Christmas 1975 is Past

                                                                                                                       From My Memoires:      

Writer’s Note: I debated putting these words on paper. Some of the events described were TOP SECRET at the time, and had an indefinite declassification date. But given the course of events, I am comfortable relating things. All the ships, and the sub that were involved, and the enemy country are gone. Given the passage of time, the need to even consider classification may seem silly, but it is not.

            We pulled out of Naples on a chilly Monday morning. That would be Naples Italy, not Florida. The ship was Med moored to Molo Angoino, right in the heart of the city. Med mooring involves having the stern of the ship attached to the pier, with the rest sticking out into the bay. The ship is stabilized by putting down its two anchors. Med mooring is unique to Mediterranean ports, where space is at a premium. Italian piers are called moles, or “molo” in Italian. Not long before, the Achille Lauro, yes, that Achille Lauro, had been moored port side to, on the south side of the mole.

            The mole was a giant cement and stone pier, about five hundred feet wide, jutting out far enough into the inner harbor to put an ocean liner against her. Four navy ships would med moor to it, which means they would back up toward the mole, drop their anchors when they were out about fifty yards, then keep backing in until their sterns were up against the mole. They would put over mooring lines and fenders, and sit there, with some amount of tension on their anchor chains, quite secure. This method permitted considerable numbers of ships to moor in a small space. Getting underway was just as simple. A ship singled up its mooring lines, heaved around on the anchor chain, then took in the lines while barely steaming forward , housed the anchor, and off she went. It was easy, and even a cruiser required no tugs, though the Italian pilots union ensured that they got their pound of flesh, especially from a foreign navy.

            We had been to Naples before; it was essentially the home of the United States Sixth Fleet. Many sailors didn’t care for it, but there were many fine eateries and bars.

            Filthy as it was the inner harbor had a certain historic beauty, if you looked for it. Naples Bay was picturesque, overseen by Vesuvius, now long dormant and frequently snow covered. Once out of Naples Bay, we had to squeeze through the straits of Messina, watched over by Mt. Etna. Finally, having gotten through the straits, we were in the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west of Italy. It took all this to get out to where a battle group had room to stem and flex its muscles. We steamed past two active volcanic islands, Stromboli and Lipari. At night Stromboli’s volcano looked like a waterfall of fire. It was a tough time of year to be in the Tyrrhenian. The winds blew off the North African coast, churning up the seas into a short, steep chop. The East Med was spared this phenomenon, but from western Crete on to the straits of Gibraltar, the winter waters are choppy and windy.

             This was a period of the toasty warm Cold War. When the fleet got underway we played hard. But we were also looking over our shoulders just a bit. A little over a month ago the carrier John F. Kennedy and the cruiser Belknap had met in a fiery collision. Virtually all the ships in Naples had been in formation with Kennedy and Belknap when the collision happened.  Kennedy had been damaged, but had resumed flight operations within twenty-four hours. Belknap, on the other hand, had her entire superstructure reduced to a hunk of molten slag. She was now under tow to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for a major rebuild. [see my “A Night to Remember”]

            Where the Kennedy went, so went a Soviet intelligence collection ship, an AGI, but also frequently a Soviet destroyer. The AGIs were small trawler like vessels, and they were unable to keep up with a carrier task group if we decided to steam above our usual economical sixteen knots.

            We had been operating for a few days when Lt. Chip Boyd, our Operations Officer, hinted that we might be breaking off from the Kennedy for some independent ops. “It’s still LIMDIS (limited distribution),” he said, “I’ll know shortly.”

            Another day passed. Screening the Kennedy was strenuous work - steaming in station around the carrier whose movements seemed random, but were dedicated to launching and recovering aircraft.

            Sometime that evening we met in the wardroom. We were leaving the Kennedy battle group, steaming west at maximum speed toward Gibraltar. We would rendezvous with an oiler west of Minorca, then take station west of the straits. A Soviet Echo-II class sub was on its way to the Med from North Fleet. Our P-3C aircraft had tracked her down the coast, but lost her somewhere of the Bay of Biscay. We would pick her up just outside of the Med and track her through the straits.

            The approach to the Straits of Gibraltar is like a funnel. Ships head there from all points of the compass. As they enter the straits they are compressed, suddenly finding themselves in a traffic jam. Ninety per cent of the ships in that traffic jam behave, adhering to a traffic separation scheme printed in magenta on the navigational charts, but invisible on the water. This makes for a divided highway, avoiding collisions, just as a highway’s median does. The other ten per cent of ocean going vessels, plus ferries running between Europe and Africa disregard the separation scheme, and risk collisions. Transiting the straits required vigilance and occasional daring. Merchant vessels often seemed willing to risk playing the maritime version of bumper cars in these close quarters.

            We had an excellent idea of where to intercept our target based on intelligence. We took station north west of the straits, with our prairie masker system energized. This system streams bubbles through a system of holes running round the entire perimeter of the propeller. That prevents the prop from cavitating. Cavitation occurs above about twelve knots when the prop creates a vacuum which forms bubbles that subsequently collapse, creating a snapping sound. The masker system also streams a blanket of bubbles along the length of the hull, masking sounds made by the ship.

            The Echo II class was an old type, based on the first class of Soviet nuclear sub. They were a family of three types, the Hotel, Echo, and November class (the HENs). The Echos carried eight big anti ship missiles. This was part of the Soviet compensation for not having aircraft carriers. Unknown to me at the time was the fact that there were two Echos coming in. The Navy had stationed three ships to intercept them, along with several maritime patrol aircraft.

            We launched our helicopter, a small twin engine SH-2F Light Airborne Multi Purpose System (LAMPS). We set a barrier of passive sonobuoys, to intercept the sub. We set and walked three barriers. Our tasking order had given us an extra budget for sonobuoys, and we were using them.

            We struck pay dirt on day three. Our helo was airborne. It didn’t generally monitor the sonobuoys. It data linked them back to the ship, where we processed them using a sophisticated acoustic processor and trained analysts. The Echo’s 1950s technology propulsion plant sounded like an underwater freight train. Once we had contact, there was no escape. The Echo was so noisy that we simply extended the sonobuoy line as she passed.

            Eventually the sub closed in on the straits. We would be unable to track it within the straits due to the noise of the high density shipping. Also, we could not safely conduct flight operations in there. The solution surprised me. Up until now, we had kept our distance. The sonobuoys were in close proximity to the sub; our helo maintained altitude sufficient to link the buoy information back to the ship. The ship remained well clear of the sub. The sub was completely ignorant of our presence. Now we increased sped to close the sub. We dropped one more expendable bathythermograph, a device that measures the temperature of the water as it drops to the bottom, yielding a temperature versus depth profile. We quickly used that to recalculate optimum active sonar ranges. At six thousand yards we went active with max power on our sonar. I expect that the ears of those Soviet sailors were ringing, and kept ringing for quite some time. Having been unaware of our presence until that moment, it took the Echo a few moments to react. They began to maneuver wildly, in an attempt to escape our active tracking. But we had them. We had moved in to optimum tracking range before going active. We knew where the thermal layer was that she would use for cover. Being off watch at this point, I went to sonar to take a look. Our senior sonar techs were there. We weren’t just tracking this guy. We were pounding him with extra noise.

            The leading sonar tech had a grimace on his lips. “This is no ordinary Russian skipper,” he hissed through his cigarette. “He’s creative. If we hadn’t gotten up close an’ surprised him, he’d a gotten away, I reckon.”

            I was a green ensign. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I knew that we were having all the fun, and the Russians down there were not.

Valentine's Day Haiku for My Rose

Each Valentine's Day I give my wife Rose no card. I write her a poem. I'm a poet, so it seems like the thing to do. She seems to like the idea. I admit it's hard to be romantic in three lines, but I enjoy the form. A signature quality of this holiday is that it occurs in the cold depth of winter (in the Northern Hemisphere).

When the sky is cold,

Our life together is warm,

Be my Valentine.

your misch

(she adds - always, the less than romantic: "Burma shave":)

On 5 June Norfolk and Western J Class locomotive Nr. 611 made its final run under steam for the year, traveling from Manassas Station to Front Royal Virginia and back. My friend Tom Bryant and I chased her across the Piedmont, grabbing a few pictures here and there. I cannot think of a better way to spend the day. I never posted these, but here they are now.

A Little Something for My Wife at Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving, 2017

Be the girl I saw with long hair,
And books.
Be the girl I came to,
In a taxi.
Be the girl who was always
In my thoughts.
Be the woman who,
Saved my life.
Let us be the ones who have what others
Wish they had.
While the wind blows,
Or the snow falls,
And the sun slips away too soon,
Cuddle with me by the stove,
As long as there is,
A together.

Under the Stars

I had been invited for a night of stargazing. To my left and right, a half dozen amateur astronomers, each armed with a bucket list of nebulae, double stars, and globular clusters pointed their telescopes at the sky. I sat back in the old catskill style chair, looking straight up at the dome of stars. An occasional car rumbled by on Ridge Road, hidden by the big stand of pines behind the house. Other than that, there were only muffled voices discussing the next celestial object in someone’s crosshairs. A voice rang out from the dark. “Anyone want to see M-9 in the big telescope?” M-9 was a globular cluster in the constellation Ophiuchus. You need a small telescope to see it at all. I climbed five steps up a ladder to reach the eyepiece of this thirty inch scope, and put my eye gently to the glass. M-9, normally a cottony blob of light through smaller instruments, became a riot of individual stars held together in a cluster by its own gravity. I had come to be in this back yard courtesy of the Culpeper Astronomy Club. The club meets once a month at the library, but maintains a relationship with a gentleman who has a superb observatory in his backyard. The observatory’s thirty inch dobsonian telescope is likely the largest telescope in private hands in Virginia. It was longer than my car. Looking through that telescope at M-9, twenty-six thousand light years distant, took me back in time. The light carrying M-9’s image to my eye began its journey when the earth was at the height of the last ice age, twenty-six thousand years ago. I felt sadly nostalgic for a past I could never recapture. This sky would never be as clear and as striking as the sky had been when I was at sea. Back then the stars would twinkle against a pitch dark sky, untouched by city lights. On a few calm nights, when the wind had died to nothing, the sea would sit flat like glass. The stars would twinkle off the water as if it were a mirror, just as they were twinkling in the sky. As the ship slipped through the water with a gentle hiss, the stars on the water would surround it in a magic display as if it were gliding through space. Those few special nights made memories that only sailors can have. They are memories that sailors have had and held for thousands of years - as long as we have gone to sea. No one who hasn’t gone to sea can have that experience. It’s something we can store away, remembering that excitement at sea wasn’t limited to hurricanes, and emergencies. Some of them are just moments of peaceful beauty.

My Review of Hue: 1968 by Mark Bowden

Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Hue: 1968" is a first class account of one of the pivotal battles of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Mark Bowden dissects the battle beautifully, interviewing combatants and civilians from all sides, where they were available, to reconstruct the battle, from the period before hostilities, when the North Vietnamese prepared to enter the city, through the final recapture. He spends an appropriate amount of time on General William Westmoreland's inept handling of the situation, and his misinterpretation of North Vietnamese intentions. The General was so convinced that the North's major target was Khe Sanh that he refused to belief that the Hue attack was anything other than a minor feint. As a result, he discounted reports of heavy enemy strength in Hue, feeding Marine strength in piecemeal. This self delusion ran down the chain of command through the brigade commander level. The result was hundreds more Marine dead than necessary.

Hue was one of THE major battles of the war, fought under the radar of the the American command in Vietnam, and the American public. This book covers the personal stories of over 100 participants, and gives the reader a clear view from ground level.

View all my reviews

Bachelor Buttons

Roadside Bachelor Buttons

Line my route,

I chat with them through the day,

Pedaling a blue path through summer.