At the bottom of the list of nineteen captains who had been selected for admiral was James L. Holloway III. What a surprise. I had been selected for promotion for admiral two years before becoming eligible for consideration within the zone. While still receiving congratulations from my personal staff, the boatswain’s mate sang out, “The admiral is on the bridge” and up walked the carrier division commander, Rear Adm. “Mickey” Weisner, commander, Task Group 77.7, who with his staff was embarked in the Enterprise as his flagship. Mickey was a longtime friend of mine whom I held in highest esteem and admiration.
While it was nice to receive my first congratulations from such a congenial source, I said to Mickey that my first concern was that, having been selected for admiral, I hoped I would not be relieved of command of the Enterprise and sent to a flag billet right away. Mickey, who had served as director of naval officer detailing in Washington, set my mind at ease. “First,” he said, “you are so far down on the list, you won’t make your number [actually be promoted] for a least a year, and second, Admiral Rickover is not about to let you go before he has gotten his promised two years of service out of you.”
At about this time, the emergency alarm on the flight deck sounded and the pleasant conversation and congratulations were instantly terminated as the admiral, captain, and XO rushed to the port wing of the bridge to see what was the problem on the flight deck. It turned out that in conducting the regular preflight tests of the number two catapult by firing a shuttle forward without a plane or load attached, one of the sailors in the catapult crew had been struck by the shuttle and had collapsed. He was now immobile on the catapult track on the flight deck. The young sailor was carried away in a Stokes stretcher with a Navy doctor at his side, and later, word came up from sickbay that he had suffered a concussion but swift first aid and the medical officer’s response had stabilized his condition and it appeared he would recover quickly with no permanent damage.
By now the excitement of the promotion had dissipated and the XO and I were immersed in the details of the upcoming flight operations that were to commence at noon, and reviewing several of the messages that would clearly need attention by the ship’s engineering department. As flight quarters sounded for the impending noon launch, the sailors put on their jerseys, each a distinctive color to identify the man’s duties, and the elevator warning horns blew as first the fighters and then the bombers were shuffled to the flight deck to be spotted for launch. It was now just another day on Yankee Station.
Two years later, when I had returned to the Pentagon and was eventually promoted to rear admiral as I took over the directorate of Strike Warfare in OpNav, I was told by Vice Adm. Tom Connolly, who was then DCNO (Air), an interesting story relating to my selection for admiral. Connolly was a very distinguished member of the naval aviation community, having served in a succession of influential jobs in naval air, including the development and production of the F14 Tomcat. It has been said that the Tomcat received its nickname in recognition of “Tom” Connolly’s contribution to its existence.
In 1965, the year before I was selected for admiral, Connolly had been a member of the Flag Selection Board. Connolly said that I had been selected for admiral by that 1965 board and that my name had actually appeared on the final list. However, Connolly and several other “friends” of mine felt that it would be best if I were not included that year. Their feeling was that I would certainly get selected the year following, but to pick me in 1965 would definitely cause me to be relieved of command of the Enterprise before its deployment to Vietnam. The naval aviators on the selection board, led by Connolly, felt that both I and the Navy would be better served by letting me complete my full tour of duty in the Enterprise. I told Connolly that I was very glad that he had waited until I was actually promoted before he told me I had been selected and then taken off the list.
Replenishment at sea was one of the most remarkable features of the carrier operations in the Gulf of Tonkin. Virtually all of the products transferred — fuel, ammunition, food, spare parts and toiletries — came directly from the United States; there was practically no transshipment through ports in the Far East. Although the carriers went into the naval base at Subic Bay in the Philippines after almost every period on the line, this was mainly for ship repairs, the offloading of dud aircraft (those that had received battle damage and were unable to be flown off), and crew rest and relaxation. More than 99 percent of all other logistical support — ammunition, ship and aircraft fuel, food and general supplies — was delivered to the carriers from logistic support ships during underway replenishments at sea.
In turn, most of the underway replenishment ships were loaded out in U.S. ports. The ammunition ships (AEs) would take on all kinds of ammunition at the ammunition depot in Concord, California, and then transit to the Gulf of Tonkin. The AE would transfer ammunition to the carriers several times a day for a month or so until their holds were getting low. Then they would join up with another ammunition ship in the forward area whose ammunition stocks were also depleted. The two ships would then consolidate. The AE that had been in Seventh Fleet the longest would transfer its remaining cargo to the other AE and then return to the United States for another loadout. The tankers and general cargo ships would conduct similar product consolidations as they rotated in and out of the Seventh Fleet. The same routine applied to the general store ships, which delivered fresh vegetables to the crews’ mess directly out of the port of Oakland from California farms.
The oilers carried both aviation fuel and ship’s fuel for the nonnuclear ships. Although much of the fuel came from the continental United States, some was also picked up from U.S. stocks at storage sites in the Pacific, such as Singapore, where it had been delivered by commercial tankers.
All of this provided significant efficiencies by not having to move these supplies through a port in the Philippines to a depot, then move them from the depot to the port again, having the carrier spend three or four days of premium in-port time loading ammunition or fuel. Each carrier replenished virtually every twenty-four hours from at least one of the ships in the URG. By this system of constant replenishment, the carriers did not wait for their fuel bunkers or magazines to become low. They were kept topped off so that the ship always had about ten days’ supply of fuel and ammunition in the event that logistic support was interrupted or so that the carriers could be sent on an unsupported mission immediately, without taking time to load out.
The URGs were supplemented by COD aircraft. The COD was a twin-engined carrier-capable transport plane with a tailhook for landing on board. It was a modification of the very reliable S2F Tracker antisubmarine warfare plane being flown off the CVS carriers. It could be configured with seats for a dozen passengers or for general cargo. It was reserved for high-priority freight that could be efficiently air transported: people, lightweight electronics, replacement parts, and U.S. mail.
With the carriers conducting replenishment almost every day, the crews became very proficient at these operations. Replenishment could be conducted both day and night under weather conditions up to gale winds and a sea state of five and when the visibility was reduced to a quarter of a mile or less. During my time in the Enterprise there were several occasions when the fog was so thick the replenishment ship could not be seen from the bridge of the Enterprise until after the carrier’s bow had passed the replenishment ship’s stern.