[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 17 (Thursday, February 24, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          DIPLOMACY'S GUNBOAT

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, almost every evening on the news we see 
the U.S. military protecting American interests around the globe. More 
often than not these American military forces include naval forces.
  A year ago, it was Navy carrier-based aircraft that were keeping the 
pressure on Saddam Hussein in Iraq. A few months later it was an 
American aircraft carrier sent to the coast of Somalia to provide 
protection to American and other U.N. peacekeeping troops. That same 
aircraft carrier also operated off the coast of the former Yugoslavia, 
ready to provide military muscle to back up diplomatic efforts to 
achieve a ceasefire in war-torn Bosnia.
  For more than 50 years, America's interests have been served by 
aircraft carrier battle groups deployed around the globe.
  I am pleased that President Clinton has included a request for funds 
to build a new aircraft carrier in this years' defense budget. The 
President and the Secretary of Defense understand the military and 
diplomatic necessity of maintaining strong naval power to protect 
America's interests into the next century.
  This week's edition of U.S. News and World Report contains a cover 
story on one U.S. aircraft carrier and follows the ship through its 
most recent deployment. The article is entitled: ``The Big Mean War 
Machine'' and is subtitled: ``Diplomacy's Gunboat.''
  Mr. President, this article provides great insight not only into the 
military and diplomatic capabilities of an aircraft carrier, but also 
into the tremendous dedication and commitment of the men and women who 
serve aboard our Navy ships.
  I urge my colleagues to read this article and I ask unanimous consent 
that it be printed in full at this point in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                          Diplomacy's Gunboat

                          (By Bruce B. Auster)


                        August 10, 1993--Goodbye

       Petty Officer Jose Mora and his wife, Loretta, finish a 
     late dinner at McDonald's and slowly walk the few blocks to 
     the pier where his floodlit ship is docked. He hugs her, 
     feeling her swollen belly pressed up against him. They part, 
     and he begins walking toward the towering ship, waving his 
     pass at the sentry and crossing over to the other side of the 
     chain-link fence separating sailors and their families. He 
     tries to look back over his shoulder but his sea bag blocks 
     his view, so he keeps on. His wife--eight months pregnant, 
     her hands resting on her stomach, fingers interlocked--
     watches and then starts walking, alone, back to the car.
       The next morning, the aircraft carrier USS America pushes 
     away from the Norfolk pier, turns up Hampton Roads amid a 
     flotilla of small craft that have come out to see it depart, 
     passes the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and sets out across 
     the Atlantic. The ship carries a crew of 4,700 sailors, 
     including 20-year-old petty Officer 3rd Class Mora, who 
     services the ship's 14 F-14A fighters. During the next six 
     months, the America's pilots will crisscross the skies over 
     Bosnia, its crew will pass through the Suez Canal en route to 
     Somalia, and its planes will enforce the United Nations no-
     fly zone over southern Iraq. For different intervals during 
     this 39,982-mile cruise, the America also will play host to a 
     U.S. News reporter, photographer and graphic artist, who in 
     the following pages examine one of the most powerful warships 
     ever built, its crew and its changing missions.
       For 50 years, the United States has counted on big carriers 
     like the America to show the flag, to respond to crises and, 
     until recently, to keep the Soviet Navy at bay. Carrier-based 
     aircraft bombed Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Libya, and Iraq. 
     Helicopters launched from the USS Nimitz tried to rescue the 
     U.S. hostages in Iran; fighters from the Saratoga, which now 
     patrols the Balkan skies, helped nab the terrorists who 
     hijacked the cruise ship Achilles Lauro in 1985.

                              War machine

       To an adversary, an aircraft carrier, its seven-story 
     island protruding from the flight deck that sits 65 feet 
     above the water, is an imposing offshore city that can appear 
     overnight. Its 70-plane air wing is equipped to kill in many 
     different ways: A single A-6E Intruder, small enough to take 
     off and land on a ship, can carry 9 tons of bombs--more than 
     twice as much as World War II B-17s, the Flying fortresses, 
     could carry--and deliver them to a target 500 miles away 
     without refueling. F-14 Tomcats can fly 600 miles, then shoot 
     down enemy planes 60 miles away with their Phoenix missiles. 
     The airborne jammers aboard an EA-6B Prowler can wreak 
     electronic havoc on enemy command centers and communications, 
     turning television screens to snow.
       Aegis guided-missile cruisers, part of a carrier battle 
     group that also includes attack submarines, destroyers and 
     supply ships, have sophisticated air defense radars, 
     antiaircraft missiles and 122 tubes capable of launching 
     unmanned Tomahawk cruise missiles. ``It has the most awesome 
     war-making potential in any one place,'' says Rear Adm. 
     Arthur Cebrowski, the commander of the America's 14-ship task 
     force. ``And we're ready to fight on arrival.''

                              New missions

       All this firepower does not come cheap: A new carrier costs 
     taxpayers $4.4 billion; its operating costs are $440 million 
     a year. And with the United States no longer facing a global 
     rival, defense spending declining and the nation more 
     concerned with foreign markets than with foreign militaries, 
     the Navy is scrambling to find new roles for its carriers. In 
     order to keep 12 of them in service, the Navy is cutting its 
     force of surface ships by 65 through 1999, letting go about 
     100,000 sailors and changing the way it uses aircraft 
     carriers. The blue-water Navy that once prepared to fight the 
     Soviets on the high seas now sends its carriers along 
     coastlines and into confined spaces such as the Persian Gulf 
     and Adriatic Sea.
       The Navy's efforts to adapt to new circumstances will 
     produce a number of firsts on this cruise of the America: It 
     is the first carrier to sail with a three-ship Marine 
     Expeditionary Unit, or MEU, as part of its 14-ship battle 
     group; it is carrying more than 200 marines; and before it 
     returns to Norfolk it will, mostly by happenstance, have 
     become the first carrier to bring women into a combat area.
       But on this August day in Norfolk, the sailors, aviators 
     and marines aboard the America are not thinking about 
     politics or military strategy. They know that while they are 
     gone, babies will be born, parents will die, Christmas and 
     Thanksgiving will come and go, cars will break down and wives 
     will give up on Navy life and leave their absent husbands. 
     But as sailors have always done, the America's crewmen are 
     turning their backs on the land to face life at sea.
       It is a hard life for the officers and aviators whose work 
     revolves around the America's flight deck and a harder one 
     for the crew members who will spend most of the next six 
     months below decks, away not only from home but also from 
     fresh air and sunlight. With its 1,048-foot length and 
     80,000-ton displacement, the America is bigger than the 
     average oceangoing cruise ship, but there are no portholes 
     and it is claustrophobic.
       Below the open, sunlit expanse of the 4\1/2\-acre flight 
     deck is a small city: Most sailors eat, work and sleep on one 
     of the ship's 10 decks, surrounded by white-painted steam 
     pipes, water lines and air ducts that run along bulkheads and 
     hang above desks and beds. Only two passageways run the 
     length of the ship; 250 bulkheads, the walls that form the 
     ship's skeleton, divide the America into the cramped, 
     watertight, fireproof compartments that are its offices, mess 
     decks, bathrooms and berths. Even the huge hangar bay can be 
     partitioned by steel doors that are so big they echo 
     throughout the ship when they close.
       The ship's sailors and aviators divide their lives into 
     compartments, too, It is their way of passing the months at 
     sea, far from home. Pilots must block out fear and land a 
     plane with one engine. Fathers who miss their families and 
     sailors whose wives move and leave no forwarding address must 
     forget about home. A month before the cruise, says Capt. Bill 
     Deaver, the America's air wing commander, he begins 
     distancing himself from his family, immersing himself in 
     flying and shipboard life. ``You start building the wall, one 
     brick a day,'' he says.
       Thoughts of home are reserved for bedtime: In cramped 
     berthing spaces throughout the America, sailors, aviators and 
     marines tape photos of their families near their pillows. 
     Before they turn out the light, those pictures are the last 
     thing they see.
       Navy families back home also must cope. Two days before 
     Chaplain Gil Gibson set sail in August, his wife found a 
     lump in her breast. She didn't tell him about it until 
     after he was at sea and the lump had been declared benign.


                    September 13, 1993--Life at Sea

       As they go about shrinking the Navy and the Marine Corps, 
     Pentagon officials are mindful of the morale and well-being 
     of sailors, marines and aviators. The Navy and Marines fought 
     then Secretary of Defense Les Aspin's proposal to cut the 
     Navy from 12 to 10 carrier task forces and Marine troop 
     levels from 177,000 to 159,000: Fewer ships and people would 
     mean sea tours longer than six months for the remaining ships 
     and people. ``If we go to eight-months cruises, we'll lose a 
     lot of people,'' says Lt. Cmdr. Brian Scott, an aviator on 
     the America.

                             Slimming down

       The Navy insists that peacetime deployments will be held to 
     six months. ``Forces won't stay ready if you deploy them too 
     much,'' says Adm. Jeremy Boorda, NATO's southern forces 
     commander in Europe, who can up through the enlisted ranks to 
     earn his four stars and is now a leading candidate for the 
     Navy's top job, chief of naval operations. ``Six months is an 
     arduous amount of duty; it's a long time away from home if 
     you have a family.'' Aspin was convinced.
       Even so, there is not room for everyone in the new Navy. On 
     this September day, Lt. Jerry Leekey, and F-14 pilot with the 
     America's Diamondback squadron, is waiting to learn whether a 
     personnel board will let him stay in the Navy. ``This is the 
     best possible job, even with all the time spent away from my 
     wife,'' the lanky, freckled redhead says after a morning of 
     dogfighting with an F/A-18 ``I signed up to race around at 
     Mach 1.''
       Although he serves on active duty, Lieutenant Leekey 
     received his commission through the Naval Reserve rather than 
     the Naval Academy or the Naval Reserve Officers Training 
     Corps. It cost the Navy $800,000 to teach him to fly his Mach 
     2 fighter, but now it is letting go its active-duty 
     reservists. Cmdr. Steven Collins, Lieutenant Leekey's 
     squadron commander, has orchestrated a letter-writing 
     campaign, endorsed by the task force commander, to retain his 
     young officer. Leekey can only fly and hope.

                              Below decks

       For a pilot, getting up in the morning means another day to 
     break the sound barrier. For most of the America's crew, 
     however, especially the 18-year-old enlisted sailors, the 
     shrill whistle of the boatswain's pipe that announces 
     reveille each morning at 6 o'clock ushers in another day of 
     drudgery. Time stands still in the 120-degree heat of the 
     engine rooms. Seaman Ryan Hall sits on a bucket under an air 
     vent for two four-hour shifts a day, struggling to stay awake 
     as he monitors a generator in one of the engineering spaces, 
     where oil-fired boilers make steam to turn the shaft of one 
     of the ship's four 69,000-pound propellers.
       The America needs constant attention. Commissioned in 1965, 
     it is showing its age. A month before leaving Norfolk, a 
     senior enlisted crew member complained to his congressman: 
     The ship was operating on only two of its six electric 
     generators, without radar and unable to pump fuel. This would 
     be its third six-month cruise in three years, and without the 
     standard 18 months at home for repairs, salt water and full 
     steaming had taken their toll.
       Seaman Hall, and the men who spend three months at a 
     stretch cleaning clogged toilets or working mess duty, say 
     the cruise is like the movie Groundhog Day. Each morning 
     begins the same day all over again. A sailor can let a week 
     pass without climbing the steep ladders to the flight deck 
     and squinting at the sun. Sometimes the menu serves as a 
     calendar: Pizza for dinner means it must be Friday.
       Crewmen learn to beat the boredom. Petty Officer 1st Class 
     James ``Elvis'' Alexander doesn't always wait for reveille to 
     get up in the morning; with 20 showers in his 296-man 
     berthing, he sometimes rises at 5 to beat the lines. After 
     working 16 hours in the ship's jet engine shop, Alexander 
     tunes his guitar and props open his songbook. The Memphis 
     native, who grew up 6 miles from Graceland and worked as an 
     Elvis impersonator--he even kept his long sideburns as a Navy 
     recruiter--leads a bluegrass trio with fiddle and banjo.
       Most nights they make music on the ship's fantail, 
     surrounded by finicky, foil-wrapped jet engines waiting to be 
     repaired. Here, at the stern, the musicians can look at the 
     ship's wake and see where they've been; in the daytime when 
     the carrier steams at full power, the wake lingers all the 
     way to the horizon. As shipmates gather, Petty Officer 
     Alexander sings of a journey by train: ``Engineer reach up 
     and pull the whistle, Let me hear that lonesome sound. For 
     it blends with the feeling that's in me, The one I love 
     has turned me down.''
       At the far end of the America's wake, in Virginia Beach, 
     Marita Cheney is lonesome, too. She is showing her two 
     children a videotape before bed, one she made of her husband, 
     Eric, a bombardier and navigator with the America's A-6E 
     Intruder bomber squadron, reading bedtime stories to Michael, 
     who is almost 3, and Kyle, nearly 1. ``They love to watch 
     Eric,'' she says. In the past year, Lieutenant Cheney has 
     spent a total of 43 days at home. ``The boys are growing,'' 
     he says. ``When I come back from this six monther, I'll be 
     nothing but a picture.''
       In the Cheneys' family room, a chain of rings made from 
     construction paper stretches around three walls. Every night, 
     the children take down one link, shrinking the chain and 
     getting that much nearer to the day their daddy comes home. 
     ``It gives the kids a concept of time, an end point,'' says 
     Marita. But gimmicks that work for the children don't help 
     their mother. ``When he left, I came home and cried and cried 
     and cried. It all of a sudden hit me. And since he's an 
     aviator, you think the worst can happen,'' she says. ``You 
     have to put it in the back of your mind or you'd go crazy.''


                       october 18, 1993--marines

       Eleven days ago, on October 7, Marine Col. Jan Huly was 
     awakened by a telephone call at 4:30 a.m. in his stateroom 
     aboard the helicopter carrier Guadalcanal. President Clinton 
     had decided to reinforce U.S. forces in Somalia after the 
     failed raid in Mogadishu that left 18 Army Rangers dead, and 
     the Guadalcanal had been ordered to leave the America and 
     speed south from the Adriatic through the Suez Canal to 
     Mogadishu.
       The marines had crossed the Atlantic in August as part of 
     the America Joint Task Group--an early test of an effort to 
     repackage U.S. military might, mixing and matching the 
     capabilities of carriers, marines, Army helicopters and 
     Ranger units and even U.S.-based air forces. The America had 
     left Norfolk with some 235 marines and their four CH-46 Sea 
     Knight helicopters in place of three aircraft squadrons.
       The marines ordinarily sail with five ships of their own, 
     but this time they had left two ships and their equipment 
     behind at Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina. In exchange, Huly 
     had been promised that his marines would have air support 
     from the America.
       But integrating the carrier's and the marines' missions had 
     proved difficult. It had been hard to fit Marine helicopter 
     training into the carrier's busy flight schedule: The 
     marines' CH-46s had to be launched from the carrier's landing 
     area, and a breakdown could shut down Navy flight operations 
     for precious minutes. Some Marine missions, such as the 
     rescue of a downed pilot, could not be launched from the 
     carrier because the America did not carry the right mix of 
     helicopters. Finally, says Bravo Company 1st Sgt. George 
     Mason, a carrier typically operates too far from shore, so 
     the marines and their helicopters would have had to leapfrog 
     to shore via other ships.
       Now, arriving off the coast of Mogadishu without the 
     America, Colonel Huly is having fresh doubts about the Joint 
     Task Group concept. As he ponders the prospect of leading his 
     men into war-torn Mogadishu, Colonel Huly misses the two 
     ships he left behind. His battalion is without many of its 
     wheeled and tracked vehicles, it is short of attack 
     helicopters and half its artillery pieces are back in North 
     Carolina.

                          Sharks in the water

       But the ship Colonel Huly misses most is the one that would 
     be carrying his air-cushioned landing craft, or LCACs, which 
     can drive onto a beach and unload men and equipment. 
     Somalia's beaches are very shallow, so the landing craft the 
     marines have brought will bottom out 200 yards from shore, 
     forcing the men to wade through 3-foot-deep water. And as 
     Huly's staff scout the coastline for amphibious landing 
     points, they discover that the Russians once operated a 
     slaughterhouse along Somalia's coast and dumped carcasses in 
     the water. The area is shark infested. ``We are going to be 
     running around in rubber boats and wading through all this,'' 
     says Huly.
       As Huly's dilemma suggests, the shrinking U.S. military is 
     facing a choice: It can either send smaller, less capable 
     units abroad or deploy larger units less often. ``We're going 
     to have fewer forces, less money,'' says Huly. ``But over 
     here where you're getting ready to go into harm's way, 
     whatever you have is not enough. You always want more.''
       Adm. Paul David Miller, the architect of the Joint Force 
     Packages at the U.S. Atlantic Command in Norfolk, says the 
     America Joint Task Group is just a ``steppingstone.'' The 
     real test, he says, will come later this year, when another 
     Joint Task Group, this one headed by the carrier Dwight D. 
     Eisenhower, will sail, Admiral Miller will propose that for 
     the first time since World War II, the United States not keep 
     a carrier in the Mediterranean. Instead, the carrier and a 
     Marine Expeditionary Unit may sail separately.
       The Eisenhower may precede the marines by as much as two 
     months. After six months, when the carrier is ready to head 
     home, the marines may remain. Admiral Miller proposes that 
     the marines sail with an attack submarine, armed with 
     Tomahawk cruise missiles, and an Aegis cruiser; with its 
     sophisticated command and control systems, to provide them 
     with added firepower after the Eisenhower departs.


                       december 13, 1993--liberty

       After 47 days at sea, the F-14 Diamondback pilots from the 
     America, fresh from flying missions and taking cold Navy 
     showers, are not about to go ashore and take a tour. 
     Traditionally, at a liberty port, squadrons set up an 
     ``admin,'' a home base ashore, where fliers can spend nights 
     away from the ship. The Tailhook sexual harassment scandal 
     has tamed aviator admins. So when they arrive in Tel Aviv, 
     the Diamondbacks find a hotel through the U.S. Embassy. An 
     embassy staffer takes the squadron representative to a small 
     hotel nearby; 20 guys lay out $50 each and the owner gives 
     them an entire six-room floor.
       But the owner fails to tell the night manager about the new 
     guests. Early one morning, after the last of the pilots roll 
     in at 5 a.m., the night manager is appalled by what she finds 
     in one room: clothes and bottles strewn everywhere, a half-
     dozen junior officers sprawled in chairs and beds. She 
     protests to the embassy, but an official there sides with the 
     fighter pilots. ``You don't understand,'' he tells the night 
     manager. ``These guys are just like a rock band.''
       Liberty for the men is no fun for their loved ones at home, 
     who wonder what their husbands and boyfriends are doing. The 
     rule is: What happens on cruise stays on cruise. Unspoken 
     fears are bound to be magnified as the Navy prepares to allow 
     women to serve on combat vessels, including aircraft 
     carriers, later this year.
       ``I think it's going to be a big adjustment for the wives 
     at home,'' says Marita Cheney, who finds a letter in the 
     mailbox from husband Eric, the A-6 navigator, every other 
     day. ``Their husbands are on the ship and they're at home 
     thinking: `There are other women out there, what's going on, 
     is my husband going to still want to be married to me when he 
     gets home?' If I had any doubts about Eric, that would drive 
     me out of my mind.''
       Tracy Carr's husband doesn't want his wife, a petty officer 
     first class, serving on a ship with 4,700 men. But that's 
     where she is. Although the Navy says women will not begin 
     sailing on carriers until later this year, the first eight 
     women assigned to a carrier in a combat zone are members of 
     the squadron that flies the America's on-board delivery 
     aircraft, which bring mail and visitors. They are usually 
     stationed in Italy, but when the America left for Somalia at 
     the end of October, the squadron with its eight women was 
     brought on board.
       One deck below the ship's hanger bay, a sign announces: 
     ``Female Berthing.'' Until the eight moved in, the rooms were 
     used for medical isolation; the four-person spaces have 
     showers and toilets but no lockers for the women to stow 
     their belongings. ``They weren't ready for us,'' Petty 
     Officer Carr says of the ship's crew. Men in towels walk past 
     the women's berths on the way to the showers. ``If we went 
     out in the passageway in a towel, we'd be called up to see 
     the skipper,'' says Petty Officer 2nd Class Laura Leigh 
     Johnson. And they still endure catcalls from some men.
       But conditions have improved since the women came aboard. 
     ``There's still a lot of guys who haven't worked with 
     women,'' says Petty Officer Johnson. When an engine panel on 
     the C-2 aircraft pops open, Johnson, an electrician, turns 
     down offers of a ladder and pulls herself up through the 
     hatch in the top of the plane. Then she crawls out onto the 
     wing and fixes the panel. ``Once you earn respect and trust, 
     the attitude starts to change,'' says Carr.


                    DECEMBER 24, 1993--CHRISTMAS EVE

       Petty Officer ``Elvis'' Alexander, his guitar tuned and 
     ready, has brought a little bit of Nashville to France. With 
     the America in port for the holidays, 80 people gather around 
     a Christmas tree in the lobby of a Marseille hotel to hear 
     Alexander's trio play three hours of bluegrass Christmas 
     carols. On the way back to the ship for the night, Alexander 
     skips down the stairs of a subway station to the train 
     platform and finds a pay phone. He dials home and reaches his 
     wife, Barbara, and their new baby, Taylor, who was born in 
     September--a month after her father sailed.
       In one ear Alexander hears a loudspeaker announcing 
     something in French. He finally hangs up the phone, depressed 
     to be missing his daughter's first Christmas, and climbs the 
     stairs to the street. A locked gate blocks his way out. It is 
     Christmas Eve and the subway has shut down for the night. 
     After two hours of calling French police, Elvis finds 
     someone who can speak English and is released from the 
     subway.
       Christmas in port and good food at Thanksgiving--turkey, 
     ham, roast beef and fixings--only remind the men that they 
     are far from home. Back in Norfolk, the families of the F-14 
     Diamondbacks held their children's Christmas party during the 
     first week of December, allowing time to mail videos to the 
     dads at sea before the holidays.
       Loretta Mora, who had been eight months pregnant on the 
     night her husband, Jose, boarded the ship in the heat of 
     August, was there smiling, dressed as Santa and cradling 11-
     week-old Justice Antonio Mora, dressed as a very tiny Santa. 
     Her pregnancy had been hard; Loretta developed toxemia, and 
     her labor lasted 27 hours before the doctors performed an 
     emergency Caesarean. But she was buoyant amid the din of 
     children waiting to see Santa. The Moras had picked the name 
     Justice together; he wanted his child's name to begin with 
     the same letter as his own but figured there are enough Joses 
     in the world.
       Loretta offers another reason. ``We had a lot of problems 
     when we first got together because he's Puerto Rican and I'm 
     white,'' she says. ``Jose always wanted to serve his 
     country.'' The name Justice fit. On the America, tacked on 
     the ceiling 1 foot above the pillow in Jose's rack, are his 
     son's first booties. ``I don't know the boy,'' he says. ``I 
     want to see my wife. I want to meet my son.''


                      january 11, 1994--emergency

       Cruises run in cycles. In the first weeks, sailors learn to 
     leave home behind. During the holidays, they feel they may 
     never get home. On this January day in the Adriatic, five 
     months after setting sail from Norfolk, Capt. William W. 
     Copeland Jr., the America's skipper, senses that his crew 
     members think they're home already. They are scheduled to 
     leave the Adriatic in three days, turning over responsibility 
     for enforcing the Bosnian no-fly zone to the Saratoga, which 
     is steaming across the Atlantic to relieve them. During 
     flight operations, planes are touching down on the 750-foot 
     landing area every 37 seconds. It is all becoming too 
     routine, and the captain fears his crew may be getting 
     complacent.
       Even in peacetime, flying jets off carriers is hazardous 
     duty: Every year there are 50 to 60 major accidents involving 
     Navy aircraft. ``We're out here just trying to keep guys 
     focused so they don't fly into the back end of the ship and 
     kill themselves,'' says Commander Collins, the leader of the 
     Diamondback F-14 squadron.
       January 11 does seem snakebit, a day of minor woes and near 
     misses. An F/A-18 loses it radio. After catching the wire 
     that jolts them to a halt, two aircraft blow tires as they 
     skid across the landing area. Two more planes, including one 
     of Collins's F-14s, lose the ability to control their wing 
     flaps. The Diamondback Tomcat has to land with its flaps up 
     rather than down. When the flaps are down, they allow the 
     plane to fly at a slower speed; this time the fighter has to 
     approach the ship too fast. To compensate, the America steams 
     hard into the wind. As the plane touches the deck, the ship-
     made breeze slows the 50,000-pound F-14, preventing it from 
     tearing the arresting wire and hurtling over the bow of the 
     ship into the water. Later in the day, another F-14 touches 
     down safely after its primary and backup visual landing 
     guides fail.

                          Into the danger zone

       Lt. David ``Boog'' Powell's January 11 begins routinely 
     enough. Ten minutes before launch, he runs through a 
     preflight checklist as his F-14 idles at the most powerful of 
     the ship's four catapults. A former high school baseball 
     player, Powell liked playing catcher because he wanted to be 
     in on every play. Now all eyes on deck are on him. A red 
     light on the carrier's seven-story island signals four 
     minutes to launch; two minutes later, when the light turns 
     amber, a green-shirted crewman, crouching alongside the jet's 
     nose wheels, signals for Powell to inch the plane forward and 
     locks it into the catapult's shuttle. The light turns green.
       Lieutenant Powell looks out to his left at the yellow-
     shirted catapult officer, the shooter. With his right hand 
     pointing at the pilot, the shooter holds his left hand aloft, 
     two fingers extended, signaling Powell to go to full power. 
     Then, his stomach rumbling from the force of the fighter's 
     engines, the shooter holds his hands open, palm out, as if to 
     slap a high-five, the sign to go to full afterburner. In the 
     seat of his pants, Lieutenant Powell can feel each of the 
     five stages of his afterburner ignite, one at a time.
       Ready to fly, he snaps a quick salute and leans his head 
     forward, bracing for the catapult shot; the shooter salutes 
     back, bends his knees, touches two fingers of his left hand 
     to the deck of the ship and gestures forward, like a hunting 
     dog pointing to its prey. On the shooter's signal, a goggled 
     crewman on the catwalk to the plane's left presses the button 
     that fires the catapult, hurtling Powell's F-14 from a 
     standstill to 150 mph in two seconds. ``It's the one time you 
     don't have control of your airplane,'' Lieutenant Powell 
     says.
       Midflight, during a mapping mission over Bosnia, a light in 
     Powell's cockpit signals a stall in his left engine, a 
     routine annoyance in the F-14. He clears it, finishes his 
     mission and heads back to the ship. It is late afternoon and 
     the clouds are heavy, so the planes follow nightime, low-
     visibility landing procedures. Circling 8,000 feet above the 
     Adriatic, 23 miles from the ship, Lieutenant Powell sees ice, 
     like frost in a freezer, forming on the leading edge of his 
     plane's wings.
       Powell hates circling in this stack of planes, four at 
     8,000 feet, another four 1,000 feet above that, and on up, 
     with no radio communications or radar. Earlier in the cruise, 
     when he had barely 25 carrier landings under his belt, he 
     would spend the 20 long minutes in the holding pattern 
     thinking about landing his jet on the tossing deck of a ship 
     at sea at night: ``Why the hell did I ask to do this job? I 
     want to be home with my wife,'' he remembers thinking. ``I 
     kicked myself in the ass every night to go do it.'' For the 
     first two months, his knees shook after every night landing.
       Five months into the cruise, he is confident. He begins his 
     approach to the ship, slowly descending to 1,200 feet 8 miles 
     out. Four miles from the ship he hears a bang, like a balloon 
     popping. Immediately the stall warning light flashes and the 
     plane yaws sharply left. He has lost power in his left 
     engine.
       Powell thinks of everything that could go wrong: He is low 
     on fuel, the weather is bad, it is a long way to an alternate 
     landing field. Taught to fly first, then navigate, then 
     communicate, he pulls the plane's nose up, corrects the yaw 
     that has taken him off course and begins talking to his 
     radar-intercept officer (RIO) in the back seat. Together, 
     they run through the Navy checklist for single-engine 
     landings and prepare to land their plane. He flies a slow 
     right turn, 360 degrees, to get the plane back in line with 
     the ship, alerts the America of their situation, then stays 
     off the radio the rest of the way in. ``We treated it like a 
     normal approach,'' Powell says later.
       Rather than slowing him down, the loss of an engine means 
     Lieutenant Powell is going to have to land at high speed, 
     with full afterburner on his good right engine. That way, if 
     he misses one of the four wires that will bring his plane to 
     a halt, he will have enough power to get airborne again. But 
     in the F-14, with a good 9 feet between the two engines, 
     throttling to full power in the right engine with none in 
     the left could make the jet swerve dangerously to the 
     left.

                              A good pass

       The landing isn't just safe; it looks good, too. Powell and 
     his RIO step out of the jet, which is surrounded by flight-
     deck crew ready to tow it out of the landing area. ``I flew a 
     good pass,'' he later recalls. ``It was awesome, I was on 
     deck.''
       Good pilots crave the chance to beat the odds. ``There's a 
     satisfaction when something happens and you're the one who's 
     going to have to bring it down safely,'' says veteran pilot 
     Andy ``Slim'' Whitson, the America air wing's landing signal 
     officer and a former flight instructor whose green Jaguar, 
     bought with his flight bonus, carries vanity tags that read 
     BLWN BKS, for blown bucks.
       ``They've all got big egos and big watches,'' Captain 
     Copeland, an F-14 pilot himself, says of the pilots he 
     commands. In the Diamondback's ready room, a tailhook bolt 
     hangs by a string from the ceiling over one pilot's seat; he 
     was the last to ``bolter'' that day, meaning he missed the 
     wires while landing and had to make another pass. On one wall 
     is the ``greenie'' board, where each pilot's every landing is 
     graded. ``They're so competitive, they like being graded,'' 
     says A-6 navigator Eric Cheney.
       Lieutenant Leekey, the red-haired pilot, flew some 75 
     flights without boltering. When he finally missed, he was 
     overheard on his radio: ``Impossible,'' he said in a mock 
     spanish accent. Commander Collins, the Diamondback squadron 
     commander who flies in the back seat, ribs his pilot if they 
     bolter: ``Hey, wasn't that our stop back there?'' Television 
     sets throughout the ship carry live pictures of flight 
     operations. Pilots, waiting to fly, sit and razz other pilots 
     for ugly landings.
       But the challenge is making the extraordinary look routine, 
     not making the routine look extraordinary, and veteran 
     aviators calculate how much slack to give junior officers. 
     ``If you go to war thinking you might get shot down, you're 
     going to be overly cautious,'' says Capt. Vance Toalson, a 
     former wrestler and the America's yellow-shirted Air Boss. 
     ``The confidence is necessary, but also the professionalism. 
     If you have some cavalier aviator out there, then he needs 
     to find another job. We don't have Tom Cruise in naval 
     aviation.''
       While the lieutenants are battling to land safely, the 
     captains and admirals have been dusting off plans to conduct 
     airstrikes in Bosnia if NATO leaders in Brussels give the 
     order. Later tonight, two of the carrier's four E-2C Hawkeyes 
     will begin monitoring Bosnia's skies around the clock. Half 
     the day's flight operations have been canceled so that pilots 
     and flight-deck crew members who might have to work all night 
     can sleep during the day.
       Captain Copeland and his air wing commander, Capt. Bill 
     Deaver, have just sat down to dinner about 9 p.m. when the 
     phone hidden under the dining table in Copeland's quarters 
     rings. There is a fire in the hangar bay: An E-2C Hawkeye 
     aerial surveillance plane, the type that is to fly later 
     tonight, is reported to be spitting sparks. Copeland and 
     Deaver scramble down three ladders and find the fire 
     extinguished. It has not reached the E-2C.


                         February 5, 1994--Home

       After six months at sea, the time has come to start tearing 
     down the walls between shipboard life and home, one brick at 
     a time.
       For some, it will be hard to let go. ``When I'm out here,'' 
     says Chaplain Gil Gibson, ``I miss home. When I'm home, I 
     miss here.'' Home cannot supply the camaraderie or the 
     challenges of life at sea.
       For Marine Colonel Huly's operations officer, Lt. Col. Jeff 
     Christman, the six months away from home have been an 
     eternity: He has numbered each of his 70 letters home, and 
     when he felt low, he played ``Danny Boy'' on the bagpipes in 
     a corner of the Guadalcanal's flight deck. But he wouldn't 
     trade the life: ``I guess there's always people who wanted to 
     be a professional soldier. I have a realistic but a romantic 
     view of what I do. I have no illusions. But still, I like the 
     life. I've gotten to do what I wanted to do when I was a 
     little boy.''
       For Lieutenant Leekey, the red-haired F-14 fighter pilot, 
     the end of the America's cruise means he must give up the 
     life he has always wanted. The Navy has rejected his appeal 
     to stay in. Leekey is slated to be discharged in June; his 
     wife, Iris, is due to give birth to their first child on 
     March 29. Leekey has flown since he was 13 and earned his 
     pilot's license at 17. He doesn't know what he will do 
     next. ``My lifelong dream was to fly fighters,'' he says. 
     ``I don't do anything else.''
       As the America steams toward Norfolk, these warriors must 
     become fathers and husbands again. Navy counseling teams came 
     aboard in Spain to remind the men that loved ones change, 
     grow independent, in six months without husbands and fathers. 
     ``It's pretty tough to go steaming into the house and say, 
     `You, get a haircut; you, clean up the back yard,''' says 
     Colonel Huly. ``There has to be some sensitivity. I know 
     that. Of course my family will say I don't, but I know 
     that.'' His wife, Patti, a veteran Marine spouse, takes a 
     more philosophical approach: ``If Robert Redford didn't get 
     on the boat,'' she advises young wives, ``Robert Redford 
     isn't getting off the boat.''

                                Too late

       Six months can be a lifetime. Almost three weeks after his 
     father underwent routine surgery, Cmdr. Vic Cerne, the 
     executive officer of the carrier's squadron of EA-6B 
     electronic-warfare aircraft, received an emergency Red Cross 
     message from his wife, Cindy: There were complications. He 
     packed a small bag and flew home from the carrier to Norfolk, 
     where he telephoned his mother at the hospital in Oklahoma. 
     His father came on the line, the husky man's voice sounding 
     weak. Cerne told his dad he loved him and promised he'd see 
     him the next day. ``I'll never forget what he said next,'' 
     recalls Cerne. ``He said, `Vic, hurry.''' The Cernes caught 
     the first flight out of Norfolk the next morning, but his 
     father died before they landed in Oklahoma. ``I never left on 
     this deployment thinking I wouldn't see him again,'' says 
     Cerne.
       Cerne's parents had planned to meet the ship when it came 
     in; his father had thought surgery would make him strong 
     enough to travel. Cerne returned to the ship after burying 
     his father. His mother will meet him at the pier.
       Norfolk still seems very far away. Every other day during 
     the 11-day Atlantic crossing, at 7 p.m., the crew must set 
     their watches back and relive 6 o'clock all over again. 
     Even two days before the ship is due in Norfolk, Petty 
     Officer 1st Class Grant Gorton, the F-14 flight-deck 
     coordinator, cannot relax: He is responsible for preparing 
     all 14 of his squadron's aircraft for the next day's fly-
     off, when the aviators will head home a day before the 
     ship docks. ``I won't be able to sleep tonight,'' he says. 
     ``We have to get every one off.''
       Gorton has learned all the ways 50 planes idling or taxiing 
     can kill a person: He avoids walking near an F-14's air 
     intakes or an E-2C's propellers. He leans his body into the 
     hot jet exhaust that can blow one overboard. His hearing has 
     worsened in his 12 years in the Navy, despite wearing the 
     Mickey Mouse-ear headgear required on the flight deck; after 
     a 14-hour day of flight operations, his ears are sore from 
     the gear. Gorton is nervous: If any of his F-14's can't fly 
     tomorrow, a crane will have to lift them off in Norfolk.
       The next day, every plane gets off as planned, the flight-
     deck crew waving good bye as the last A-6 Intruder departs. 
     In the bright sunshine, with the crew wandering about the 
     suddenly empty flight deck, the booming voice of Air Boss 
     Vance Toalson orders them to clear Catapult 3. The America's 
     senior shooter, Lt. Bill Clock, unties and removes his boots 
     and in his stocking feet walks to the catapult, where his 
     boots are tied to the catapult's shuttle. On the Boss's 
     order--``Shooting the boots''--the catapult, which has just 
     launched a 60,000-pound bomber, propels Bill Clock's boots, 
     tied together, off the carrier and into the Atlantic. The 
     America is almost home.
        Loretta Mora has written Jose that she will wear red to 
     the homecoming so he can find her on the crowded pier. She 
     does: a red winter coat, a short-sleeved, tailored red dress 
     and red high heels. Standing in the heated ``mommy tent,'' 
     where many of the 85 women who have given birth since their 
     husbands sailed in August wait, Loretta stays dry in the 
     driving rainstorm that has soaked the more than 5,000 people 
     waiting for the America.
       The big ship is tantalizingly close, with hundreds of 
     enlisted crew members standing shoulder to shoulder along the 
     bow and the starboard side in dress blue uniforms, and six 
     tugboats puffing black smoke turning it toward the pier. 
     After the America pulls alongside and the lines are fired to 
     secure it, Loretta leaves the warmth of the mommy tent, 
     pushing the baby carriage through shoe-deep puddles, and 
     waits alongside the ship. In the hangar bay, Jose musters 
     with the other new fathers, all weighed down by the clothes 
     and souvenirs stuffed into their duffels. In his pocket, Jose 
     carries his new son's first blue booties.
       An hour passes. On the pier, Loretta removes her red coat, 
     places it like a tent over the baby carriage and stands in 
     the downpour in her short-sleeved red dress before finally 
     retreating for shelter. Finally, the new fathers pass the 
     quarterdeck, salute their ship and walk the length of the 
     pier, through the crowd, to the mommy tent, where Jose Mora 
     embraces his wife and meets his son.
       The America has brought home every one of its sailors and 
     aviators, a remarkable feat: An F-14 and an F/A-18 from the 
     carrier Saratoga will collide in midair a week after the 
     America reaches Norfolk. Two of the America's sailors will 
     die in a late-night auto accident on the day it docks in 
     Norfolk. The ship is scheduled to sail again in August 1995, 
     on what may be its last cruise before it is taken out of 
     commission. Jose Mora will spend his son's second birthday at 
     sea.

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