I was on thin ice. How and what I said next to the admiral would probably make the difference whether or not the crew stayed with their ship. Slowly, carefully, and with great emphasis, I looked up directly into his eyes and said, “Admiral, I could not disagree with you more. This crew saved this ship; this crew saved their shipmates; and, this crew, as a crew, will get Cole out of Aden and onto Blue Marlin; then, as a crew we will go home. Together.”
Now it was the admiral’s turn to think about what had just been exchanged between us. He paused, looked down at the deck himself for a few seconds; then, as if to redeem himself in the eyes of history, he looked at me and with a confident tone, said, “OK, you’ve got it.”
Longstanding Navy tradition held that no crew surrendered to the enemy or abandoned their ship without a good fight or unless it was absolutely impossible to keep the ship afloat. This was best memorialized at the Battle of Lake Erie when Captain James Lawrence, who was mortally wounded while furiously battling a British frigate, cried out, “Don’t give up the ship.” History was about to cast its shadow on us. The crew of Cole and I had fought to keep our ship afloat from the moment of the attack until now. They could not be seen as giving up because of a lack of courage on the part of the Navy’s leadership or for the sake of political pressure or expediency—it would have cast a pall of shame on the crew and their captain for time immemorial.
For just a few brief seconds, the history of the crew of Cole and the United States Navy had hung in the balance. It was the right decision and for the right reasons. Standing, I extended my hand to shake his and thank him for supporting me. Both of us knew it would be a difficult decision to maintain back in Washington. We also knew, however, that eventually the Navy would back us; too much was at stake otherwise.
As the admiral and I walked back to the flight deck for the reenlistment ceremony, it was apparent that another change within the crew had taken place. With a growing sense of pride, many contemplated their commitment to the nation and their future in the Navy. Already, a dozen people had approached the ship’s career counselor, Petty Officer Huber, to adjust and modify their reenlistment dates so as to fall, with symbolic significance, during our time in Aden. Concerned that this life-impacting decision could be misinterpreted, every sailor who reenlisted had to speak with me about the decision, and only after calling home to discuss it with family. Their decision to reenlist would extend an irrevocable vow to continue a life of service to the country, and I did not want the emotions of the moment to blind them to the broader, long-term implications this decision would have on them.
Just before walking onto the flight deck, the admiral mentioned that he would like to address the crew. Unlike General Franks, Admiral Moore was not about flash, pomp, and circumstance. He had done more to ensure the survival of the ship and crew than anyone else. It would be an honor for the crew to hear from him, just as it had been with FBI Director Louis Freeh.
Under the bright sun, the admiral reenlisted Chief Cavanaugh, and as he addressed the crew, he hailed them as heroes for what they had done to save the ship. He made no mention of the discussion he and I had just had, but he said the ship would soon leave port and be taken home on M/V Blue Marlin.
While some of the crew had clearly hoped Admiral Moore would confirm the rumor about getting off the ship early, most were grateful for the recognition of what they had achieved as a team. The crew applauded his remarks and shortly afterwards, he left the ship to go back ashore. It was a great visit but from my perspective, it had been fraught with the potential for disaster. Later that afternoon, rumors began flying that he had come with an offer to let them leave, but that I had quashed the opportunity. This time, however, the undercurrent of discontent seemed to be limited to a shrinking number of the crew.
The flight deck needed to be prepared for the memorial ceremony. As a working party of boatswain’s mates set up the cots recently used as beds in row after row of benches, Debbie came up and asked if she could brief me on several items in the central control station. As we walked down the starboard passageway, still dark in the area of the galley and mess decks, just as we were about to turn the corner to walk into the control station, a young petty officer, Engineman Third Class John Thompson, confronted me. Agitated, his voice rising with each word, he said, “Captain, I don’t understand why you’re keeping us here. We had a chance to go home and you just don’t seem to care about our safety.” Debbie, who had been walking behind me, was not about to brook even the slightest hint of disrespect to the captain, and immediately tried to move around me and throttle this upstart. Sidestepping in front of her, I raised my right hand to signal her to keep the wrath that was about to escape her lips buttoned up. Thompson continued, “I think you’re going to get us all killed. We’ve been through a lot,” he stammered. In a pleading tone, he blurted out, “I just want to see my wife and kids again.”
Overcome with my own emotion at seeing his pain and the heartbreak of knowing we were not going to send anyone home early, all I could do was step forward and give him a hug. Stepping back and holding both his upper arms, I looked him squarely in the eye and told him, “We’re going to get everyone home safely but first, we are going to get the ship out of port, onto Blue Marlin, and then we’re going to go home; together, as a crew.”
He nodded his head up and down, unable to say another word. While he probably did not fully embrace what I was telling him, at least he had been able to say his piece to the captain. Now it was time to get back to work and get everyone ready for the memorial service to honor our fallen shipmates.
The quartermasters calculated sunset that evening to be at 1738. At 1720, the ceremony began, the air perfectly calm and the flag still, hanging from the flag staff at the aft end of the flight deck. The crew was quiet and introspective as they solemnly took their seats. A hush fell over the crowd. Up on the aft missile deck, the investigators from the FBI and NCIS, the MDSU-2 divers, the Norfolk Naval Shipyard workers, and crew members from ships that had been supporting us, as well as staff from Fifth Fleet and the Determined Response Joint Task Force, stood quietly looking down.
A single microphone on a stand stood near the back of the flight deck. As if on cue, “Chaps” Thornton approached the microphone and the crew stood up from their seats.
Taking a deep breath, he intoned, “Let us pray.” He invoked God’s blessing on each of our shipmates with an invocation spoken from his heart. At the conclusion, the crew took their seats. One crew member would speak for each of the ranks we had lost—officer, chief petty officer, enlisted. Lieutenant Derek Trinque spoke for the officers, Senior Chief Pam Jacobsen for the chief petty officers, and Petty Officer Randall Butte for the crew. At the conclusion of the remarks, Chaplain Thornton again approached the microphone, asked the crew to stand, and sang the first note of “Amazing Grace,” the crew quickly joining in:Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.
As always with this song, the power of the melody and words worked with and against everyone. The crew drew close together, in comfort and support:Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come;
’Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.
I wanted to look out and see their faces, but my eyes had welled up with tears.
As the song ended, Chaplain Thornton paused for a brief moment before asking everyone to once again bow their heads in prayer for the benediction. At the conclusion, everyone involved in the ceremony stood back as Petty Officer Crowe and Petty Officer Butte slowly but precisely marched up to the flagstaff and untied the halyard. Understanding the importance of the moment, each of them paused to look up at the flag.
Slowly they lowered the flag and unhooked it from the halyard. Tightly holding the corners at each end, Crowe and Butte precisely, and with great care and deliberation, folded the flag into the traditional triangle shape. When they had finish
ed, only the dark blue background and smudged white stars were visible. With his right hand firmly resting on top, Crowe took the flag and confidently strode to the starboard side of the ship.
Seventeen sailors had silently lined up and stood at attention along the starboard side of the flight deck. Crowe stood at the head of the line as the first sailor saluted the flag and held his hands out to accept it. With the flag passed to the first person, Crowe then paused and saluted. As his hands fell slowly and evenly back to his side, the ship’s bell pealed out two distinct strokes, then Chaplain Thornton called out the first of seventeen names of our shipmates killed in the attack.
The sailor then smartly executed an about-face to the next in line. The same short ceremony was then executed: salute the flag, pass it on to the next in the line of seventeen, return the salute, ring the ship’s bell, and announce the name of a fallen shipmate.
Seventeen times.
At the end of the line was Master Chief Parlier. As the seventeenth sailor finished accepting the flag and turned to face him, he saluted it, took it in his hands, and marched to the back of the flight deck and presented it to me for safekeeping until the day when we would all come home.
That flag was our battle ensign. Stained by the black residue of the explosion, it had proudly flown over Cole since the moment of the attack. It had sustained us during our darkest moments immediately after the explosion; it was streaming still when Cole almost sank next to the pier on Sunday; and over the past four days it had honored us as we said good-bye to our shipmates for the last time. We had survived under that flag. It had been a symbol of our determination not to give in, not to be intimidated by a cowardly act of terrorism. I had refused to lower it until we had recovered every one of the crew who had given their lives. Now the flag was a stark reminder of the price of freedom, a part of our naval heritage and a proud emblem of our country’s history.
11
Underway Again
THE NEXT EIGHT DAYS went by in a continuous whirlwind of activity. The oppressive weight of recovering our shipmates was lifted from our thoughts, and by Saturday, October 21, we could finally allow ourselves to look forward. The fallen were on their way home to their families, and the crew now turned fully to the task of getting Cole out of port.
Commander Pat Keenan, the resident technical expert on the ship’s structural integrity, and Commander Bobbie Scholley and her divers expanded their assessment to include the undamaged spaces and the hull, to determine as clearly as possible how the ship would bear up under the load and stress of movement at sea and onto the docking blocks on M/V Blue Marlin. Some of the Norfolk Naval Shipyard workers had returned home, but the remaining workers and the engineers set about determining which areas needed support braces welded into place to ensure the bulkheads did not collapse when the ship was towed out of port.
Their work might have been easier if we had been able to contract to conduct repairs at the nearby Aden Container Terminal, which had two berths that might have accommodated Cole and five forty-ton-capacity gantry cranes. However, when the U.S. Navy approached the Yemeni-owned company that owned it and the Singapore company that was operating it, the request was flatly refused. The growing political tensions, coupled with intelligence indications of an increased threat of a follow-on terrorist attack, were considered too problematic.
The FBI/NCIS evidence collection team, with Cole’s crew still providing help, continued to sift through evidence up on the forecastle, but the piles had been growing smaller every day. The evidence gathered so far had been easily accessible but a follow-on plan was already being formulated at FBI Headquarters and the FBI’s New York Field Office to have another evidence collection team meet the ship when it arrived back in the United States. Already, the FBI/NCIS evidence team anticipated that once the ship was up on M/V Blue Marlin, the area inside the flooded compartments at the center of the explosion needed to be examined in detail for additional evidence that had been blown into the ship by the force of the explosion.
Additionally, many areas of the galley and the spaces surrounding it would remain inaccessible until the folded and mangled metal could be pried or cut away in a safe environment.
In addition to evidence, Don Sachtleben informed me that his FBI team members had spotted pieces of crew remains they could not reach or safely retrieve. Those areas had been identified, and the remains would be removed upon the ship’s arrival in the United States. This news was of particular concern. When Captain Hanna and the Joint Task Force Determined Response staff were briefed on this, they clearly understood. Back in Norfolk and Washington, however, it seemed as if the leadership of the Navy could not grasp what the enormity of the explosion had done to the ship and how that force had physically torn apart some of the sailors nearest the epicenter of the blast. The families of the deceased were not immediately told of this new development.
We wanted to be able to get the ship underway on its own power to leave port, and Debbie and her engineering team determined that the gas turbine modules in main engine room 2 were intact and capable of operating the port shaft. The port reduction gear and its lubrication system would work properly, and there were no obstructions in the engine’s air intakes. Days of checking remained, but the engineers were buoyantly optimistic. By midmorning Sunday, the FBI/NCIS team had completed their external sweeps for evidence, and at last we could hold a freshwater washdown of the exterior of the ship to remove the disfiguring streaks of greasy, black explosive residue left over from the blast.
As the Sunday work day drew to a close, the ship was starting to look shipshape again—until, at 1618, the engineering officer of the watch announced over the partially restored 1MC system, “Fire, fire, fire. Class Charlie fire in number 3 switchboard. This is not a drill.” Number 3 switchboard was in the same engineering space as the crucial gas turbine generator 3, and moments later the high-pitched whine from the generator slowly wound down and stopped, as thick smoke billowed out of the space. A power failure meant that the ship would start sinking again, if more slowly than a week before because of all the repairs and reinforcements that had been made. With the interior of the ship now in darkness, the FBI team prepared to wrap up for the day, and the crew steeled themselves to save the ship once again.
Don would later tell me that when the fire broke out and the crew started reacting to the alarm, he was amazed at how calm they seemed. Normally, a Class Charlie fire in a switchboard is a momentous event on any ship. This battle-hardened crew took it in stride, reacting with a focus that left no doubt that they would handle the situation efficiently and effectively.
Fortunately, the electrical fire in the casualty power terminal in number 3 switchboard was quickly contained. Many of the electrician’s mates and engineers surmised that water we had used to clean the exterior of the ship after the FBI had finished gathering evidence had seeped into electrical outlets and circuits damaged by the blast, causing the system to ground and short out. Gas turbine generator 3 could not be reconnected to the switchboard, and we began to start generator 2, but did not want to take unnecessary risks by immediately reenergizing the electrical system and put power back to the switchboard. The ship again began to take on water, but reinforcements over the previous week had made the leaks into main engine room 2 and auxiliary machinery room 1 far less dangerous than they had been during the previous bout of flooding. The engineers started generator 2 at 1625 but waited to complete a set of system checks to ascertain that there were no electrical grounds in the system that might further damage the switchboard or the ship before placing the generator online at 1709. As everyone dipped into reserves of physical and mental strength, we again refocused our energies on getting Cole out of port and onto M/V Blue Marlin successfully. We were not about to give in now.
In order to determine if the ship could be safely maneuvered out of port and docked onto M/V Blue Marlin, the engineers at Naval Sea Systems Command back in Washington needed a series of critical measurements taken to deter
mine how much the keel of the ship might have been bent and flexed. Over the weekend, the divers had rigged two ratchet hoists attached by the sonar dome at the bow of the ship and at another point between the two rudders at the stern. A Kevlar mooring line was then attached between the two points and slowly drawn taut. Approximately three tons of pressure created a straight line underwater to measure any deflection in the keel. It was innovative and creative, but it worked. Measurements by the divers were made every twenty feet, and in the end the keel was deemed undamaged.
The divers then carried out a number of surveys to locate every crack in the hull plating emanating from the blast hole. At the end of every crack, they drilled a hole into the hull plating to stop the crack from spreading when the ship twisted and flexed while being towed at sea.
On board M/V Blue Marlin, the calculations of how Cole would fit on the deck mandated that several strict requirements be incorporated into the docking plan. In order to keep the center of gravity low, the normal height of the wooden docking blocks that the ship’s keel would rest on had to be greatly reduced from a normal height of thirty-six to sixty inches, down to a nominal height of fifteen inches. Since the ship would rest low on the blocks, the blades of the propellers would not fit without hitting the deck. Measurements indicated the blades would extend at least 1.65 meters into the deck. Here was the choice: either remove the lower blades on each shaft by unbolting them from the hub or cutting them off, or cut two holes in the deck of M/V Blue Marlin big enough for the blades to slide into as the deck came up and met the keel when the ship was docked. It was determined that two large cutouts into the deck could be made without damaging M/V Blue Marlin. The propellers on Cole, however, had to be centered over the holes with the blades in exactly the right position, or they would not fit. On a 505-foot ship, the margin of error was down to inches on either side of the blades as they slid into the holes during docking.
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