Aircraft Carrier Deployment - An F-35C Lightning II, assigned to the 'Black Knights' of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 314, launches from the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) on Feb. 22, 2022. US Navy Photo
The editorial I wrote calling attention to the sacrifices by the men of the Nimitz battle group appeared in The Daily Progress the next day, and then—as we journalists say—went on to wrap fish. But less than a year later, in early May 1981, it got me recruited to join Norfolk's afternoon newspaper, The Ledger-Star, as an editorial writer.
Aircraft Carrier Deployment
It was a routine assignment on board the USS America (CV-66) moored at Pier 12 in the summer of 1984 that I learned once again how brutally hot a hangar deck could become. While covering a change-of-command ceremony for COMNAVAIRLANT, the event morphed into a non-TV version of "Survivor."
As the outgoing three-star reminisced without end, droning on and on, Hangar Bay One echoed with the surreal “CLANG … SPLAT!” as one by one, the Marines in their dress blue uniforms dropped their M-14s and swan-dived onto the steel nonskid.
"Employees from Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility and Norfolk Naval Shipyard, along with the ship's force and contractors, are working together in Japan to complete maintenance on the aircraft carrier," according to a Navy statement.
When she took command of the Lincoln last summer, Bauernschmidt said in a statement that "there is no more humbling sense of responsibility than to know you are entrusted with the care of the people who have chosen to protect our nation."
Russian warships have deployed in a formation to the theater; however, additional guided-missile destroyers – each with 90 vertical launcher cells each – have deployed and are in the Mediterranean Sea. These five Aegis DDGs and one guided-missile cruiser were built to counter the type of surface-surface anti-ship cruise missile threat currently presented by the Russian cruisers in the theater.
Each of these Russian cruisers has 16 SSN-12 missiles. The six U.S. Navy DDGs and the cruiser San Jacinto carry hundreds of surface-to-air missiles and can control 16 missiles in the air simultaneously to counter multiple targets out to 256 nautical miles.
Then suddenly for me, it was over. On August 22, 1971, I flew back to California from Clark Airbase, out-processed at Treasure Island three days later, and flew home to Virginia and civilian life. Within a few months, I started working at a local newspaper.
My days on a carrier, I thought, were done. Thirteen years later, I rode the Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) as she crossed Puget Sound from Bremerton to her new home port at Everett, Washington. And 36 years later, in the spring of 2020, I posted an online commentary praising the crew of the Theodore Roosevelt as they valiantly grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic in Guam.
Aviation Structural Mechanic 2nd Class Ryan Shewmaker, from Lawton, Oklahoma, conducts a magnetic particle inspection aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) on Feb. 22, 2022. The Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group is on a scheduled deployment in the U.S.
Sixth Fleet area of operations in support of U.S., allied and partner interests in Europe and Africa. (U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Elexia Morelos) After recounting the Midway's role as flagship of the Persian Gulf carrier force in Operation Desert Storm, one pilot summed up: "This is an old ship," he said.
"It's beat up, it leaks. It's an old boat. But, boy do they do a lot with it.” My piece concluded: As the sun rose over Puget Sound, Midway's men manning the rail were still unable to think of their ship in the past tense."
Even the Navy budget could become an adventure: In 1982, when the admirals and Congress were wrestling over a number of major ship overhaul projects, the Hampton Roads business community went to General Quarters when it appeared that the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard (e.g. the Pennsylvania and
New Jersey congressional delegations) were maneuvering to hijack a $100-million overhaul of the USS Coral Sea away from the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. After listening to one near-hysterical press conference by local business executives and labor leaders, I felt inspired to write: "It is a sign of the age we live in that the Navy, which used to name its aircraft carriers after major battles, is
now naming its major battles after aircraft carriers. . . .” An EA-18G Growler, assigned to the 'Wizards' of Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 133, makes an arrested landing on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) on Feb.
21, 2022. US Navy Photo Once more, it was an Associated Press article reporting the upcoming homecoming of an aircraft carrier after a prolonged, frequently extended deployment to the Middle East due to a flare-up of tensions with Iran.
Young men and women served long hours and endless days in a far and distant hostile zone, with scant opportunities ashore, while carrying out a vital yet unheralded mission. And it was the USS Nimitz. I wrote: "As its crew disembarks in Bremerton for the first time in 340 days—the longest overseas mission by an aircraft carrier since World War II—the sailors and Marines can be proud of both their victory over COVID-19 and their ship's operations
from the South China Sea to the Persian Gulf and back.” For me, that day seemed to mark a turning point away from the frustration and angst of Vietnam towards a genuine reconciliation between the U.S.
the military and the civil society it protects. And unbeknownst to me, it set in motion a series of events that would define the next four decades of my newspaper career. An E-2D Hawkeye, attached to the 'Seahawks' of Airborne Command and Control Squadron (VAW) 126, flies over the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75), Feb.
21, 2022. US Navy Photo When earlier this year I read that 2022 would mark the centennial of naval "tailhook" aviation, the news hit home with a jolt. I suddenly realized that I've had a personal and professional connection with this proud Navy community for nearly two-thirds of its existence.
. . and for over 90 percent of my own. The ARG is comprised of three ships: landing helicopter dock USS Essex (LHD-2), amphibious transport dock USS Portland (LPD-27) and amphibious dock landing ship USS Pearl Harbor (LSD-52).
Together the 11th MEU, Amphibious Squadron (PHIBRON) 1 and ships are designated as an ARG/MEU. In addition to the ships, the main Navy elements of the ARG are a Naval Beach Group element, a Tactical Air Control Squadron element, a fleet surgical team and a helicopter sea combat squadron element.
The deployment will involve "approximately 9,000 personnel from nine nations, 20 ships and 60 aircraft," a US Navy release said. The nations participating in the exercise include the US, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden, the release added.
In addition to these major formations, not shown are others serving in submarines, individual surface ships, aircraft squadrons, SEALs, Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Forces, Seabees, Coast Guard cutters, EOD Mobile Units, and more serving throughout the globe.
Just two weeks after I started work, the Nimitz suffered a major flight deck accident that killed 14 sailors and injured 39 more. The tragedy occurred a year to the day after the homecoming. Assigned to write about the deadly mishap, I found that I did not have to consult any reference books or naval histories.
Memories from my service on board the Midway a decade earlier came flooding back and all but dictated my column on the dangers faced every day by the guys who work on "the roof." I wrote:
An aircraft carrier is staffed by personnel clerks, by food processors and enginemen, quartermasters and radar techs and weapon handlers. . . . In the diversity of our jobs, however, we were sharing a common role: to provide, directly or indirectly, for the ship's ability to launch and recover its air wing.
The Midway is closing out a career that spans three generations of U.S. Navy sailors, and a tenure that started with Navy design teams at work a year before Pearl Harbor and ended after the virtual collapse of the Soviet threat.
Her history is a litany of peacetime, crisis and wartime operations from the Arctic Ocean to the eastern Med, the U.S. West Coast to the shores of Africa, from the Tonkin Gulf to the Persian Gulf.
. . . Her first planes were prop-driven fighters, and her last cruise brought the supersonic F/A-18 fighter-bombers of Strike Fighter Squadron 151 back to the U.S. mainland for reassignment. At the time, I was so glad to be back in "the World" that this did not bother me.
Now, nine years later as I read about the planned celebration in Norfolk, it did. I felt something pulling at me to go down and cover the event. On January 31, 1970, I was one of several thousand sailors joining the Midway at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard near San Francisco on the day she formally rejoined the fleet.
(In between model building and Hunters Point, I'd had a brief introduction to carrier life during a reserve cruise on board the USS Hornet [CVS-12.]) This would mark the start of an intense immersion into the world of aircraft carriers
. When I walked down the Midway's gangway for the last time 19 months later at Cubi Point Naval Air Station, I had experienced the full cycle of carrier operations. Over the course of 1970 and 1971, the Midway went from cold steel at a shipyard pier to combat operations in the Tonkin Gulf.
Sonar Technician (Surface) 2nd Class Dashae King connects a sound-powered telephone to a stowage location on the fo'c'sle before a replenishment-at-sea with Supply-class fast combat support ship USNS Supply (T-AOE-6) aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Jason Dunham (DDG-109) on Feb.
19, 2022. US Navy Photo In the end, two of my most treasured stories involved homecomings. In September 1991, the Midway entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca after a trans-Pacific crossing from its home port in Yokosuka, Japan, en route to its decommissioning in April 1992. The carrier's three-day Seattle port visit offered me the chance to
make a final trip on board her. In my Navy Times "farewell" article, I noted the carrier's lengthy history and accomplishments: The column was well received. My editor suggested that from now on I should focus on military and defense issues wherever possible.
In Norfolk, that meant the U.S. Atlantic Fleet—particularly its aircraft carriers. I found this focus both professionally challenging and personally fascinating. Over the years, I would write about Army Rangers, Air Force transport missions, Marine amphibious exercises, nuclear weapons, and a plethora of other military topics.
But time and time again I found myself sitting in a COD as it snagged the three-wire. The amphibious ships of the America Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) are USS America (LHA-6), USS Green Bay (LPD-20) and USS Ashland (LSD-48).
Elements of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) are embarked. The ESG departed on Jan. 14 from Sasebo, Japan, for a patrol in the Western Pacific. USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) is in port in Yokosuka, Japan, conducting its annual winter maintenance availability.
The carrier began a four-month selected restricted availability in Yokosuka on Jan. 13, following a five-month deployment in the Middle East and the Pacific. I was riding in a van with some other reporters at Newport News Shipbuilding on October 27, 1984, when our shipyard escort pointed out the windshield to a bizarre landscape of giant metal shapes and forms—some several stories tall—littering a wide open field at the
shipyard. "That's the USS Abraham Lincoln," he said with a grin. "We haven't started gluing it together yet." The event we were attending was the launching of the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71). Among the distinguished visitors were Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, Navy Secretary John F. Lehman, and an entire bleacher section filled with Teddy Roosevelt look-alikes.
During that time, I experienced the full spectrum of a carrier sailor's life: mundane shipboard routine, brief respites of liberty in San Francisco, Alameda, and San Diego; backbreaking around-the-clock General Quarters, damage control, and firefighting drills off southern California;
the dawning excitement as our deployment departure loomed. And a magical ten-day transit of the North Pacific in springtime with a full moon low on the horizon under the brilliant Milky Way pointing our westward track.
Despite operating under EMCON silence, a pair of Soviet Bear-D bombers out of Artem North jumped us a week out of Hawaii, adding an adrenaline spike to the day's routine. We then sprinted into the Tonkin Gulf for the air wing's first Alpha Strike against Laotian targets.
A summer of around-the-clock air operations, interspersed with liberty stops in Olongapo and Yokosuka, followed. Seaman Oscar Ruvio, left, from Los Angeles, and Seaman Michael Blanchard, right, from Panama City Beach, Fla., wait to be signaled by the landing signalman enlisted (LSE) on the flight deck of the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer
USS Spruance (DDG-111) on Feb. 23, 2022. US Navy Photo The Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group (CSG) is back in the Ionian Sea and under NATO command. The CSG departed for its deployment on Dec.
1. Along with the U.S. ships, Royal Norwegian Navy frigate HNoMS Fridtjof Nansen (F310) joined the strike group under the Cooperative Deployment Program. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the strike group to remain in the Mediterranean Sea, rather than travel to the U.S.
Central Command, USNI News reported in December. In a journalistic replication of my own brief naval service, I had the rare opportunity to cover in depth a carrier's entire pre-deployment cycle. In early 1987, the Navy announced it was reassigning the Nimitz from Norfolk to a new home port in Bremerton.
Unlike Norfolk or San Diego, where aircraft carriers had been a normal presence forever, there had not been a carrier homeported in Puget Sound since World War II. It was news. Sailors, assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit (EODMU) 3, conduct a helicopter, visit, board, search and seizure (HVBSS) drill aboard the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Mobile Bay (CG-53) on Feb.
23, 2022. US Navy Photo
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