Mission for Tonight
[Recorded aboard USS KIRK, 30 June
1985]
Scheduled flight is at 2100 hours (9
p.m.). My preparation begins at 1900
when I arrive at our Berthing Compartment down in the bow of the ship.
I rarely deviate in what I wear on a
flight. Everything has a reason so I
don't change it. Under my flight suit, I
wear a loose pair of running shorts or Levis and a drab green t-shirt with a
Soviet emblem on it for Aviation Excellence.
My broke-in boots, buttery soft with age, go on over thick wool Diver
socks. I hang my gloves out of my
calf-side pocket - an odd trait no one else shared (due to a regulation against
it). I carry a beat up helicopter flight
helmet, adapted from an older style to make it work with current
equipment.
Dressed, I head up seven ladders to
the Combat Information Center, that is abreviated CIC or simply Combat. It is the nerve center of the fighting
capability of the ship. Other members of
my crew stand in the dim phosphorous glow of a gigantic circular plotting
table. It shines with red radiance and
we are surrounded by other voices in the near-darkness. Radio transmissions, encrypted signals, male
voices muffled by distance and tension.
For 30 minutes, we discuss points of
the flight profile (our intentions) and tactics. When the ship folks and the aircrew agree on
all aspects of the mission planning, we break up to continue individual aspects
of our preparation. Pilots do pilot
shit; I do mine.
From the TACTIC room (my office), I
pull either a worthless Government-issue 35mm camera or a pair of night vision
goggles from the safe. Why anyone would
steal one of them, I'll never know. I
check the lenses, power them up, and get all the various logs that I will need
to record the flight.
In the tiny ship's hangar, my crew of
three briefly reviews safety and emergency procedures concerning the
helicopter. Night and helicopter ops
means mortal danger, so we don't take this part for granted. In the event we splash, I am designated to
swim free with the survival gear and the bag of rafts. If there is time, I will be dropped into the
sea before the impact.
Briefing complete, we each take our
time and inspect different sections of the helicopter for damage and
security.
Satisfied, I gather up my gear and
dress out. Over the sage green flying
suit, we wear a vest that contains roughly 25 pounds of emergency
supplies. A radio, signal mirror, water,
that sort of thing, plus an elaborate floatation system. Held on by straps and buckles, it rides high
on your chest. After several years, its
weight passes completely unnoticed.
The ships general silence is broken by
the call on the public address system, or 1-M-C. The matter of fact statement, "Flight
Quarters, now Flight Quarters", sends about 60 men to their special
jobs. Sailors from every department jog
to their places in the area just forward of the helicopter hangar, on the
exposed weather decks outside the ship's protective skin.
This ship lost a helicopter attempting
to land on their last cruise. Several of
these men - waiting to fight fires or extract us from a wreck - already have
practical experience. The motor
whaleboat is also manned in the event we get wet.
That wreck was due to one thing - the
environment we fly in. Sea Snake One Two
was trying to get a oil tanker's crew safely off during a raging storm at sea
and at the moment of triumph, a wave staggered the ship and the little rescue
helicopter flipped on its side, to lay broken on the pitching deck. Another of the pilots from this ship died in
an accident only three months ago, in the waters off San Diego. At night.
Preparations complete, I give my
driver a thumb's up and he starts our turbine engines. Both engines light off without a hitch, and
he releases the parking brake on our massive rotor head. The four 28-foot long blades begin to spin,
and soon, our helo is ready to be a flying machine.
In a moment, the blades merge into a
whirling disk, illuminated by the rotating anti-collision light mounted high on
the tail. The two General Electric
dash-58s sing nice and strong while the pilot does control and throttle checks.
This bird is Sea Snake Two Zero, an
SH-2F Rescue and Anti-submarine helicopter produced by the Kaman Electric
Guitar and Naval Helicopter factory, twenty five years ago. We are stationed in Atsugi, Japan. Soon, it will be rotated home, but it has one
long journey ahead of it first. I will
make that journey as well. I have flown
in her for five months so far, and she treats me okay.
We lift into a quick hover over the
darkened landing pad. The ship, a black
mass 15 feet ahead and 15 feet below us, heaves about on the sluggish waves of
the South Seas. In a very quick moment,
the pilots are satisfied and we swing our tail over the water to clear the
ship. They point the nose over, and we
accelerate away, gaining altitude.
I run through the detailed checklist,
warming up my sensors.
Turn this one on; feed that one
paper. Magnetics, sound waves, even
cloaked electrical signals -- Soon, the outside world is represented to me in
several dimensions. My RADAR sees 70
miles into the night, giving me basic clues about what is out there. I tweaked this LN-66 set into a crystal ball
you couldn't imagine. Once, I found a US
Submarine in the Sea of Japan at 12 miles, with only one periscope up. (Please, be impressed; it is normal to not
find them at all, past 3 miles.)
The MAD system is towed behind us on a
180' cable, like a tethered dog. Its job
is to sniff below the waves, seeking submarines to a depth of a couple of
hundred feet. The MAD recorder scrawls
red and black traces down it's recorder as it searches. I don't see the lines as they are drawn -- my face painted in the eerie glow of the
sweeping trace on the screen is under a large rubber RADAR hood (looks like you
are putting your face into a grammaphone horn!), so my fingers have to tell me
if they feel the MAD recorder make a wide trace.
The pilot uses small explosive
cartridges to blast 30-pound sonobuoys out of the launcher that my seat is
crammed against -- these buoys provide me with an accurate tactical picture of
the major sound sources within several miles of each buoy. We drop them within a grid that we plant,
like a mine field. (They sink soon after
the batteries die.)
Under the half moon of a Southern
Pacific night, my RADAR looks far beyond the horizon for targets, weather, and
land. It is a clear night, so we fly at
100 knots (around 115 miles per hour) at 50 feet, investigating my
contacts. There are numerous small ships
in these confined waters and they constitute the greatest threat.
We are in an exercise with frigates of
the Royal Singapore Navy, and we are tasked to locate three of their lil' boats
in the middle of the Malaccan Straits.
At any given moment, there are approximately 100 to 200 vessels in these
Straits, and finding three gunboats is just stupidly impossible. One of the pilots commented drily that we
were searching the hive for left-handed bees.
My RADAR leads us to within a mile of
the unseen watercraft, and I hang out the doorway to take a look with the NVGs
(Night Vision Goggles).
We read the name (hopefully in
English!), chart direction of travel, and visible cargo. I've actually gotten some skill at
transliterating Cyrllic, but if the name is in Arabic, forget it.
At our speed, most of the ships don't
even know we are coming until we scream over.
Prudent Captains click on their lights, to preclude anyone thinking that
they are hostile or illegal.
The rudimentary identification
complete, we race on to the next contact, and the next, as the hours burn away.
I insist we fly with the door open,
more because I enjoy the cool night air than anything. I have a odd habit of
flying completely outside of the helicopter, in the howling embrace of the
night winds. If you can think of a
better way to spend your life, I will respectfully disagree. At the wily old
age of 25, I am quite senior to most of the crewmen that fly with me so I am allowed
some degree of self-determination in how I conduct my business in the cabin of
the aircraft.
Midnight in the Straits of Malacca,
Singapore thirteen miles that-a-way, I look up at the stars of the Southern
Cross. This is tits!
Hours later, we have conducted dozens
of RADAR run-ins (approaches) to targets and the path of our ship has been
completely swept to 60 miles ahead. The
weary pilots ask me for a bearing to HOMEPLATE (our ship, of course), and we
climb steeply to make radio contact.
In the velvet darkness, we hear a
distant, faint reply. On my LN-66, I
locate a shadow on the Eastern horizon.
We turn toward it and 48 miles away, the old frigate turns toward us, as
it repeats our nightly courtship dance.
The radio chatter picks up in
intensity as we close; the ship calls Flight Quarters for the thousandth
time. Men crawl back into the
comfortable spots they claim on the weather decks, waiting for our return so
they can get some sleep.
Luckily, the seas are nearly calm
tonight.
The pilots guide our tired helo back
and in short order, we are in that 15 foot hover over the tiny landing
pad. Some nights, that deck really
shrinks. We get a signal and plop
heavily down onto the USS KIRK. On deck,
our “Sea Snake” thunders loudly at the men that rush forward from the darkness
to chain it down, lest an errant wave flip us, as well.
Another signal in the dark, and the
copilot cuts the fuel to the engines -- in seconds, they begin to freewheel and
wind down, slowing the rotor blades down as well.
The last things to stop are those
heavy swinging blades and two whiny generators for the radios. When even that source fades into silence, I
remove my straps (if I used them) and pull myself out of the tight sensor station.
The officers return to COMBAT to
debrief the mission and the targets we detected.
The maintenance crew and the fire
party cluster around while I relate the interesting points of the flight. Sometimes, this is the only word these men
will get about how we did in a particular exercise. When this summary is done, I walk into the
hangar to stow my helmet and fill out reports.
I log all equipment failures so the maint guys can fix them before
Danny's ‘Dawn Patrol’, two hours away.
I put away my gear and leave a
perverse note for Danny while I wait for the tension of the sortie to wear
off. The cooks in the galley give me
cold sandwiches that I eat in silence, alone.
The clock on the galley wall reads 0310...three a.m. on a Sunday
morning. The buzzing in my teeth and
ears won't stop for hours. I don't want
to talk, or think, or do anything but sleep, until it is time again.
The mission is complete.
Gordon Permann
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Last Modified: Monday March 09, 2009