Neptunus Lex

So said Captain James Lawrence, the mortally wounded CO of the USS Chesapeake as he was being carried below. Our infant Navy had grown a bit impetuous perhaps after USS Constitution under Isaac Hull battered HMS Guerriere to bits and after her next CO, William Bainbridge sent whatever bits of HMS Java hadn’t burnt down to the bottom of the deep blue sea not much later.

Chesapeake was another of the American heavy frigates that had given Britania such a case of the hives during the War of 1812, and under Lawrence met the Royal Navy’s Captain Philip Broke of the HMS Shannon shortly after getting underway with a fresh and unworked crew from Boston harbor in the summer of 1813. Lawrence declined the advantages obtaining to the weather gage - including passing up an opportunity to rake her with a broadside from stern to stem - the better to shorten sail and duke it out with Shannon at close quarters, broadside to broadside. No doubt he thought to make short work of the somewhat smaller British frigate.

Broke, however, was a fighting captain as well as a wealthy one, having many times dipped into his own pocket to keep his gun crews plying at their trade more often than the Admiralty would have authorized all on their own. The net result of his largesse was that the gun crews aboard Shannon gave a fair bit better than they got in what ended up being a brutally short action. Broke believed in winning too, none of your gentleman’s duels and doffed caps: He directed his gun crews and marksmen to focus their efforts on the American ship’s quarterdeck, sweeping it clear of officers again and again until the fight had gone out of USS Chesapeake, her officers dead or wounded and her helm shot away. He could well afford to tip it the generous after Chesapeake had struck her colors.

For all of his “don’t give up the ship” rhetoric, Lawrence’s crew couldn’t fight longer than they could be led, nor could they run away to fight another day with a helm that wouldn’t answer. Not long after he was sent below, Shannon’s boarders made short work of what was left on the weather deck of the USS Chesapeake. Lawrence died an honored prisoner a few short days later.

Which all reminds me of a time I was leading a two-ship element of strikers against the Bravo 17 airfield complex at NAS Fallon, Nevada. Must’ve been sometime in the summer of ‘88 or so. The terrain is mountainous in the vicinity of Fallon, which is a strike fighter pilot’s dream because it allows him to run in at low altitude behind the dirt with a bag of knots and a bad attitude, a-hiding of himself from any surface-to-air-missile systems that might seek to shove a warhead into his forehead on the way to the target.

If there’s anything more fun that can be done fully dressed than running around with a wingman at 540 knots carrying hell and death (or 25-pound practice bombs, anyway) a couple of hundred feet above the deck, secure in the knowledge that you are invisible to radar, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.

The problem is that while you can spring upon a target pretty much unawares by using the terrain to your advantage, popping over the last ridge with maybe 45 seconds to go to the target, it can be damned hard to find your precise aimpoint flying that low. It has to do on the one hand with a natural desire to avoid tying the low altitude record and all of the attention span that takes, and on the other hand about the lack of visually significant vertical development on airfield-type targets. A characteristic that - especially when you’re hauling the mail - makes it hard to just lay down a string of bombs willy-nilly and nevertheless find the correct impact point, not to mention the reduced delivery accuracy that comes with not having any dive angle on the jet.

So what is a motivated strike fighter pilot to do? He’ll perform a pop-up maneuver, gentle reader, like he’s been taught. Haul back on the stick at the prescribed distance before reaching a reversal point and, having reached an apex altitude whilst upside down and hopefully acquiring the target visually by looking over his shoulder, pull the nose back down below the horizon at a prescribed g and defined dive angle, putting the target in his sights and moving the jet around in three dimensions, like. With chaff and flares if it do ya. On account of the dreadful vulnerability that’s in it.

You see, once you break the horizon on a pop attack, any properly motivated gomer in your flight path with the presence of mind could lie down on his back with his AK-47, shoot straight up in the air and maybe do you a profound dis-service if his ammunition lasts and you take a 7.62mm round in the wrong spot. Which while we’re on that topic, there aren’t any right spots, but anyways. And all that’s before you get to the MANPADS threat: Man portable air-defense systems - hand-held infrared guided missles like the Stinger or the various Eastern Bloc equivalents. Any one of which, take it in the tookas, could result in a prolonged stay at a Glorious People’s Re-education Center for Yankee Air Pirates, complete with a steady diet of fish heads and pumpkin soup. Which I’m reliably informed, Atkins or no, gets rather tedious after a bit.

So what do you do? Well, having dutifully gone on government time for the duration of the bomb run and coming off target making good time, you keep her moving a bit until you’re out of range. Make it hard on the bad guys. Stay unpredictable until you’re clear.

Which is exactly what I did, beating hell out of myself in the cockpit what with all of my jinking and jiving and running for the deck, the better to hide myself again mere coward that I was, not wanting to be bagged even if it was only a training flight in Fallon, Nevada in the summer of 1988.

Safely clear of the target I eased g and looked around with casual curiousity, wondering how we’d done. Which is the exact point that the Stinger operator on the target centroid got me in his sights and pulled the trigger because it turned out that I wasn’t actually clear, not quite yet. Capturing the whole thing on video tape for my later edification in the debrief. The bastard.

But I learned about flying from that. As I was reminded that we don’t give up the plane ship.

Here’s a note worth bringing out of the comments boxes of a previous post: 

Sir-

While doing some research for a book about the Barbary Wars, I had a chance to do some fairly heavy research on Constitution - the legend about the USN wanting to break her up is actaully somewhat misleading. At the time Constitution was laid up ‘in ordinary’(along with a good chunk of the rest of the Navy) and the leadership in Washington ordered her surveyed - along with all the other laid-up vessels - to see how much it would cost to get her back on the line. A Boston reporter took ’surveyed’ to mean the traditional inspection before an item is disposed of, adn wrote his story accordingly, without bothering the check with the USN. The rest, as they say, is history.
FWIW, President and Chesapeake were both captured by the RN, while Congress and Constellation madde it into the 1850s before they were surveyed due to badly deteriorated hulls. (Both ships were broken up but quite a bit of their material was salvaged and added to new material to build new ships with the same names, which has kept historians going nuts for decades.) United States survived capture by the CSN in 1861 but was burned when the Federals recaptured Norfolk, and even with her record Constitution came close to disintegrating on at least three occasions between the 1840s and the 1930s.

Best regards,
Mike Kozlowksi
SSGT, USAF (Ret)

Thank you, SSGT Kozlowski!

So there you have it: A USAF Staff Sergeant (retired, even!) who knows his naval history better than an active naval officer. Is this a great country, or what?

Yep. Now we can.

After decades of secrecy, Air Force officials acknowledged Nov. 13 that Communist-built fighters were flown at the Tonopah Test Range northwest of Las Vegas, Nev.

From 1977 through 1988, the program, known as Constant Peg, saw Air Force, Navy and Marine aircrews flying against Soviet-designed MiG fighters as part of a training program where American pilots could better learn how to defeat or evade the Communist bloc’s fighters of the day.

Constant Peg was good, clean, old-fashioned fun. The pilots the USAF chose for this program - Air Force and Navy - were among the best their services had to offer, test pilots for the most part. I don’t know how the rest of them did in their careers, but the lieutenant commander I fought against back when I was a lieutenant is a hot-tracking flag officer today. He was a damn good stick back then, so I know that it’s possible to be both a good officer and a good pilot. I also know that while it’s possible, it’s hard. Or at least it was for me, anway.

It was pretty cool to get “read in” to this program - you felt special, trusted. Cooler still was the day your name popped up on the flight schedule for an actual mission. After a high speed tactical intercept - you never quite get over that shot of adrenaline you get hitting the merge with an actual MiG-21 for the first time - came a side-by-side performance comparison and familiarization. For my own part, I only ever flew against the MiG-21 Fishbed, never the -17 or Flogger. Which was OK by me because the Fishbed was far the better performer in a knife-fighting pilot’s favorite room: The “phone booth.”

As an adversary pilot we used the subsonic A-4 Skyhawk as a good slow-speed simulator of the Fishbed, and the F-5 Tiger II as it’s high speed equivalent. But there was nothing like hitting the merge on your full-up, high aspect hop agains the real item, himself doing 1.1 in a flash as he passed your wingline, climbing into a nose high, high g hard turn. We were taught in those days to try and keep the Fishbed at a distance, the better to use our all-aspect weapons. But that was a risky game plan too, for it was a real sportscar - little more than a minimalist cockpit atop an engine - very hard to see beyond three miles or so nose-on and not much more than that in planform. The MiG-21 had been a stern teacher of visual lookout techniques in the air war over Vietnam: It was the jet that had taught our our Vietnam predecessors that losing sight meant losing the fight - knowledge that they had passed down to those of us who followed them, after they got out of the POW camps.

With a clear lane of fire and ROE satisfied the MiG-21 was no real threat against a radar and radar missile equipped Hornet or Tomcat - it was just a high speed missile sponge. But if for some reason the Fishbed survived to the merge for a close-in fight, manned by a pilot who knew what he was doing,  it could be a handful, a highly potent adversary even for its much more expensive and high tech opponents. You didn’t get many mistakes. Even one could be humbling.

That was the point.

So, another program declassified. Maybe someday I’ll be able to tell you where they’re keeping Elvis.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. - Sun Tzu

Anyone that goes down to the sea in ships has to love this pic:

Note the sailors “doffing their caps,” against VADM “Rat” Williard’s returned salute as he goes aboard the oldest commissioned warship in the US Navy, the USS Constitution. “Old Ironsides” is a 44-gun heavy frigate that brought our infant navy respectful recognition during the War of 1812 from Britain, far and away the dominant maritime power of the day. 

We’re lucky to have her, as there was a move afoot during the lean post-war years to strike her from the lists and break her up. A young Oliver Wendell Homes took umbrage, dashed off a poem that was immediately published to patriotic acclamation and which saved her for posterity:

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon’s roar; –
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.

Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o’er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor’s tread,
Or know the conquered knee; –
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!

Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!

The ship still gets underway - and under sail - a couple of times every year for a “turnaround” cruise to put the opposite side to the pier. I’d pay to go on one of those and envy Bostonians the opportunity to compete in that lottery, if for nothing else in particular. She’s only manned to raise five sails when she gets underway although she carries eleven. God alone knows how well she’d wear them after all these years.

And mixing old and new, here’s a pleasing shot of the Navy’s newest jet flying from her oldest carrier:

Anyways, seeing a  Rhino getting through the number is nearly a rare enough thing to devote its own page too. 

Yeah. You could consider that a snark from a grounded Charlie pilot.

In the news from 5^th Fleet, a tradition as old as the sea:

USS ANZIO, At Sea - USS Anzio (CG 68) provided assistance to a vessel in distress in the Arabian Sea, approximately 140 miles off the coast of Pakistan on Nov. 10, while conducting Maritime Security Operations (MSO) in the area.

The 24 person crew of motor vessel SINAA, a 35 meter Iranian-flagged dhow from Kubala, Iran, contacted the Anzio on bridge-to-bridge radio asking for assistance. The motor vessel’s crew said they needed water and fuel.

Anzio received the call during an Underway Replenishment (UNREP) and then proceeded toward the position of the dhow.
According to Ensign Scott Szurovy, the Junior Officer of the Deck, their English was broken, but it was clear that they were in some form of distress. We heard “Navy ship, navy ship, can you help. Water. No English.”

“At first it was thought the dhow might be sinking or have flooding,” said Szurovy.
A 12 person rescue and assistance (R&A) team and one translator boarded the dhow as part of their MSO mission to provide supplies and assistance to the crew. Anzio provided 75 16 ounce bottles of water, 236 gallons of fuel and two days worth of food.

“This was my first time doing anything like this, and it was very exciting, actually a pleasant experience. They were all very appreciative,” said Ensign Patrick King, rescue and assistance officer.

As part of MSO, coalition forces have a long standing tradition of helping mariners in distress by providing medical assistance, engineering assistance and search and rescue efforts.

“The Anzio crew was happy to provide maritime support, and relieved that the dhow contacted us for help. The dhow crew had been out fishing for 25 days and miscalculated their fuel and water consumption. We were pleased to be able to assist them in the way of fuel, food, and water for about 2 days to get them home,” said Capt. Perry Bingham, commanding officer USS Anzio.

Anzio, part of the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group, departed Naval Station Norfolk on Oct. 3 for a regularly scheduled deployment in support of maritime security operations and entered the Commander, Fifth Fleet area of operations on Oct. 30.

MSO helps to set the conditions for security and stability in the maritime environment and complement the counter-terrorism and security efforts of regional nations. These operations deny international terrorists use of the maritime environment as a venue for attack or to transport personnel, weapons or other material.

Just another day at the office.

It’s called “Speed & Angels” - three words guaranteed to quicken the pulse of anyone who’s ever flown fighters, since the words that follow after are “fight’s on!”

Speed and Angels is the true life story and feature-length action documentary about two navy officers chasing their dreams to become fighter pilots. The film follows them during the most dangerous parts of their training and as they go to war, where the realities of being a fighter pilot test their limits.

The film includes epic aerial footage in stunning HD—including the last ever F-14 Tomcat dogfights—and rare naval archival and wartime footage. Thanks to unprecedented access granted by the navy, Speed and Angels gives an inside look at people’s journeys as fighter pilots as it has never before been seen.

The tag-line for the movie is, “Behind every fighter pilot is a dream.”

And, since the movie is about F-14 pilots, it’s probably safe to add, “And behind that dream is a Hornet pilot, closing to guns on the both of ‘em.”

Which, yes thank you, I absolutely do crack myself up.

When you’re in overhead holding, or proceeding back to the ship for recovery, you check in through Marshall control and on to Tower, where the Air Boss awaits, ruling his airspace. If he wants you to come into the break and land, he’ll call “Charlie” on the radio - it’s the signal to buster into the pattern, break to downwind, configure for the approach - landing checklist complete - and put her down in the spaghetti.

“Charlie” is the radio phonetic for the letter “c.” One piece of apocrypha says that the word “Charlie,” when attached to carrier aviation, comes from the signature C-shaped wake of the carrier turning into the wind for recovery. True or not, when the Boss calls “Charlie” on the radio, the next words out of his mouth will be directed to the personnel on the flight deck, and will very often be “Head’s up on the flight deck, turning starboard, heel to port.” At about the same time, the bridge watch will sound one short blast on the ship’s whistle - starboard turn.

Everyone on the flight deck knows what that means: We’re about to get busy. And it’s about to get dangerous.

Well. At least for the last 84 years. And counting. Steeljaw Scribe has it all:

On October 26, 1922 LCDR Godfrey DeCourcelles Chevalier, USN made the first arrested landing aboard the USS Langley, a converted coal collier (ex-USS Jupiter) and the Navy’s first aircraft carrier, underway off Cape Henry, VA.

Already an accomplished aviator (Naval Aviator #7), LCDR Chevalier had pioneered the installation of catapults on the Navy’s battleships and piloted the first plane to be launched by catapult in 1916. In 1917, he commanded the first naval air station in Dunkerque, France during WW1.

Mmmm. Dunkerque. Now that’s what I call an IA.