The ship that I had the honor to sail aboard last year was the designated “night carrier” during Operation Iraqi Freedom. We had three carrier battle groups in the Gulf (and two more in the Med). To keep the pressure on at all times, one carrier had to serve as the night carrier, and we were nominated, ran and got elected. Our day began at 1830, and the last event would typically land about 1200 the next day. So long as we didn’t have to go alongside an oiler or ammo ship (the latter we had to resupply from fairly often), those not on watch could then go their racks, and try to snatch some sleep before the cycle started again.
On those days we replenished, whether it be fuel or ammo (or generally both), we’d be alongside the resupply ship an hour or so after the last aircraft had landed, and take on stores for the next two hours or so. On those days, we got around three hours sleep. It was hard, but at least we were not getting shot at – the infantrymen and Marines did no better in the category of sleep, ate MRE’s and had people trying to kill them, so we didn’t complain. We were support, and we were OK with that.
It’s a little strange at first, to go up on the bridge at the beginning of your work day, and see that it is totally dark outside. I never quite got used to it.
One night we got word that there was to be some bad weather up country – the soldiers advance would be affected, they would need air support to help consolidate their positions. We had several strikes going through the night in support. None of us thought for a moment about how this weather might affect us.
We started getting word from the picket ships up north that their visibility had suddenly degraded – we were still doing fine, steaming into the wind. Half an hour later, we’d just finished a launch and recovery cycle when suddenly there was a shift in the wind, some flaw that made the anemometers slacken and then spin around the compass. And then a moment later, we couldn’t even see our own bow. The aircraft on the roof, the landing lights, all were whisked from view. I’d never seen the vis go down so quickly. We were totally enveloped by a howling wind, and dust was everywhere. The flight deck crews were forced below, choking, while the lookouts on the weather decks took what shelter they could, while staying at their posts. The wind made a keening sound that was almost unnerving, and the bridge crew silently exchanged shocked glances.
We had another strike to launch in an hour or so, and a recovery to follow – a quick check with our escorts to the north told us that they had no sign of any clearing in the weather. The captain turned the ship before the wind, and called for the seventh and eighth boilers to be lit off. We’d need all of our speed to outrun this storm.
Slowly the old girl picked up speed out of the turn – 14 knots. Now 20. At 25 knots she started to tremble just a bit. At 28 knots she shuddered, fighting the waves, fighting against her age. At 30 knots you could feel the thrashing of her monstrous propellors all throughout the ship, as we strained to outrun the sand clouds that had enveloped us. Water glasses slopped their contents over their rims, or walked across tables to clatter to the deck.
It may not sound much to those of us who had in previous lives counted speed in Mach numbers. It is not fast in your car. But 30 knots is very fast indeed, in a ship that weighs 88,000 tons. It would take miles to stop her at that speed, We were scarcely able to turn, without the ship heeling over unacceptably, straining the tie down chains which secured the aircraft to the flight deck. So on the scales by which a carrier’s speed are judged, we were going like a bat out of hell.
And it was night, and we were blind.
But our boys were still coming back from that strike, some had in fact incurred damage from the storms. They needed a place to land.
No one would mistake the bridge of a US Navy warship at sea for a society social. People talk in hushed tones, it’s nearly all business – especially when the captain is on the bridge, sitting in his chair, the sacred chair on the port side of the bridge that belongs only to him, wearing his authority like an austere mantle. The only time a voice is raised is to issue or answer a command, in sharp, high tones, almost kabuki-like in their ritualized formality:
“Lee Helm – All engines ahead flank, indicate one -three-nine RPM.”
“All engines ahead flank, indicate one-three-nine RPM, aye sir!”
“Officer of the Deck, all engines are ahead flank, one-three-nine RPM indicated and answered.”
“Very well.”
But this night, in this brown hell that surrounded us, the bridge was as quiet as the tomb. All orders had been given, we had done everything that could be done.
Aircraft carriers have radars to search the air and seas for contacts, for traffic. But some contacts, the dhows that frequent every part of the Gulf, are too small to be seen at a distance, especially if there is any sea state at all. Which is why we always man lookout stations throughout the weather decks, day and night – to pick up those small, wooden hulled ships before they became a hazard to us. Before it became to late to avoid them. Before we ran them over.
We saw dhows almost every night – we often maneuvered to avoid them, if we could not make them maneuver out of our way. It always surprised me that anyone in a such a small boat would want to risk their lives by closing on an aircraft carrier operating at sea, limited in her ability to maneuver while conducting flight operations. There is, after all, recognition in the rules of the road of the “Law of Gross Tonnage,” which essentially states that while you may be perfectly entitled to the right of way by other rules in the book, it’s not worth having your 19 foot fishing boat challenge for water rights with an oil laden merchantman. Or an 88,000 ton aircraft carrier going as fast as she can.
And yet it happened all the time, in the Gulf. Insh-Allah, I guess – the Arab’s shrugging acquiescence to his fate, whatever it may be. If it be God’s will…
We didn’t see anything of course, and to my knowledge we never hit anything either. Insh-Allah.
Eventually we broke free, after what seemed an eternity, but the storm was moving at nearly 25 knots, and if we turned into the wind to catch the recovery, it would quickly overwhelm us again. And we were running out of sea space. By the time we got enough separation from the storm, we’d be in Iranian territorial waters. Or aground, in Iran.
Neither of which would do, frankly.
Fortunately, our Air Ops Officer had busily been calling all the local air fields, and had coordinated diverts for those aircraft we could not catch downwind. We caught some, diverted others, and battened down the hatches until the storm passed.
And when it did, we scrubbed the flight deck and the aircraft from the dust and sand that seemed to be everywhere, that seemed to seek its way inside seals and hatches and seams like some sort of malicious virus. We worked through the rest of that morning, and afternoon.
And when all was made ready, like things were supposed to look aboard a US Navy warship at sea, we went back to war again.
No real lesson here. Just a sea story. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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