On the level above, a third class petty officer pulled himself to his feet and rushed to close the watertight door. The wire trailing from his sound-powered phone jerked him up short as he reached the door, nearly knocking him off his feet. He jerked them off and tossed them aside before throwing himself to the deck and sticking his head inside the compartment. Smoke poured out, sending him into a spasm of choking and coughing as he pulled back. Rubbing his eyes, he shouted for anyone in there to come out.
A quick flash of flame erupted through the hatch, singeing off hair on his head and hands. His long dungaree shirtsleeves protected his arms and the top button-buttoned — kept the heat away from his chest. His face and hands looked as if he had suffered bad sunburn. He’d live.
The smoke began to taper off as the fire burned itself out.
He continued calling and refused to shut the watertight door.
The warrant officer slid down the ladder, saw the damage below, and shouted, “Shut this damn hatch! You want to sink the ship? And put that fucking phone back on and tell Damage Control what’s happened.” Then the warrant jumped through the smoke-filled hatch, feet first, into the water below. Shaking the water from her head, the warrant looked up, smoke obscuring her face; the water was waist high and rising.
“I said shut the hatch, sailor!”
“But, Warrant!” he protested, as he fumbled with the headset.
“Dammit, sailor. I’ll be all right if you’ll just shut the hatch! Now, tell Damage Control what’s going on. You can do it.” Without waiting for a reply the Gearing’s only warrant officer grabbed a nearby bunk and pulled herself forward into the smoke and waded out of sight.
The third class petty officer gripped the handle on the watertight hatch. His hands shook as he dropped it.
“Damn you. Warrant!” he repeatedly cried as he spun the wheel, sealing the compartment below from the rest of the ship.
“Damn you!” The sailor pushed the speaker on his sound-powered phone set and shoved the earpiece against his ears to seal out imagined cries from below. Then in a weak voice he reported to Damage Control Central. Afterward, he stood alone in the emergency-lighted compartment and several times successfully fought the urge to throw off his headset, open the overhead hatch, and flee topside to the perceived safety of the open air. Everything would be alright, he kept telling himself.
“Fire Control, do we have solution on the aircraft?”
“Nearly there. Captain!” A couple of seconds passed.
“There! We have a firing solution!”
“Then blow them out of the air! Fire, fire, fire!”
Cafferty pressed the intercom.
“Helo Deck, Combat; do you read?” Once again, no answer. Cafferty had no way of knowing the helicopter props were turning as it prepared to take off or that the helo deck sound-powered phone operator had plugged into the wrong circuit.
The sounds of Super RBOC, reseeding the air with chaff, echoed through Combat.
“I have video separation again! Video separation!” cried the air search operator as he announced the enemy ship’s launch of another surface-to-surface missile.
“How long to Harpoon impact?” Focused. Stay focused.
One battle at a time. Can’t lose it. Keep it together for them and the ship. What the hell is happening on the helo deck?
“Thirty and thirty-two seconds!”
The roar of the Styx antimissile shook the Gearing. What was this antique weapon doing here in modern warfare, Cafferty wondered. “Combat, Bridge; missile passed astern of Gearing about one hundred yards. Missile miss! I repeat, missile miss. It’s heading for the horizon!” A cheer went up inside Combat.
“Quiet! Focus, Combat! Stay focused!” shouted Cafferty.
God must have been watching; now fight the ship. Concentrate.
What next? What next?
The ship executed a series of zigzag movements as the enemy aircraft approached. Lieutenant Commander Leroy Nash, XO, was doing a great job maneuvering the ship.
Cafferty made a mental note to recommend the XO for a medal when this was oven-if they survived.
“I have inbound air-to-surface missile,” said the EW, interrupting Cafferty’s thought.
Ten seconds later the first air-to-surface missile hit the helicopter as it rotated on the flight deck. The explosion rattled the USS Gearing. Streams of metal and smoke rocketed a hundred feet into the air. When the smoke cleared two sailors on the helo deck were gone. The second missile exploded harmlessly off the port bow, sending a wash of water over the front of the ship. The third passed directly over the ship, between the two masts, barely missing the signal bridge, to hit the bullnose on the bow, blowing off the flagpole, but doing little damage otherwise. A fourth air-to-surface missile misfired and exploded in the air off the starboard beam, sending bridge personnel diving to the deck. The lead Libyan pilot misinterpreted the fiery damage to the helicopter as a mortal blow to the ship. Smoke from the burning helicopter obscured the enemy pilots’ view of everything aft of USS Gearing’s amidships quarterdeck.
The two Mig-23s followed their missiles, raking the ship with twenty-three-millimeter cannon shells from stern to bow as they roared past. They executed a quick split as they climbed upward, one breaking to the left and the other rolling to the right. The one breaking left came within radar contact of the ship’s port Vulcan Phalanx — the good one. The CIWS locked on and immediately fired a tattoo of two hundred shells racing toward the Mig-23. As the aircraft, nose up, gained altitude the depleted uranium bullets stitched a fine weave up it. The radar-guided stream of bullets tore the fighter-bomber’s jet engines apart, laddered up its fuselage, and turned the inside of the cockpit a splattered red as it chewed through it and everything within it before blowing off the Mig-23 High Lark radar in the nose cone. Blazing pieces of what had been a Mig-23 rained from the sky.
“Scratch one Mig!” came an exhilarated shout from the bridge.
“All the King’s horses and all the King’s men won’t put that Mig-23 together again!”
A loud chorus of hurrahs echoed through Combat.
“Quiet! We’re not done yet!” shouted the captain.
The Number Two Damage Control Party rushed to the helo hangar from where they had just finished containing the flooding in main engine room number one. A minimum manned ship lacked the personnel needed for multiple damage control parties. Fire was the more dangerous element to a ship. Sailors could always pump out a flooded compartment and refloat a ship, but they could not rebuild what fire destroyed. So, when faced with the two choices, putting out a fire came first. The radioman chief led the team.
“We’ve got to shove that helo off the ship! Smitty, rig the hose while I try to shove it overboard.”
The chief jumped into the parked yellow forklift and turned the electric engine on. He pushed the pedal to the floor. The small one-man forklift moved forward and rammed the burning helicopter. The back wheels of the forklift spun as it fought the inertia to shift the helicopter.
A tilt by the ship aided the effort as the burning wreckage moved slightly toward the edge of the deck about ten yards away. The chief hunched over the steering wheel to avoid the heat. Glancing at the cockpit, he saw the outlines of the bodies of the pilots dancing within the flames.
The fire blazed up, burning his eyebrows away. Blisters began to rise across the top of his hands and his exposed neck. He turned his hands over and gripped the wheel from beneath, but this did little to protect his exposed fingers and nothing for the back of his neck.
“Can’t do it!” he shouted and took a step to abandon the aviation truck.