Back on Connie’s flight deck in the controlled chaos of a hectic night’s flying the 22-ton Tomcats were slamming down in batches, because the carrier has to keep making ground downwind, altering course, between landings and takeoffs. Swarms of flight-deck personnel surrounded each aircraft as it thundered in, a team ever ready to rush forward and ram the Sidewinder safety pins into the pylon firing mechanisms. The hot swirling air, stinking of JP-4, burned rubber, searing hot metal and salt water, assaulted everyone’s senses as the air boss snapped out commands through the 88,000-ton ship’s tannoy system. This was Connie’s last tour of duty.
Out on the stern, oblivious to the earsplitting shriek of the incoming jets, the duty arresting gear officer, a lieutenant junior grade, sweating in his big fluorescent yellow jacket, was in contact with the hydraulic operators one deck below. The wires were ready to withstand the 75,000-pound force of the Tomcat hitting the deck at 160 knots, the pilot’s hand still hard on the throttle just in case the hook missed.
The 28-year-old Lieutenant, Bobby Myers from Ohio, could feel his voice rising now as he snapped down commands to the hydraulic men…“Stand by for Tomcat one-zero-seven…two minutes.”
He looked back over the stern, 90 feet above the water, straining to catch the lights of the fighter-bomber. He knew the pilot personally, and, as it did every single time, his chest began to tighten, and his heart was racing. Nothing ever dismisses the nerve-twisting tension that grips the arresting gear officer when a fighter-bomber is on its final flight path. Every arresting gear officer who ever lived, that is.
Bobby had him now, five miles out, and he checked the wires again, checked on his radio phone that the huge hydraulic piston was ready to take the strain in the forthcoming controlled collision between deck and plane.
“GROOVE!” he shouted into the phone, the code word for “She’s close, STAND BY!”
Two miles out now, bucking along in the warm erratic air currents of the gulf, the Tomcat pilot fought to hold her steady, watching the landing lights, always watching the balls of light, an iron grip on the stick. He could see the carrier’s stern rise slightly on the swell, and the precision required for the high-speed landing would be measured in inches rather than feet. Every pilot knows he is a split second from death during every carrier landing he makes. One in five Navy pilots dies in the first nine years of his service.
Seconds later Bobby Myers snapped, “SHORT”—the critical command for everyone to stand right back away from the machinery.
And now Bobby saw the Tomcat right above, screaming in.
“RAMP!” he bellowed, and every single eye on the flight deck was lasered in on the hook stretched out behind. The blast from the jets shimmered in the night air. The ear-shattering din of the jet engines made speech impossible. One mistake now and it would not be just the pilot who died. A pileup on the flight deck could spark a jet-fuel fire that could put the entire ship out of action.
And hundreds of battle-hardened flight-deck technicians, already swarming forward, silently breathed Thank God, as the hook swung, and then grabbed the wire, hauling the Tomcat to a standstill. Just as they would all breathe Thank God again, one minute from now, as they coaxed yet another F-14D out of the sky to safety, refueled her and prepared her to go again.
So it is, out with the frontline steel fist of the U.S. Navy, where men face danger every minute, where they operate in harm’s way every single day, always under orders, always working for the cause. Their rewards are modest, at least financially. But in a sense they have the biggest paychecks of alclass="underline" not written out on some bank transfer. Written out on their own hearts.
And meanwhile 200 million citizens back home grouse and moan about the rising price of gasoline.
“Tomcat one-zero-six…one minute…STAND BY!”
The 88,000-ton carrier was halfway between Pearl Harbor and Diego Garcia, steaming at flank speed through the Arafura Sea south of the Indonesian archipelago, heading for the near-bottomless waters above the Java Trench. They were well through the narrows of the Torres Strait, there was almost no wind off Australia’s Northern Territory and it was hotter than hell. Big John’s 280,000-horsepower Westinghouse turbines were working. The giant four-shafter was fully laden with more than 40 fighter-attack F-14A Tomcats, F/A-18C Hornets and a dozen more radar-spotter aircraft, prowlers and ASW squadrons.
The flight wing patches worn by the aviators bore the names of legendary U.S. Navy outfits: the Black Aces; old Fighting 14; the Top Hatters; and VFA-87, the Golden Warriors. There might not yet be a full-scale war raging in the Gulf of Iran, but you’d never have known it watching Big John, armed to the teeth, driving forward on the second half of her 10,000-mile mission to Jimmy Ramshawe’s minefield.
And now 5,000 miles of the Indian Ocean stretched before them. They would be the fifth U.S. CVBG to arrive on station, almost certainly to move north from Diego Garcia immediately, up to the gulf to relieve the Constellation Group.
On the bridge of the carrier, Rear Admiral Daylan Holt was studying the plot of his group, one cruiser, two destroyers, five frigates, two nuclear submarines and a fleet tanker. At this speed they were burning up fuel, fast. But his orders were clear: Make all speed to DG and stand by for gulf patrol.
That was one way to send someone on a 10,000-mile journey across the world. But Admiral Holt was prepared, even though it was difficult to get a handle on how serious things really were in the Strait of Hormuz.
He sipped black coffee in company with his Combat Systems Officer, Lt. Commander Chris Russ, as the sun began to rise blood red out of the ocean over the stern of the massive warship. There was an air of apprehension throughout the carrier, had been since they had cleared Pearl a week ago. The pilots were predictably gung-ho. A bit too gung-ho. And now, for the first time, Lt. Commander Russ posed the question to the Admiral.
“Do you think we might actually have to fight this, sir? I mean, a proper hot war?”
“I think it’s possible but unlikely, Chris. Look at our perceived enemies — Iran, who put down the minefield, and China, who made it possible. Well, for a start, Iran’s not going to fire a shot in anger. They know we could ice their entire country in about twenty minutes. They have not fired yet, and in my opinion will not fire at all.”
“How about the Chinese?”
“They might attack if the action were in the South China Sea where they have their main fleet and we have many, many fewer ships. But they won’t attack in the gulf. They’re too far from home, and anyway they know we’d wipe out their ships in about twenty minutes.”
“That’s a kinda busy twenty minutes, sir,” replied the Lieutenant Commander, grinning.
“That’s a lot better than a kinda dead twenty minutes,” replied the Admiral, not grinning.
Commander Russell Bennett, one of the most highly decorated U.S. Navy SEALs ever to serve in the squadron, was relishing his new job as the senior instructor for combat-ready men.
The ex-Maine lobsterman, lionized in Coronado for his daredevil role as forward commander in a sensational attack on a Chinese jail last year, was back home on the beach, running through the cold surf, driving his men ever onward, before the sun had fought its way above the cliffs.