coupling adapter to connect the three-inch discharge pipe from one pump to the two-and-a-half-inch suction pipe of the second pump. The Navy had not foreseen that P-100 pumps would ever have to be connected in series; no such part was carried on board Cole or any other ship. The general workshop, with welding equipment that might have been used to make one, had been completely destroyed.

  Even so, there was one more chance to restart the generator with high-pressure air. The engineers suspected that trapped air in the fuel system was the root problem. With only a limited number of access points, the engineers picked the highest and most accessible fuel p
iping coupling to the generator, disconnected the fittings, and slowly bled what they hoped was all the entrapped air out of the system. At around 0600 Sunday morning, Debbie and her engineering team gathered in the control station for the last and final attempt. With the push of a button, high-pressure air was applied to the starter, and the generator rapidly wound up almost to the point where it should have ignited the fuel, fell 50 rpm short, and slowly wound back to a stop.

  We still had a long shot. The 250-kilowatt diesel generator brought out to the refueling pier, near the middle of the ship, now became a critically needed emergency backup and our last, best hope. It had worked well enough in a test on Saturday. Several engineers quickly checked its systems and pressed the start button—after numerous tries, failure again.

  By this point, the sun was rising over the harbor as we faced another hot, humid day. Floodwaters were flowing into the ship and there seemed to be nothing we could do to stop them.

  I saw Debbie standing alone near the starboard topside shelter with no one around. “How are you doing?” I asked. Utter disappointment was written across her face. “Captain, I just don’t know what to do. We’ve tried everything and I can’t get anything to run.” I told her I had every confidence in her and walked away to give her the time and space she needed to pull herself together and get back to fighting to save the ship.

  At about 0730 Sunday, after several hours of poring over technical specifications and architectural drawings of the ship, Chris and Debbie came to me with a new idea. A P-100 pump operating on the second level of the flooded engine room could pump water from the bottom and over the side at that level—if we cut a hole in the side of the ship, that is, because there were no discharge ports that low in the hull. They thought we could do that with our portable exothermic cutting unit, a device the Navy had adopted as a replacement for heavier and bulker oxy-acetylene cutting torches. The portable unit could be set up rapidly and cut metal at temperatures well over 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.