WAR GAMING THE CARRIER
It was my job as carrier program coordinator and director of strike warfare in OpNav to give an annual lecture on carrier air warfare to the student body at the Naval War College (NWC) in Newport, Rhode Island. Normally I flew from Anacostia Naval Air Station in D.C. to Providence, Rhode Island, to be picked up by Navy helicopter and taken to the helo pad at NWC. Then it was a quick sedan trip to the stately pillared front entrance of the main building. The auditorium was directly inside.
The president of the college at that time was a flag officer of acknowledged intellect, selected for the assignment by the secretary of the navy. As my sedan pulled up, the president graciously came down the steps to greet me. We shook hands cordially, and his very first words were — he was not a naval aviator—“In our war game last week, all your carriers got sunk.” All your carriers. Not “the Navy’s carriers,” not “our carriers,” or even “the carriers,” but your carriers. I don’t think he realized he had such an anticarrier bias, but it came through loud and clear. Of course, the end result of a war game primarily depends on the assumptions made in setting up the scenarios. This kind of prejudice against carriers could not have been helpful in his position as president of the NWC. After all, the role of the aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy was no longer questionable as it was in the 1930s. The carrier was in 1971 the acknowledged capital ship of the Navy. Naval aviation represented almost half of our service in terms of investment and manpower. It seemed rather outlandish for the college to promote a debate on the carrier’s viability in the U.S. Fleet. In those days, as today, the aircraft carrier was the only ship in the U.S. Navy that had its active force levels established annually in the DoD’s draft presidential memorandum, along with Army and Marine divisions and U.S. Air Force tactical fighter wings. Clearly, the National Command Authority considered the carrier the primary index for measuring U.S. sea power.
15
The Syrian Invasion of Jordan
The USS Saratoga had been conducting air operations the night of 17 July 1970, and I had been observing the night flying from the flag bridge until the final trap at 0200. I was still asleep in the flag cabin at 0700 the next morning when there was a sharp rap at the door. Before I could react even with a “What is it?” the door burst open to admit Vice Adm. Isaac Campbell (Ike) Kidd, commander of the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet. Ike had a napkin over his arm and a steaming cup of black coffee in his hand, which he politely served to me as I sat up in bed.
This was most unusual. I was a rear admiral, and Vice Admiral Kidd was my immediate superior. It was hardly consistent with flag officer protocol. But Kidd was considered somewhat of a character by his Navy colleagues. He had adopted the manner of a gruff old salt, with the homespun wisdom and rolling gait of a true man-o’-warsman. This belied, to some degree, his matriculation from one of the United States’ classiest prep schools, St. Georges, in Newport, Rhode Island. But he was a seagoing naval officer, and as competent a naval leader as could be found in the three-star ranks. He was a bit of an actor even as an admiral, having once given a lecture wearing the rented uniform of a Soviet navy captain. So he relished the opportunity to have some fun with his friend and principal subordinate — Jim Holloway.
CARRIER DIVISION 6
In June 1970 I had reported aboard the USS Saratoga as Commander, Carrier Division 6. The Saratoga was deployed to Sixth Fleet and at that time was in port at Naples, Italy. As the senior carrier division (CarDiv) commander assigned to Sixth Fleet, I was also designated Commander, Task Force 60, an operational command that carried the title of Commander, Carrier Striking Force Sixth Fleet. In this operational role, the carrier division commander was supported by a staff of about fifteen officers and forty-five enlisted men. The CarDiv staff was structured specifically to conduct operations and oversee the support of two or more carrier task units, with their embarked air wings and accompanying cruisers and destroyers. Consequently, the Commander, Carrier Division 6 staff included senior naval aviators for operations and plans, an experienced former destroyer CO as surface operations officer, and an intelligence section built around selected air intelligence specialists. This staff was further organized to work in conjunction with the operations and intelligence departments of the carrier in which the flag was embarked.
Vice Admiral Kidd, a surface warfare officer, had taken over as Commander, Sixth Fleet only two days before I relieved as Commander, CarDiv 6. Ike was a year senior to me. We had known each other since our Naval Academy days. He was an acknowledged comer in the surface warfare community. His father had been a rear admiral, in command of Battleship Division 1, aboard the USS Arizona and had been killed during the Pearl Harbor attack and awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor.
Although Ike was installed with his staff in the designated Sixth Fleet flagship, the missile cruiser Springfield, he spent most of every day at sea aboard the Carrier Division 6 flagship, the Saratoga. In the Saratoga there was always a lot going on compared to his own flagship. Ike would observe air operations, visit the pilots’ ready rooms, gain familiarity with the combat aircraft, and discuss carrier task force operations at length. He usually arrived on board the Saratoga by helicopter shortly after 0800, and his coming was announced well in advance on the carrier’s general announcing (loudspeaker) system when his helicopter called in for landing instructions. I was usually on the flight deck to meet him, and I would then turn him over to Capt. Jack McQuary, the commander, Carrier Division 6 chief of staff.
Ike Kidd spent most of his time on board the carrier with Captain McQuary over innumerable cups of Navy coffee cooled with liberal infusions of Carnation condensed milk, a trademark of Ike’s. Jack was an alumnus of the University of California at Los Angeles and had experienced a brief fling as an offensive lineman with the Los Angeles Rams pro football team. He was an ardent sports enthusiast. They could spend hours just talking football. As commander, Task Force 60, I was in tactical command of the ongoing air operations of the Sixth Fleet, and in addition to the current operations, there was always the need for the planning of impending training exercises and contingency operations. The latter included crisis management and general war plans. So there was always much going on, and it all needed the constant attention of the CarDiv commander.
In September 1970 two events that had a profound impact on the Sixth Fleet collided in the Mediterranean. The president of the United States, Richard Nixon, decided to pay an official state visit to Italy that would include an underway visit to a Sixth Fleet carrier, and Jordan was invaded by a Syrian armored column, a situation that threatened to destabilize the always delicate equilibrium of the Middle East.
CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
On 6 September 1970 an Arab group of Fedayeen, representing the Palestine liberation movement, hijacked an American, a British, and a Swiss commercial airliner, blowing each of them up after offloading the passengers and flying them to Dawson Field, near Amman, the capital of Jordan. There were several hundred passengers involved, most of them European, along with a number of Americans and Israelis. The hijackers offered to release all of the captured passengers in a trade for the Fedayeen and Palestinian guerrillas held in Swiss, German, British, and Israeli jails. It was understood that negotiations with the terrorists would be difficult because of the multinational composition of the hostage group and the Israeli policy of not responding to blackmail. On 7 September the king of Jordan, King Hussein, who considered himself and his country friends of the United States, violently condemned these actions of the Fedayeen. He was deeply embarrassed by the open presence of the renegade Palestinians within the boundaries of Jordan. His condemnation was reflected in the reaction of his loyal army, who were near mutiny over the insulting disregard of the Fedayeen for the sovereignty of Jordan. Hussein appealed to the United States for help. In Washington, President Nixon, through his national security advisor Henry Kissinger, put the National Security Council (NSC) machinery in motion. The Washington Special Actions Group (WSAG), headed by Kissinger, was meeting frequently in prolonged sessions as the events unfolded. This was a serious matter that could eventually involve us in a military action in the Middle East, a particularly dangerous course of action in view of the Soviet political entanglements in the Arab world and the several hundred thousand Americans already fighting the ongoing war in Southeast Asia.