—Richard May, former U.S. Navy fighter pilot
Admiral Mark Stanhope, former commanding officer, HMS Illustrious: “We are recognizing now that one of the most important requirements to continue the good will and motivation of our people is to ensure that they can talk to their home. The old letter is still an important mechanism, but it’s somewhat dated in this day and age of instant communications, and while we’re around the UK, everybody wants to use their cell phones. We have a system on board here on daily orders. It says Mobile Phone State Green which means that they can use their mobile phones should they wish to. There are about 700 mobile phones on board this ship. Most people have standard mobile phones that you can use around the UK, but there are some phones on board, ‘anywhere in the world’ phones, and they like that sort of access. Away from home, we have to look at other mechanisms to keep them all in touch. Email is a great facility on board, and they are allowed to send up to five letter-page emails a week.
“We have an operational requirement to have phone connectivity with headquarters, the Ministry of Defence and such like, which carries with it, on a ship of this size, about nine or ten different telephone lines. During the working day these are being utilized by various officers to do their business, but in the evening we take three, sometimes four of these lines and pass them through a phone box down below. The ship’s company can go into this phone box and ring a number that gives them access to any net that they want to use to phone home. This costs, I think, about thirty-three pence a minute. Quite expensive. In my time in submarines, we went away for eight weeks and didn’t speak once to family. Here they have it available to them at cost. It carries with it a burden. I can’t deny that. The burden is that it has changed communications. The average sailor on board suffers the ups and downs of home life … little Johnny is sick or the wife has just smashed the car up, or mother is ill, and so all the woes that we were, frankly, cocooned from in the past, as you go away and leave your wife to sort out all the problems, go home at the end of a trip and help her sort them out … now its on a daily basis. So, lots of information gets fed to people that they want to do something about but can’t.
NFO Shannon Callahan with her EA-6B Prowler aircraft;
“We have something called the Naval Families Services System, which is an organization where, if there is a problem at home, an illness or a bereavement, or a marital problem, or anything, the wife can get hold of this organization, which can then go and see the wife and find out just how serious the problem really is. They will then signal me with their recommendation. They will tell me what the problem is and maybe give me a recommendation that, in their opinion, it’s important that we give this sailor three weeks leave to go home and sort out the problem, or support the family, or look after the children while the wife is ill, and I would normally react to them positively. It would only be an operational expedient that would cause me to say ‘I’m sorry. I understand the situation, but I cannot spare this man.’ That’s finally my judgement. In and around the UK we would make that judgement fairly easily. You can get people on and off. What we can’t do abroad is get them backwards and forwards very easily. When we go to the Gulf, for instance, it’s easy for me to reduce the number of people on board this ship when we’re doing an exercise. I’m not quite so free and easy about giving up one of my two radar maintainers when radar is critical to our operational capability. So that becomes slightly more demanding. How do I ensure that the ship’s company can appreciate the difference? How can I make sure that when we get out to the Gulf they are clear that this isn’t quite the free and easy time that they’ve had before, and that I’m going to be a bit more restrictive in dealing with them? My answer to that was that I think you’ve got to be as open as you can with the ship’s company about the business in the first place. Set it up. ‘Put the money in the bank.’ That is, in circumstances when it is quite possible to let the people go, let them go. Then, when you can’t let them go, at least you can say, ‘Look, I’ve got a track record here of letting people go as best I can when the circumstances permit. Right now, the circumstances do not permit. I’m sorry. Sod’s Law says it happens to you when we were operational, and it happened to Jimmy Smith over there when we weren’t operational.’ I think that’s really the only way you can do it. They did join the Navy and the Queen pays them, and therefore, in the end, you’ve got to take the Queen’s shilling, as they say, and do the business.
“I think it is essential today to provide our people with instantaneous communiction. I’d go further. I know in the American Navy, on deployment, they sometimes even offer to the ship’s company video links with home so they can see little Johnny growing up.
“People don’t like being separated and you can’t show the stiff upper lip in true grit British style and go away for two-and-a-half years. It wasn’t so long ago, not in my time in the Navy, but certainly in my lifetime, that the Navy used to go away for two-and-a-half years. You’d sail from Portsmouth, leaving your wife and kids on the jetty. Now we have formal limits on how long these ships can be deployed. We have harmony rules on how long the ship’s got to sit in its own dockyard port. Theoretically, the planners should look at keeping these ships in dockyard ports, which is Portsmouth for Illustrious, for something like forty-three percent of the year. You aggregate your time over two or three years to compensate for the fact that some years you’re gonna be away more than others. That’s what we’re working too. We don’t allow ships to go away for longer than six months. If they do, someone’s got to explain why that is, and if that’s the case, then allowances are made for a foreign visit, to support the wives going out for that foreign visit, or provide interest-free loan support to wives going out for that visit. This is very much part of the way we are doing our business now and the more we can make the lifestyle of these people acceptable, the easier it is to recruit them. Much of what I’m suggesting does cost money; there’s no two ways about it, but it can be leeched onto the side of the operational requirement anyway. TV! It seems small beer, but the government in one of their last defence reviews, are trying to fit satellite television to all ships. It’s quite difficult to do, actually. This big platform is a challenge in itself. I can switch on the TV and get CNN because of its operational importance. In the Gulf, in the ops room in my command seat, I can convert the screen to present to me an intelligence picture, flight deck cameras, or CNN, and in the Gulf CNN was an important mechanism because they pick it up so much quicker than most. We’re looking at putting satellite televisions on all ships.”
A page of World War II ration stamps.
You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave, or wounded in a mentionable place. You worship decorations, you believe, that chivalry redeems the war’s disgrace. You make us shells. You listen with delight, by tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled. You crown our distant ardours while we fight, and mourn our laurelled memories when we’re killed.
—from Glory of Women by Siegfried Sassoon
Frank Furbish: “One of the most valued possessions I took away from my stint in the Navy was the camaraderie built with my squadron mates. Your squadron becomes your family while on the boat. The bunk room member’s problems become your problems and an individual’s joy becomes a collective joy. Things didn’t always run smoothly in that small room housing the nine of us, but overall we got along well. I still keep in touch with several of my fellow squadron mates. Along with the camaraderie, serving aboard the boat builds a sense of duty and pride in your country. Most folks don’t take in ‘the big picture’ and just go out and do their job while serving aboard the ship. Defending the rights of your country and developing pride in a job well done is a reward in itself.
“Perhaps the greatest morale booster for most of us was receiving mail. Those with sweethearts or wives and family really needed reassurance that everything was OK at home. Even the act of writing was therapeutic and stabilizing, and helped offset our loneliness and feelings of futility. It was sad
to realize that some crew members never received mail or packages, and those of us who did, often tried to share as best we could. While being away from home for such lengthy periods strengthened personal bonds for some, it undermined them for others.”
When a carrier returns to its home port after a long deployment half a world away, the final few hours before the great ship can be maneuvered to her berth, tied up, and connected to the quay by gangplanks, can be the longest hours of the cruise. Thousands of wives, children, girlfriends, parents, relatives, and friends anxiously press forward on the quay, straining to pick out their particular sailor amid the ranks of officers and ratings lining the edge of the flight deck.
As the ship is finally secured, there are shouts of sailor’s names, and hundreds of waving arms and hands holding up homemade signs: HEY BOBBY, CAN’T WAIT, IT’S A BOY! and WELCOME HOME. The restless, expectant crowd has been waiting six months for the return of this vessel and now the final moments of waiting are almost agony. By Navy tradition, the men of the ship’s company who are the fathers of babies born while the carrier has been on deployment, are entitled to disembark before all the others. The first moments of the homecoming, tearful and happy, are treasured.
A rare non-operational day aboard a Royal Navy carrier at sea. The flight deck is made available to the crew for a picnic and other activities.
There’s still no letter … in my troubled mind I seek a reason, and quickly reasons find. Indeed, they tumble in, to be discarded, each as it comes … it could be that you’re very busy; missed the evening post; or else it’s held up in the mail. A host of explanations … yet that gnawing fear o’errides them, still keeps dunning at me that you just don’t want to write. And vainly I attempt to thrust aside the thought; deny it with your last note, and the one before. But no. I must resign myself to wait until tomorrow, or the next day and a day. Surely then I see your handwriting and envelope. And life is sweet, until a week or so, when … still no letter.
—Still No Letter by John Wedge
IN THE GULF
A Grumman F-14 Tomcat taxiing out for take-off at NAS Miramar near San Diego. Introduced into fleet service in September 1974, the F-14s were finally retired from U.S. Navy operational work in 2006.
YOU START OFF WITH A BIG BAG OF LUCK and an empty bag of experience. The trick is to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck.
It was all set to be the first daylight strike of the Gulf War, the Allied Coalition effort to force the invading Iraqis back from their incursion into neighboring Kuwait. F/A-18C Hornets from the U.S. Navy carriers John F. Kennedy (CV-67) and Saratoga (CV-60) were to launch the daylight phase of an ongoing strike series to be conducted round the clock. The night before, 16 January 1991, the black sky over Baghdad was rent with streaks and dotted lines of neon-like anti-aircraft artillery fire. The triple-A was in response to a massive first strike by several coalition aircraft, on airfields and other facilities around the city. Iraqi surface-to-air missiles flew at the attackers, and a few interceptors of Saddam Hussein’s air force rose to the occasion. In the evening’s action, three Iraqi MiG-29s and Mirage F1s fell to the weaponry of U.S. Air Force F-15C Eagles. The flak and SAMs accounted for some Allied aircraft losses; the interceptors remained but a threat.
The next day the Navy continued the activity. Lieutenant Commander Mark Fox was flying from the Saratoga in one of the spare aircraft, airborne in case any of the other Hornets on the raid should develop a problem and have to abort. In fact, three squadron aircraft had to return to the carrier, unable to complete their assignment, and Fox moved into the line-abreast formation to join the mission.
The four F/A-18s proceeded on course toward their airfield target, H3 in western Iraq. They were heavy, each of them loaded with four Mk 84 2,000-pound bombs. The Hornets were being monitored from above by an AWACS E-3B Sentry aircraft from the King Khalid air base near Riyadh, and an E-2C Hawkeye of VAW-125 from the Saratoga.
Mark Fox had prepared well for the attack he was running in on. He had set and checked the required switches for the drop. As the Saratoga Hornets approached the target from the south, Fox began hearing radio calls from aircraft of the Kennedy strike force Hornet pilots who had sighted a few Iraqi MiG-29 Fulcrums following them as they left the target area after releasing their ordnance. In seconds, two U.S.A.F. F-15C Eagles appeared from a higher flight level and fell upon the MiGs, disposing of them and their potential threat to the heavily loaded Hornets.
Now the Hornets were less than thirty-five miles from the bomb-release point, when the Hawkeye called them with a “bandit alert.” More MiGs were in the area and were believed to be heading for the Hornet flight as it continued toward H3. The situation became serious when the Hornets received a second call from the Hawkeye, telling them that the MiGs were fifteen miles dead ahead. At that moment, both Lt. Cdr Fox, and Lt. Nick Mongillo in a nearby Hornet, elected to reset their weapons systems to “missiles” for possible air-to-air engagement. When the four Navy pilots drew within ten miles of the bandits, three of them got “missile-lock” on the two enemy aircraft which were MiG-21 Fishbed fighters. Fox had the MiG on the right; Mongillo took the other. Radar missile-lock was then also achieved by the other Hornet pilots.
The MiG fighters approached the Hornets head-on at supersonic speed and did not waiver. Fox was the first to fire, sending a Sidewinder toward his MiG. For good measure, he also fired a Sparrow missile at his target. The MiG became a fireball, absorbing both missiles, but it was the Sidewinder that had destroyed it. Within seconds of Fox’s kill, Mongillo loosed a Sparrow at the MiG in his lock, splashing it as well. Though heavily loaded with bombs and not ideally set up for aerial combat, the two Hornets had made their kills and now joined up with the other two for the bomb run. They attacked the airfield target and turned south again on a heading for the Gulf and their carrier. Two towering columns of black smoke marked the locations on the desert floor where their MiGs had impacted.
The incident may have been the first when fighter/attack airplanes carrying 8,000 pounds of bombs engaged and shot down two other fighters, and then were able to continue on and complete the bombing attack. Lt. Cdr Fox knew, however, that if the MiGs had been able to get behind his flight, the Hornets would have been compelled to jettison their bombs in order to take on their adversaries. In the only confirmed U.S. Navy air-to-air victories over Iraqi fixed-wing aircraft in the Gulf War, the Hornet proved the really special plane most Navy pilots had long believed it to be.
This is the transcript of a radio conversation between a United States Navy ship and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October 1995. It was released by the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, 10 October 1995.
Canadians: Please divert your course fifteen degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
Americans: Recommend you divert your course fifteen degrees to the north.
Canadians: Negative. You will have to divert your course fifteen degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
Americans: This is the Captain of a U.S. Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.
Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States Atlantic Fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers, and numerous support vessels. I demand that you change your course fifteen degrees north. I say again, that’s one-five degrees north, or counter-measures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.
Canadians: We are a lighthouse. Your call.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You won’t live long enough to make them all yourself.
“Flight operations consisted of various missions for each specific tactical aircraft. Fighter missions varied, from the boring grid search looking for submarines, to actual combat. Obviously, missions are dependent on the world political picture—news we rarely knew.
“Standing ‘alerts’ is part of carrier life. We
fighter pilots had three alert stages: thirty, fifteen, and five minutes. The status refers to the amount of time required to be airborne and ready for combat. Alert Thirty required us to stay within 1,000 feet of the aircraft. In other words, don’t leave the boat. Alert Fifteen meant being in full flight gear, sitting in the ready room. Alert Five was ‘stood’ sitting in the aircraft, strapped in and ready to go. At times the aircraft was even hooked up to the catapult. The watches were stood in succession: Thirty, then Fifteen, then Five, with each stage two hours long. At night Alert Thirty was stood in your rack; Alert Fifteen in the ready room watching a video of anything even remotely entertaining, or sleeping in a chair. Alert Five at night was ‘stood’ in the aircraft, either sleeping or reading a book. There was a friendly competition between the two sister squadrons to be the first off the deck, and in one dramatic incident a RIO, in order to be the first off, took a bad INS alignment. The crew were stationed on a combat air patrol a few hundred miles from the carrier, outside of radio range of the ship. In the course of their flight, they lost their alignment and bearings, and could not relocate the ship and were not close enough to contact the ship by radio. Eventually, they ran out of fuel and were forced to eject. Luckily, they were picked up by another ship after spending a very long night in their life raft.”
—Frank Furbish, former Navy fighter pilot
When Kelly Kinsella was a high school student in the Washington DC area, she was interested in attending a college that had a good competitive swimming program. In the middle of her senior year, she received a call from the swim coach at the United States Naval Academy, recruiting her to swim there. Her grandfather had been a Class of 1935 Academy graduate, but that had been the extent of her involvement with the institution. Intrigued by the possibility of being accepted for enrollment in the Naval Academy, she applied and did very well there, so well that by the second semester of her senior year, she was entitled to select her choice of Navy career assignment areas; she chose aviation.
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