Joint Task Force #1: Liberia

by David E. Meadows

  He blew out a cloud of smoke that the wind across the bow of the ship quickly dissipated. Reaching below the top of the stanchion, Holman flicked ashes into the brass bottom of a five-inch 62-shell casing. Once you fired an artillery shell, the gun ejected the spent casings onto the deck. Boatswain mates, or deck apes as they were fondly called, used them for everything from storing bolts, nuts, and nails to artistic endeavors involving elaborate macramé designs. The two casings on the bridge wings had none of the accoutrements of at-sea art. They were just two empty shell casings put there by some enterprising young sailor who probably was tired of cleaning up after the admiral. It never occurred to Dick Holman that the shell-casing ashtrays were tokens of respect from the men and women who worked for him. He made sure he used them. He wouldn’t want to clean up after a messy slob like him. He looked at his cigar for a moment before shoving it between his lips. He enjoyed them, but was conscious of public opinion that regarded most smokers as being inconsiderate bastards screwing up the atmosphere and surrounding those nearby with secondhand smoke. He did not intend to be an inconsiderate bastard—a considerate bastard seems okay.

  The screeching sound of the forward elevator drew his attention.

  “That should be them,” Upmann said, standing to the right and upwind from the cigar.

  A couple of seconds later, the four Unmanned Fighter Aerial Vehicles appeared over the edge of the flight deck.

  “How could we ever give up manned aircraft for something like that?” Holman asked.

  “Sometimes technology and society don’t give us many options.”

  “And don’t forget politics. We got one political party viewing us as cash cows and the other knocking on the door shouting ‘We’re here to help,’ and ignoring anything we have to say. Sometimes, I don’t know how we survive.”

  The screeching stopped as the elevator reached deck level. A large group of sailors swarmed across the deck, dividing into individual working parties for the four UFAVs.

  “If it hadn’t been for the war in Afghanistan, we’d be without aircraft carriers today,” Upmann added thoughtfully.

  Holman shook his head. “Oh, I don’t agree with you, Leo. I’ve always questioned that opinion. Aircraft carriers will be around as long as America needs to control the seas, protect our interests abroad, and project power when needed. What worries me is this idea that unmanned aircraft can replace manned ones. You can’t fight a war through the eyes of a camera. You need the man—or woman—on the edge of their seats piloting that fighter or bomber, making snap decisions that mean the difference between life and death. Not piping signals back to a bunch of information jocks who will analyze the situation to death.”

  “And the Air Force?” Leo asked, grinning.

  Holman nodded. “Nice try, Chief of Staff. Won’t work. I’ve got enough on my plate here without worrying about what the Air Force is trying to do to the Navy this week. Besides, we need the Air Force. I know getting a bunch of Air Force pilots and Navy pilots in the same room to argue the merits of airpower versus carrier power is like a meeting of the Hatfields and McCoys, but we both know that without their bombers and tankers, we’d’ve been severely restricted in Afghanistan. Might have taken four months instead of three to conquer the country. Same goes for Iraq.”

  The first UFAV, attached to a yellow deck cat, moved across the gray flight deck, heading aft toward the stern of the USS Boxer. Though it weighed only a thousand pounds, it still needed a runway to get airborne. Beneath each wing, two air-to-ground missiles protruded. Holman did not intend to engage the French fighters. He mentally crossed his fingers. What gave him the idea that just because he’d fooled a bunch of electronic-configured mines in the Strait of Gibraltar, he could fool a bunch of Frenchmen? He chuckled. Because the mines were smarter?

  “What’s funny?”

  Holman shook his head. “Nothing, Leo. I was just thinking of the thoughts that might go through the head of Admiral Colbert when our little charade begins.”

  “He’s French. Don’t have to worry too much about anything going through his head.”

  “Wish you were right, but I’ve worked with the French and while they’re very nationalistic, they’re good fighters. I discovered during Afghanistan that when the French set an objective, they tend to follow it to the end.”

  Upmann leaned forward, bracing himself against the waist-high stanchion. “If that’s right, Admiral, then we won’t fool them.”

  Holman took a puff on his Cubana. “No, you’re right, Leo. I don’t think we’ll fool them completely. But if we keep them confused long enough to land the Marines at Kingsville, then we’ll be ahead of the game.”

  The second UFAV jerked as its wheels rolled across the slight bump between the elevator and the flight deck. The driver of the deck cat spun the steering wheel slightly to align himself about twenty feet behind the first one. The third and fourth UFAVs followed, with the drivers pulling into a parade heading toward the stern of the amphibious carrier USS Boxer.

  “Has the Mispellion reached its position?” Holman asked.

  Upmann nodded. “She is thirty nautical miles southwest of us.”

  “Her team knows what they have to do?”

  “Admiral, we gave them a script, but you know it was hastily written and it may be hastily executed.”

  “All Mispellion has to do is give us one hour. If the old ship can give us an hour, we’ll have Marines far enough inshore that the French will be hard-pressed to stop them before they reach Kingsville. And they would never dare to act hostile to returning helicopters full of civilians.”

  Holman turned slightly so he could see the CH-53 helicopters parked along the port and starboard sides aft of the forecastle. Two of them had their rotors turning. Marines with full packs, guided by their gunnery sergeants, boarded through the lowered back ramps. A new whine of engines straining to achieve RPMs joined the cacophony of air operations as the rotors on the other two CH-53 Super Stallions started to rotate. He looked over his shoulder at the two tilt-rotor V-22A Ospreys parked directly across from each other near the bow of the ship.

  “They’re turning them around, Admiral,” Leo said, pointing toward the UFAVs.

  Holman looked. Sailors who had walked alongside the procession now crouched between the noses of the twenty-eight-foot-long UFAVs and the deck tractors, working quickly to disconnect the tows.

  A blast of gray smoke from the exhaust of an Osprey trailed as it spread toward the stern, wrapping around the forecastle in its passage. Painted parking areas kept them out of the way of flight operations.

  Near the UFAVs, the sailors finished picking up the towing gear and tossed it onto the deck cats.

  Flight operations should never work. It was an impossible task. You take an 888-foot floating airport with twenty helicopters, two Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, being operated by many who had never seen an aircraft until they joined the Navy. Since the Navy rotated its personnel every three years, the ship lost one third of its experienced workforce annually, making the evolution a training continuum where what has been found to work is passed on to those who follow. You could read all the damn publications you wanted, and they wouldn’t teach anyone what they needed to know to make an aircraft carrier work. Holman shifted the cigar to the left side of his lips. Complicating the challenges of flight deck operations were things such as fueling aircraft with running engines and Marines boarding. Within feet of these operations, various armaments either waited to be loaded or rested a few inches above your head beneath a wing or along a fuselage.

  Holman watched stoically as the working parties aligned the unmanned Navy fighters. This had better work.

  A whistle disrupted his thoughts and drew his attention. Holman twisted his head a couple of times before he spotted the yellow jersey of the master chief petty officer in charge of the working parties standing on the starboard side. The man held his whistle to his lips with his left hand, while his right waved the sailors away from the area. />
  For the uninitiated the noise, equipment, aircraft, oily smell, and intense movement of sailors across the flight deck appeared a disorganized jumble of unrelated events. And it was. Holman tried to recall if he had ever seen or read a book on the management theory of flight deck operations. He shook his head—only official Navy documents. Even aircraft and amphibious carriers of the same class had differences in how they conducted flight deck operations. It took experience. Experience on the ship and actually flying off a flight deck, before the epiphany of at-sea air operations fell into place.

  “You know, Leo, this scene has to confuse anyone who sees it for the first time.”

  “I don’t know, sir. I think Dante was the first to recognize it,” Upmann replied. After a couple of seconds, he continued. “I know it confuses me and I see it nearly every day. It took me nearly a month to figure out different jobs had different sailors wearing different-colored jerseys.”

  “Kind of reminds me of a beehive.”

  Upmann chuckled. “I was thinking more along the lines of Dante’s Inferno. You could be right. We got workers, we got royalty, and we definitely got stings. Probably a bunch of drones too.”

  Holman winked at Upmann. “I won’t ask who you think the drones are.” He turned back, observing the activities below. “When you see all those different-colored jerseys running about the flight deck wearing cranials with different designs on top—”

  “Maybe a paintball derby. Yes. That’s it; a paintball derby could describe it.”

  Holman shook his head. “Leo, don’t you have something you need to be doing?” Holman asked jovially. “Maybe a few hours working alongside the Air Boss would give you a better feel for the artistic professionalism we witness every day from up here.”

  “Oh, no, sir. No, thanks, Admiral,” Upmann protested. “I’ve been there and I’ve watched him. It only took that one visit to figure out why there are no chubby Air Bosses.”

  Two decks below the starboard bridge wing where Admiral Holman and his Chief of Staff stood, a small compartment jutted out slightly from the side of the forecastle. Windows tilted at twenty-degree angles with windshield wipers locked in place to give the occupants a clear view of every inch of flight deck space. This was the sacred place of the Air Boss. The mystical sorcerer of flight deck operations whose every desire or command produced dread and fear in those singled out by a speaker system designed to be heard over any flight evolution ongoing at the time. The Air Boss, a senior commander or junior captain, was directly responsible for everything that occurred within this nearly three acres of United States real estate floating on this vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. For anyone on the flight deck, the Air Boss’s word was law, his justice swift, and his punishment irrevocable.

  The Boxer Air Boss, Commander Scott Proudfoot, native Cherokee, tight end for Naval Academy class of 2001, watched the flight deck. The familiar set of binoculars swung like a pendulum from his neck as he moved from window to window, watching the evolution below him. Around the top of the compartment above the windows, rows of speakers broadcast the walkie-talkie conversations from the flight deck.

  Behind Proudfoot, on top of the familiar gray Navy metal table was a facsimile outline of the USS Boxer flight deck and hangar deck. The flight deck got most of his and his team’s attention. Hangar decks changed little. But regardless of where a piece of equipment or aircraft was located, nothing moved without the permission of the Air Boss. To do otherwise meant finding yourself back in Kansas for, as Commander Proudfoot enjoyed telling everyone, he owned the power of the red slippers.

  On top of the facsimile, scale models of the V-22A Osprey and CH-53 helicopters reflected their true positions. Each model had corresponding tail numbers to help the Air Boss direct deck crews to specific aircraft. Someone had made cardboard cutouts to represent the four UFAVs taking up valuable real estate on his flight deck, for Commander Proudfoot wore the wings of a Navy pilot. If they could do this to the fighter jocks, how long before his EP-3E was replaced by robots?

  On the flight deck, every sailor and officer wore a protective helmet with goggles and earmuffs to protect their head, ears, and eyes from the myriad of things that could go wrong in such a confined area. Sailors called the helmets cranials because unlike standard helmets, they were a mixture of cloth and hard plastic built with sufficient flexibility to be folded and carried. The helmets reminded Holman of the heads of beetles. Different colors, stripes, and emblems on top of the cranials told the Air Boss, and anyone else watching from above, the position of authority and skills of the wearer. To the starboard side of the UFAVs stood a tall officer wearing a yellow jersey with a cranial bearing three orange stripes identifying her as an Air Department officer. Proudfoot made a mental note of where she was standing. If she were still there when he came back to her, he’d jerk the handset up and ask her if she knew what in hell she was doing. Anyone standing still on a flight deck had no business being there. If you want to watch, watch from somewhere else and get the hell off his flight deck.

  Sailors, according to their specialty, wore colored jerseys. Purple identified those in charge of fueling the aircraft, while red with black stripes told the Air Boss which ones handled ordnance. Red without the black stripes identified crash/salvage teams. Though all sailors and officers were trained to fight fires, the red jerseys were true professionals.

  Yellow jerseys were in charge of the flight deck, aircraft movement, and handling. They were the aviation equivalent of surface force boatswain mates. Those yellows operated the yellow aviation equipment such as the tractors that had towed the UFAVs into place. They also led the firefighting teams when necessary. Fires at sea were scourges for a sailor. Fighting fires took precedence over fighting flooding. At sea you could always refloat a flooded ship, but you couldn’t rebuild a burned one.

  Green denoted the maintenance personnel in charge of those things on deck that controlled takeoffs and landings. On carriers, they made up the catapult and arresting crews.

  Speckled among the profusion of reds, greens, and yellows were the blues who were the plane handlers, elevator operators (white cranial), and messengers. They tied down and removed the chains that held an aircraft to the deck, as well as reaching beneath the turning engines to jerk away the chocks from the wheels.

  Safety observers wore white jerseys with a green cross highlighted on the back. The same color jersey with a red cross on the back and the cranials identified the “docs” of the deck—hospital corpsmen. Small first-aid kits were strapped to their waists.

  Watching aft, Holman saw the wake bending to port. The Boxer was in an easy left turn, shifting the relative wind to bring it across her bow for the upcoming launch. Holman squinted as the sun reappeared from behind the forecastle and the morning shadows on the flight deck disappeared. The African heat rolled across them. Below him on the deck, the long-sleeve jerseys would help keep sunburn down, but already, he knew, sweat was crawling down the sailors’ skin, soaking their uniforms. The danger of being blown overboard, cut in half by props, or sucked into an intake was compounded by the danger of dehydration and sunstroke. Christ! No wonder life at sea is great! He noticed the safety observers carrying plastic bottles of water with them, stopping along the way to provide drinks to the working parties. “Umm,” he wondered, “who had the foresight to think of that?”

  As if reading his mind, the voice of Commander Proudfoot echoed across the flight deck speakers. “Okay, everyone, listen up. We’re turning into the wind for upcoming launches. I want everyone to be alert to moving aircraft and keep an eye on your shipmate. Watch those propellers! You feel that heat? That’s African heat. It ain’t heat from home! Every one of you make sure you drink plenty of water. It’s only a little after zero-nine-hundred and the temperature is already one hundred. For those of you from Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, welcome home.”

  The UFAVs were aligned two by two. They would take off one after the other, down the middle of the deck between loading h
elicopters and empty Ospreys waiting to launch toward Kingsville. Rotors and propellers turned, hot exhaust fumes mixing with hundred-degree heat, enveloping the flight deck. Inside each idling aircraft, Marines sweated. Suffering through the dehydrating wait. While they sat crammed together, they watched cautiously the mounted ordnance on the wings baking in the heat. This was one of the many critical times aboard a floating airfield. If one of those air-to-surface what-a-macallits went off, they would never be able to evacuate the helicopter in time.

  “Admiral?”

  Holman nodded. “Tell Buford to give the go-ahead to Mispellion. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

  “What do we do when the French discover there is no American aircraft carrier? What if they pursue our helicopters ashore?”

  Holman leaned forward and ground his cigar out against the inside of the shell casing. “I’m hoping what we’ll have is a lot of French bluster and my fine French counterpart, Admiral Colbert, backs off.”

  “So do I, Admiral Holman. But what if he doesn’t?”

  Holman’s eyebrows furrowed into a deep V. Being a senior officer meant making hard decisions. What would he do? What he did know, and wouldn’t be surprised if Leo Upmann hadn’t figured out already, was that Washington and Stuttgart were hanging him out. Why? He didn’t know. Every message he had sent requesting clear rules of engagement had been ignored. Effectively, what they were doing was leaving it to him to decide. A wrong decision would affect America’s relationship with an ally Washington needed to finish the final terms of the Middle East treaty between Israel and Palestine. Navy officers, more than any of the other services, were forever faced with balancing military actions with geopolitical realities. The tactile authority to spend millions of dollars while deployed, steaming within sight of another country’s shores, the presence of an anchored man-of-war in a foreign port; all leveraged American foreign diplomacy.

  Washington and Stuttgart knew of his quandary. They were slow-rolling their reply. He didn’t spend eight years of his career in the Pentagon without discovering there were many ways to play politics, and using time was a primary one. If you delayed long enough, the problem went away, or someone else had the good fortune of being blamed for the decision.