The fleet staff would normally be about twenty officers and thirty enlisted men, but when the activity in the western Pacific and Southeast Asia picked up, the staff had been augmented by a dozen or so junior officers to handle the increased workload. Actually this didn’t fully materialize, and for the first month or so after the resumption of Linebacker I, these additional people were underemployed. That tends to be a normal phenomenon for fleet staffs, I suppose.
Because the flagship was equipped with a triple 6-inch gun turret forward, the Oklahoma City was a valuable asset for shore bombardment. There was only one 8-inch gun cruiser in the fleet at that time, the USS Newport News, and the largest-caliber guns in destroyers — of which there were about seventy in the augmented Sixth Fleet — was a 5-inch gun with more limited range and explosive power than the 6-inch. As a consequence the flagship was required to take her turn on the “gun line” conducting shore bombardment, either prearranged fire or call-fire from the troops ashore. With the advent of the Linebacker I campaign, which included shore bombardment against targets in North Vietnam, there was seldom a day in which the flagship was not involved in a period of shooting lasting from four to six hours at a stretch. This could be disconcerting to the staff and to life onboard of the staff members when the big guns were going off all night long. In the dental spaces, for example, a tarpaulin was placed over the dental chairs, because when the guns fired, the ceiling insulation, which was old and in need of repair, would break loose with the shock of gunfire and without the tarpaulin would have fallen into the open mouths of the patients.
The flagship’s schedule was similar to that of the other cruisers and destroyers deployed to the Seventh Fleet. It normally consisted of about a month in the Gulf of Tonkin, then a trip back to its homeport of Yokosuka for a week of in-port time. When the Oklahoma City was out of the gulf, headed for its homeport or visiting a foreign port, the command functions of Seventh Fleet remained with the staff, with very little if any diminution of effectiveness. Even in the Gulf of Tonkin, connectivity between the commander and his forces was maintained mainly by radio and electronic message traffic.
Part of the responsibility of Commander, Seventh Fleet was to show the flag of the United States and the power of the U.S. Navy throughout the western Pacific. This meant periodic visits to other nations on the Pacific Rim. These visits were not curtailed even with the war in Vietnam, and the Oklahoma City routinely would travel to such ports as Sasebo in Japan, Taipei in Taiwan, Hong Kong in China, White Beach at Naha, Okinawa, and ports in Malaysia and Thailand. Once a year or so the flagship would travel to Australia, but that was set aside during the Vietnam War because of the time involved in transit. When the flagship traveled to foreign ports, these were known as representational visits, and Commander, Seventh Fleet called on the heads of military service and the local civic government leaders. This usually included an exchange of dinner parties at the headquarters or capital and a reception on board the Oklahoma City. For this reason it was considered important that the wife of Commander, Seventh Fleet be available on these representational visits to foreign ports. Of course, the spouse could not travel in the flagship, but a flag jet transport was maintained at the Naval Air Station in Yokosuka to fly the spouse to the port of visit to rendezvous with her husband and provide representation on the distaff side. These VIP aircraft were T-39 Sabreliners and were comfortable if not loaded with more than four passengers. Usually Dabney traveled by herself, and it took a certain amount of spunk to make these trips. On one occasion she boarded the Sabreliner as the only passenger. There was a crew of two jaygees as pilot and copilot with no flight attendant. The plane was flying from NAS Atsugi to Taiwan for an official fleet visit in the capital of Taipei. About three hours out of Japan, the plane suddenly lost pressurization at forty thousand feet altitude. The pilots rolled the plane on its back and dove at high speed almost straight down to ten thousand feet, where the ambient pressure would provide enough oxygen for survival. The plane, then unable to fly at altitude for its best fuel economy needed to make it all the way to Taiwan, headed back for Japan with fortunately enough fuel to reach Atsugi. Dabney, who had been in the back with her seatbelt buckled, had heard enough about what can happen in aircraft not to be terrified, and when the plane had leveled off at ten thousand feet, one of the pilots told me later that he was amazed at her remarkable calm when they explained to her what had happened. Dabney, however, did not attempt to take a second flight to join me in Taiwan on that occasion.
When the flagship returned to its homeport in Yokosuka, once or twice a year the port visit would include a maintenance availability in which repairs or modification to the ship would be made in the shipyard. This could mean that the period in Yokosuka extended to as long as two weeks, especially if drydocking was involved. On these occasions I would fly back down to the Gulf of Tonkin and remain on board a carrier, visiting the various ships in the fleet by helicopter, going up and down to the decks of destroyers and frigates at the end of a cable hoist. To make these visits more efficient for the fleet commander, Commander, Seventh Fleet was assigned a jet transport that was capable of landing on a carrier. This was an A-3 twin-engine jet bomber that had the bomb bay sealed to make an internal cabin in which an operational seat was installed with built-in parachute and solidly bolted to the airframe to enable the seat with a passenger to withstand the arresting force of a carrier landing. The procedure was for commander, Seventh Fleet to fly by helicopter from the helo pad at Yokosuka, land at NAS Atsugi, transfer to the A-3 attack plane, and fly to the Gulf of Tonkin, where the A-3 would land on board a carrier. Then from the carrier, the fleet commander could visit the various ships in the gulf by helicopter and hoist, or by landing on the decks of other carriers and large amphibious ships. Usually a trip to the Gulf of Tonkin also involved a visit to the South Vietnamese Naval Headquarters in Saigon. When this occurred, a special helicopter was flown out from the port at Tan Son Nhut Airfield operated by Marines with window machine-gunners and antimissile protective devices.
The Seventh Fleet staff’s working day normally began at eight o’clock in flag plot with a briefing, a very important part of the staff’s operations in my approach to the fleet command. My staff experience was based upon OpNav, where I attended a daily brief. I used the daily briefing to get to know the staff and for them to understand the way I did business. A large-scale map was installed in flag plot on the biggest piece of plywood that could be found in Japan. Cardboard cutouts of ships were made in various coded colors to represent the different types and were placed on the chart with thumbtacks to indicate whether they were operating or in port. Plastic grease pencil status boards were installed similar to those in air operations in a carrier, where all the ships and forces in the fleet could be listed with the status of their operational capability noting any casualties that might limit their warfighting ability. The front lines of the ARVN were plotted on the large chart and when available the positions of major North Vietnamese forces were also displayed.