FRONT ROW Part 2

There was a reason for that timing...

☆AS I WENT through the F-14A Fleet Replacement Squadron, it was clear I was not a natural.  I had some issues working against me, as my early path in the Navy was not the smoothest: a failed marriage in Training Command and protracted divorce, sometimes acrimonious and bitter; a catastrophic aircraft mishap and ejection out of a TA-4J Skyhawk; the death of a close friend from AOCS, the trauma of being the one to wake the widow in the middle of the night to tell her she was now a widow.  All before age 26.  That which does not kill us, makes us stronger, eventually.  But there were times when I felt like I was hanging on by the slimmest of margins, and it’s safe to say, at times I was distracted from learning my craft.  

Despite the added distractions of San Diego in the 80’s, I somehow graduated the syllabus, though toward the bottom of my class, and toward the bottom of the last 100 students who had finished the F-14A syllabus.  I was selectively sent to a squadron that would not face a deployment for the better part of a year, to allow me time to get up to speed.  The squadron leadership knew this when they received my name, and I was paired with strong flightleads and no-nonsense RIOs who had previous instructor or test flying experience--to keep a watchful eye on me.  And it was necessary.  By the time the deployment loomed, I was making progress, but others who had checked in after me, were ‘getting it’ faster than I was. It’s safe to say the Ready Room was unsure of how I would be on cruise.

Black Knight Cruise photo from the 88-89 deployment.

When I first checked into the Black Knights in March 1988, I was one of the most junior officers. I got stuck with a chair in a heavy traffic area in the back of the Ready Room with a bad view of the movie screen.  By the time deployment rolled around in December of that year, several of the more senior JOs had rotated out of the command, and others more junior to me had check onboard; I had bubbled into the lower-middle class section in Ready Room hierarchy.  When my turn came to pick my chair for the entire deployment, miraculously, there was one chair left in the front row--it was all the way in the extreme right corner next to the wall, but much better than the one I had, or so I thought.  It wasn’t perfect; to see the movie screen for a roll’em or the front whiteboard for a brief, you had to hold your head past a 45 º angle; after a few minutes, my neck was tired and it became apparent that this front row seat wasn’t such a good deal after all.  But it would be my home in the Ready Room for the next 6 months, and I made the best of it.

We made the best of being deployed and underway during Christmas 1988--hats and 'modified' carols  sung in each Ready Room.  You make the best out of bad situations and make your own fun, or you're miserable.  We chose to make our fun. 

The Black Knights deployed on USS CONSTELLATION in early December 1988.  Christmas was spent underway; New Years’ was in the Philippines (no fireworks law enforcement there, like a war zone).  On 04 January 89, the ship was still in port Cubi Point, when news from the other side of the world broke that two F-14s from the VF-32 Swordsmen had shot down two Libyan MiG-23 Floggers in the Gulf of Sidra.  This was big news.  Aircrew throughout the Air Wing were understandably excited; the ship was abuzz with what might happen next in the Mediterranean, and whether we might find ourselves part of it.  As we left Cubi Point PI headed for the Indian Ocean through the South China Sea, our course was supposed to take us near the coast of Vietnam.

Port call on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, 1989.

CONSTELLATION’s Battlegroup Commander was an Admiral named Carlson.  He was not well-liked or highly regarded among the Air Wing JOs.  He was comically short, a sourpuss on the edge of being ill-tempered, allegedly hard on his staff and those who worked for him, and it appeared that he took himself way too seriously.   He was an aviator, having ‘grown up’ as an electronic attack Naval Flight Officer (NFO), but he seemed to distance himself from all the good things about aviation.  He didn’t like to fly, for one; he didn’t even seem to want to talk about aviation, or to other aviators.  He barely concealed his disdain for fighter pilots; he believed we were a bunch of undisciplined cowboys with little regard for authority (only partially true).  The prevalent theory was that he must’ve been picked on by fighter guys when he was a JO, who beat him up and took his lunch money (in all fairness, we can be a fairly ruthless and asinine bunch).  These traits combined to make him an easy target for jokes and cartoons throughout the Air Wing and ship, for which he had little sense of humor.   

F-14 cockpit silhouette; with the seat all the way down and a short RIO, the backseater's head would barely show over the side of the aircraft.

The one time Admiral Carlson flew as a guest RIO with the Black Knights, he had a joke played on him.  His seat was preflighted by a JO, who ran it all the way to the lowest position in the cockpit, then pulled the circuit breaker which controlled power to the seat, so that the Admiral was unable to adjust the seat height once he was strapped in.  He struggled with it until completely exasperated, and just flew that way, unable to see forward over the instrument panel, barely able to see over the sides of the cockpit to the outside.  The next day a cartoon appeared in the ship’s airplan which showed the top of his head barely above the canopy rails, like a little kid in the backseat of the car.  He was furious, as the butt of a joke, ridiculed and mocked by fighter guys...again.  The joke seemed like a good idea at the time to us, but it didn’t make the life of the Air Wing Commander (CAG Bud Orr) any easier.

In the late 80’s, the Soviet Union had an arrangement with the Vietnamese government to use the former US airbase at Cam Ranh Bay to forward deploy its MiG-23 Floggers.  Soviet Floggers occasionally came out toward US carriers to test US response; it was a little game of chess, requiring discipline, restraint and professionalism to intercept and escort a sometimes uncooperative adversary.  

Soviet MiG-23 Flogger.

But in the light of the Libyan shootdown, the Air Wing’s excitement in the aftermath, and Libyan claims that the aircraft shot down were on a reconnaissance mission without intent to provoke, Admiral Carlson became concerned that fighter pilot bravado in CONSTELLATION’s Air Wing might cause an international incident with the Soviet Floggers out of Cam Ranh Bay.  The story was he was concerned we’d go pick a fight, ‘fishing’ for a MiG kill.  CONSTELLATION adjusted her course to stay well clear of any possibility of encounter with the Soviets.

Commercial routes throughout Indonesia and the South China Sea.

This widened the rift between the Admiral and the Air Wing on the ship--more cartoons and jokes about the Admiral being scared of the Soviets, and some justifiable indignation that he was making decisions assuming the worst about the discipline of his fighter crews.  We sailed east of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, closer to Borneo than Indochina, and passed through the Straits of Malacca into the Indian Ocean.  After some operations around the Maldives, we would eventually head north for a portcall in Karachi, Pakistan--the first US carrier there for a number of years.  

Sir Salman Rushdie's controversial work, which was the catalyst for unrest and riots throughout the Muslim world in the late 80's.

The timing of this scheduled visit was interesting; it coincided with the controversy in the Muslim world surrounding the publication of Sir Salman Rushdie’s work, ‘Satanic Verses.’  Reports of unrest, riots and violence directed at UK and US consulates in Pakistan led to the prevailing notion that the Karachi port visit would be cancelled.  When it became clear that the port visit would occur as scheduled, the ship’s navigator found he didn’t have any recent photos of the anchorage;  it was decided that a pair of F14A’s, each loaded with a standoff photo reconnaissance pod, would launch on a long range, max-endurance mission to get imagery, staying just outside of Pakistan’s internationally-recognized 12-mile sovereign airspace/waterspace boundary.  It’s my guess that this mission wasn’t requested by higher headquarters, or approved by it; we were simply going to make it happen.

Tactical Air Reconnaissance Pod System (TARPS),  a 1700-pound pod that carried several cameras and film, and other sensors to capture imagery on the ground.

The F-14A had this long-range photo capability, it was true; but what it lacked in those days was an accurate inertial navigation system (INS), and there was no GPS.  The F-14 was designed as an open-ocean fighter against large numbers of Soviet Bear and Badger long-range bombers.  It was not originally designed to deliver precision weapons (that came later, in the mid- and late-90’s), so there had been no need to give it a state-of-the art navigation system.  The INS was notorious for drifting off-position after only a short time; it would still provide a good attitude reference platform for instrument flying, but it would routinely be several miles off of the actual position over the ground....