The Bird Farm

by Philip Kaplan

  Harrier jet fighters believed to be embarked on board HMS Invincible during the Falklands campaign in 1982.

  “On 1 June my section had launched after daybreak and we had carried out our CAP duty over Falkland Sound without any sign of trade. Everything appeared quiet in the skies to the east as our two jets commenced the climb-out to the north of San Carlos en route to the ship. Our home transit would be at 35,000 feet and, in the climb, Steve [Thomas] kept his Sea jet in neat battle formation on my starboard beam.

  “HMS Minerva was the Local Area Control Ship and we had not yet switched from her radio frequency. The craggy north coast of East Falkland Island was well below us when my helmet headphones crackled as Minerva called us up.

  “ ‘I just had a pop-up contact to the northwest of you at forty miles. Only had three sweeps on the contact and it has now disappeared. Do you wish to investigate? Over.’ I could tell from the controller’s voice that he really felt he had something but didn’t want us to waste our time if he was wrong. After all, forty nautical miles was a long way in the wrong direction when our aircraft could be running low on fuel.

  “He needn’t have worried; neither I nor Steve would dream of turning down the slimmest chance of engaging the enemy. Before he had finished his call I had already started a hard turn to port with Steve in my wake. I was flying aircraft side number 006 and its radar was on top line.

  “In the turn and using the radar hand-controller thumb-wheel, I wound the radar antenna down to just below the horizon, and as we steadied on a north-westerly heading, there was the target. The green radar blip stood out as bold as brass in the centre of my screen at just less than forty miles. ‘Judy! Contact at thirty-eight miles. Investigating.’ This was a chance we couldn’t miss.

  “I decided to try to lock the radar to the target to get some accurate height information on it. The radar locked easily, telling me as it did so that the target had to be a large one at that range, and gave me what I wanted to know, a height difference of 4,000 feet. I was at 12,000; that made the target at 8,000. I broke the lock so as not to alert the target. He would be listening out on his radar warning receiver. I wound our speed up to 500 knots in a shallow descent. Target range decreased rapidly to thirty-four miles, thirty miles—then it seemed to hold. There was only one possible reason for that.

  “ ‘Steve, I think he’s turning away. He’s now at right 10° at twenty-eight miles. 4,000 below.’

  “ ‘Roger. Contact.’ Good! Steve also had contact. I locked the radar again. Still about 4,000 feet below, but we had already come down to 10,000 in descent.

  “ ‘He’s definitely turned away and he’s descending. Must have seen us.’ The shore control radars of the Argentine forces must have monitored the start of our intercept and then passed the information to the target. It was now a race against time and fuel. Invincible was over 200 miles away and we should have been heading home. But there was an easy alternative. I called Minerva on the radio.

  “ ‘We may be too short of fuel to get back to Mother after this. Can you ask the assault ships to prepare to take us on board in San Carlos?’ A short pause before Minerva came back. ‘We have decks ready to take you if you need it.’

  “ ‘Roger. Please check that weapons will be ‘tight’ in the missile zone if we pay you a visit.’ I knew it wasn’t necessary to remind Minerva of that, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

  “Roger. No problem.’ The ship-borne controller then settled down to monitor the chase—if we destroyed the target it would all be as a result of his sharp radar pick-up and concentration.

  “Having sorted the fuel problem out in my mind, I could give my full attention to tracking the target, which was now heading west and had descended to low level below the cloud. We were still cracking along above the cloud in brilliant sunshine. I checked my missile and gun switches; safety flaps were up and everything was live and ready to go.

  “The sea state was markedly rough and as we continued to close on the fleeing target from above, I wished that the Flag and all his Staff could have been in the cockpit with me to witness the radar’s performance in these look-down conditions. The radar was holding contact with the target on every sweep.

  “We were now approaching the cloud-tops at 6,000 feet and catching the fleeing aircraft fast. To stand any chance at all of survival, the slower target ahead would need to stay in the cloud layer and try to evade us with hard maneuvering. But there was little chance of that being successful either, since I had had a lot of practice against large evading targets by day and night.

  “Steve, you’d better stay above the cloud until I am visual with the target below.’ If he popped up through the cloud layer, Steve would get him.

  “Roger. Still good contact at nine miles.

  “I descended steeply into the cloud layer, breaking through the bottoms at 1,800 feet. I still had the enemy on my radar screen; a fat blip at six miles and closing fast. I looked up from the radar and flight instruments and there it was at 20° left, a Hercules heading for the mainland as fast as it could go. It was at a height of about 300 feet above the waves.

  “Tally-Ho, one Herky-bird! Come and join me down here, Steve.’

  “I closed on the four-engined transport fairly quickly and when I felt I was just within missile range and had a good growl from the seeker-head, I fired my first Sidewinder. As usual, it seemed an eternity before it came off the rails and sped towards the target. I had locked the missile to the left-hand pair of engines. The thick white smoke trail terminated after motor burn-out and the missile continued to track towards the Hercules’ left wing. I was sure it was going to get there, but at the last minute it hung tantalisingly short and low on its target and fell away, proximity-fusing on the sea surface below.

  “There was no mistake with the second missile. I locked up the Sidewinder on the target’s starboard engines, listened to its growling acquisition tone, and fired from well under one and a quarter miles. It left the rails with its characteristic muffled roar and tracked inevitably towards the right wing of the Hercules, impacting between the engines. Immediately, both engines and the wing surface between them burst into flames.

  “Our fuel state was now getting marginal, to say the least. The job had to be finished, and quickly. Otherwise the Argentine aircraft might still limp home and escape. I knew the Hercules had an excellent fire suppression system in the wings and we couldn’t let it escape now.

  “I still had more than 100 knots overtake as I closed to guns range and pulled the trigger. My hot-line aiming point was the rear door and tailplane and all of the 240 rounds of 30mm high-explosive ammunition hit their mark. There were no splashes in the sea below. As I finished firing, and with its elevator and rudder controls shot away, the large transport aircraft banked gradually to the right and nose-dived into the sea. There could have been no survivors.

  “Pulling off the target hard to port, I called Minerva. ‘Splash one Hercules! Well done on spotting it!’

  “As the controller’s excited voice came back on the air, I could hear the cheers of the Ops Room staff in the background. They also knew that the Hercules force had been running supplies into Stanley on a daily basis, usually at night and always at very low level. To our ground forces they were a high-priority target. This Hercules had shown some complacency by popping up to 8,000 feet, and had paid the price.

  “ ‘Nice one.’ It was the Minerva controller. ‘Do you wish to land in San Carlos? We’d all like to see you both.

  “ ‘Roger. Wait. Steve, check fuel.’

  “ ‘2100,’ came the reply.

  “I had a couple of hundred less and the ship was 230 miles away. We couldn’t rearm my aircraft on board the assault ships and as I thought we could just squeeze home to Invincible, I decided to turn down Minerva’s kind invitation.

  “Sorry, we can just make it back to Mother, so we’d better do that. Thanks anyway for standing by.

  “We were already in the climb and in less than half a
n hour were touching down on deck. There had been a tailwind so we ended up with about 400 pounds of gas in the tanks—more than I had expected.

  “Sorry, we can just make it back to Mother, so we’d better do that. Thanks anyway for standing by.

  “We were already in the climb and in less than half an hour were touching down on deck. There had been a tailwind so we ended up with about 400 pounds of gas in the tanks—more than I had expected.

  “During the preceding weeks there had been much talk in our crew room about knocking down a Hercules or similar large transport. Given the chance, everyone favoured flying up alongside the cockpit and signalling to the crew to jump out. We felt no animosity towards the Argentine pilots; they were just doing what they had to do, and if their lives could be spared, then they would be. Sadly, there had been no time for such chivalry on this occasion. The choice was chivalry, thus possibly giving the enemy aircraft the opportunity to survive and maybe running our Sea jets out of fuel, or a quick kill. Circumstances and, in particular, fuel states dictated that it had to be the latter choice. I didn’t lose any sleep over it, but wished that we had had more time to play with.

  “The Hercules intercept turned out to be the last kill of the air war in which the Sea Harrier weapon system was able to play its full part.”

  A BAE Sea Harrier returns to her mother ship in 1982.

  The safe return of a Sea Harrier to her ship.

  DEPLOYMENT

  ALL BRANCHES OF THE MILITARY HAVE their problems, but in peacetime, navies suffer more in one way than the other services. No matter how dedicated a person may be, or how much he likes his job, nothing can take the place of being with the ones he loves, or make up for the prolonged periods away from them. It’s a hard fact. Every navy has its requirements and commitments which have to be met. They have to take precedence over all other considerations. Lengthy work-ups prior to lengthy deployments are just part of the deal, and that isn’t likely to change.

  What looks like fun, excitement, challenge, and adventure to a twenty-three-year-old naval aviator fresh from the Fleet Replacement Squadron may look very different to a mid-grade aviator officer who has experienced two or three work-up cycles and deployments which, cumulatively, have taken him away from his wife and kids for half of the six years he has been in the service. Never mind the benefits, the travel, adventure, security, the satisfaction in serving his country, even the thrill of flying military aircraft which drew him to the Navy in the first place and which he has wanted to do all his life more than anything … even that may no longer seem quite so essential. Nature has kicked in and he’s only human. And not incidentally, just how much understanding can one expect from a wife or girlfriend?

  What is a navy to do? How is it supposed to retain the guy who has taken the training, served his obligation faithfully and efficiently, and must soon decide whether to stay in or leave this service that he has been part of for several years? It can’t hope to match the salary he can get on the outside. He’d be of no use to the fleet if the Navy were to let him stay ashore permanently—navies go to sea and that’s what he was trained to do. If even the flying has lost some of its lustre for him, at least compared to quality time with the family, where is the incentive for him to re-up? And what about that seat with the airline that may be waiting for him? Economics have a way of changing, and that seat may not be there the next time he looks. What should he do? Stay in? Get out?

  Danny Vincent, USS John C. Stennis: “The hard part of navy life is leaving your family for six months. Everyone will say that, but it’s equally hard to do the work-up process that we go through. We go out for two or three weeks at a time; we’re in port for maybe three weeks and then it’s out for ten. It just disrupts the family life.

  “I like email. I want to know if my son fell and hurt his head. I would want to know it right away. I would be concerned the whole time until I got that email saying he was OK. With email you feel like you stay connected with all the stuff that’s going on. For special occasions like Christmas and some holidays, they sometimes do a real-time video thing and now there are a lot of satellite phones too.

  “The introduction of women on the ships was a huge thing. There were growing pains associated with it and it was a topic of discussion with just about everybody for a long time. But we’ve all seen that women can integrate into the environment and it’s not a big deal. We still have some old salts, people who have been in the Navy for a long time who are gonna resist. But the Navy is evolving and changing, and those people are being asked to leave after they’ve fulfilled their twenty years. The new airman who checks in on board, who only knows a navy with women on the ships, it’s nothing to him. The ship’s company, including the air wing, is about 6,000 people now, of which about ten to twelve percent are women.

  “You’re always gonna have people that complain, but the way you combat morale problems is, you keep people busy. If they are involved in doing their jobs, they may not be happy that they’re away from home, but they’re gonna be content doing what they’re doing as long as they know there is a goal. I think morale on the ship is fine. We have movies, satellite TV, email, computers, satellite phones, video games, workout facilities—it all contributes to improving morale. We all made a conscious choice to be here.”

  “I’m looking forward to the six-month deployment. I don’t mind being out at sea. I’m young. It’s not that I have nothing to look forward to if I were to stay on shore, but I think the cruise is a chance for me to get out and see things. I’m not married. It’s a chance for me to save money, and a lot of time to think, so I don’t mind it. The foreign ports are great. In the Gulf we hit Dubai and Bahrain. On our transit we’ll most likely hit Perth, Hobart, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Hawaii.”

  —Aaron Zizzo, USS John C. Stennis

  “Separation and how to deal with it was an individual dilemma. At times, the feeling of isolation was enormous. I assume that the problem has been diluted with the advent of email. During my time, the C-2 Cod (Carrier Onboard Delivery aircraft), lovingly called Miss Piggy, was our infrequent connection to home. It would deliver the mail, which was obviously not timely but was always received with much anticipation. It was a gloomy day when you didn’t get a single piece of mail or a ‘care package’ from home. Care packages were boxes containing stale cookies or other treats. Besides the contents, these packages commonly contained portions of hometown newspapers used to wrap the food items and these papers would be distributed around the ready room. It was the simple things that were missed.

  The key multi-role fighter of the U.S. Navy into the twenty-first century, the Boeing F/A-18 Hornet.

  “Separation from family was the hardest aspect of ship life for most. Several members of the squadron came home from a cruise to be introduced to a new child. Then there were those who came home from a cruise to an empty house. I remember counselling an enlisted man who had just received a letter from his wife. It was a common practice to sign a power of attorney allowing a spouse the authority to run the household. In this case, the lady had used the power of attorney to sell his house and wipe out his finances. She then moved in with a friend of his. We had only been gone for three weeks. Life on the ship can be tough. There were others who revelled in the separation—an extended break from a bad marriage or a timely excuse to end a relationship. Most immersed themselves in their work, wrote and received loving letters, and returned to rebuild their relationships with their families.”

  —Frank Furbish, former U.S Navy fighter pilot

  “My girlfriend was very supportive actually. She has always been very supportive and she knew that I wanted to fly when we first started going out together. She’s never tried to say it’s too dangerous and why do I want to do it? She’s always put up with me being away a lot and only seeing me at weekends, and now, of course, she’s putting up with me being away for longer periods on the ship and certainly next year in the Gulf, for quite a long time. I think she’s very pleased that I’m doin
g what I want to do and I’m very lucky to have someone who thinks that way. Email has made a big difference, although the number of emails you can send is limited. I think it’s five or six a week sent to a private address. It’s a fantastic way of keeping in touch and really, in this modern world, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have it available. But even though we have got email, receiving and writing letters I still find very important, and often receiving a letter is more personal. Someone has actually taken the time to do it and it’s nice to receive. I actually do write home quite a lot on snail mail as well.”

  —Nick Walker, HMS Illustrious

  The joys of a long-awaited homecoming.

  “The six-month deployment for me is both interesting and kind of scary. I have a wife at home with a pre-existing medical condition, so I have that in the back of my mind. If I was single or had a wife in healthy condition, I’d be looking forward to it. For her sake, if I had a choice, I wouldn’t go on the deployment. We do keep in touch by email and my division are aware of what I’m dealing with at home. Once in a while they’ll allow me to call home just to double-check on her and make sure everything is going OK. My job is very good and very rewarding. My father was an E-8 in the Navy, and from watching him in his career, taking on board a lot of the stuff that he did, I learned from him. Being in the Navy has taught me about responsibility. I grew up real fast.”

  —Parnell Chapell, USS John C. Stennis

  Letter from a sailor’s girlfriend: “Dear John, I couldn’t wait any longer, so I married your dad. Love, Mom”

  “There were always one or two members of the squadron who were on the ‘wild side’ on shore leave, but most were the best guys in the world. You flew their wing in formation, or they yours. This took trust. You flew with your team daily, lived with them, lifetime friendships were formed. All my squadron friends who survived the war later married and raised families.”