“Can’t the damned harbor police do anything about this?” U.S. Navy Captain Davis Manaus complained. “Where the hell are they?”
“They’re out there already, skipper,” U.S. Navy Captain Sam Anse replied, scanning the area with his binoculars. “Every harbor patrol, prefecture police, and Maritime Self-Defense Force unit stationed in the Bay is out there.”
It was not hard to understand why it was impossible to believe that fact. Admiral Manaus’s ship, the American aircraft carrier USS Independence, was surrounded by what one lookout estimated as two thousand boats of every shape, size, and description, all decked out in white sheets and flying white flags. Most of the people on each ship were dressed in white, with white bandannas with the red “rising sun” of Japan over their foreheads. Interspersed among the white-clad protesters had to be another several dozen boats with camera crews from all over the world. The police and Navy security units had been circulating around the Independence all night and all morning, keeping protesters away from the carrier’s hull; many of the protesters were carrying buckets of red paint, obviously destined to decorate the ship’s hull.
It took several more hours and much restrained but angry appeals all the way to the office of the prime minister, but eventually the tugs were allowed to be brought into position, and the Independence was moved away from the wharf and into the bay. Protesters on loudspeakers and bullhorns tried to convince the tugboat captains and harbor pilots not to assist the carrier out, and for a brief moment it appeared as if their appeals might take hold, but seemingly by inches the great warship was under way and heading out into the Gulf of Sagami.
The Independence, now with its escort group assembled and in formation — three anti-submarine warfare frigates, two Aegis guided-missile cruisers, and a replenishment ship — was about twenty miles south of the tip of the Miura Peninsula, roughly in the middle of the Gulf of Sagami, when it was safe for fixed-wing flight operations to get under way again. There were still a few protesters shadowing the carrier group, but they were not allowed closer than three miles from the carrier, well outside the perimeter established by the escort frigates. The battle group had accelerated now to flight ops formation speed of twenty-seven knots, so very few of the smaller protester’s vessels could keep up.
The first aircraft to launch were the rescue helicopters, two huge Sikorsky SH-3H Sea Kings with two pilots and two rescue swimmers on board. Next were the E-2 Hawkeye radar planes, which could extend the radar “eyes” of the battle group out almost 400 miles. The Hawkeye’s crew would act as the long-range air traffic controllers for the carrier, vectoring incoming aircraft toward the carrier until the final approach controllers on board the carrier itself took over. One KA-6D aerial refueling tanker then launched, followed by four F-14A Tomcat fighters on outer perimeter air defense patrol, with two more Tomcats positioned on the number three and four catapults on alert five status, ready to launch and help defend the carrier group.
The first aircraft to arrive was the least attractive but most appreciated aircraft of all — the twin turboprop C-2A Greyhound, known as the “COD,” for Carrier Onboard Delivery. The COD ferried crewmembers, passengers, supplies, spare parts — and most importantly, the mail — on and off the ship several times a day. Ungainly and slow when “dirtied up” and ready for the “trap,” or landing on the carrier, the COD was cleared to land, reporting its landing weight as 48,000 pounds, just two thousand shy of max landing weight — it was loaded to the gills with crew members who hadn’t made the departure, extra crew members, a few civilian passengers participating on a “Tiger Cruise” for a few days, and a pallet of mail sacks.
The approach was a little high, and that spelled trouble right away. Nailing the airspeed, nailing the initial approach and rolling in on final at the right altitude to capture a centered Fresnel glide path landing indicator, called the “ball,” then nailing the desired angle of attack, making very slight corrections to stay on centerline and stay on glide path — that was the key to a successful “trap.” Corrections in a heavyweight COD had to be made very, very carefully — crew members describe it as “thinking” throttle movements rather than actually applying huge inputs and then having to take them back out again. Many pilots liked to carry a little extra airspeed, knowing that a plane configured to land, with gear, flaps, slats, and hook extended, was going to slow down fast with the slightest reduction in airspeed; also, it took several seconds after any throttle advancement for the turbine engines to spool up to desired power, so being on the positive side of the power curve was important. But high and fast was a bad combination.
Altitude was corrected with power, airspeed corrected with angle of attack — just the opposite of cruise. The pilot pulled off a fraction of an inch of power, and immediately felt the sink rate increase. He had to ignore the sensation of sinking too rapidly and concentrate on his scan— ball, airspeed, ball, AOA, ball, centerline, ball. Enough of a power correction: the LSO, or landing system officer, ordered more power just as the pilot was pushing the throttles forward. The tiny speck of a carrier deck was quickly becoming bigger and bigger. Enough power; recheck and correct pitch angle to get the AOA indexers centered again.
OK, OK, the pilot told himself, this was not going to be a pretty landing, but it was the first of about three he’d make today. He was now at the reins of a bucking bronco. If everything starts smoothly and inputs are gentle, the ride down the chute is smooth and easy — relatively speaking for carrier landings. But very often, if one parameter is off, then it’ll be hands and feet dancing on the controls, throttles, and pedals all the way — and that’s the way it was on this one. The ball was staying centered, but it was like controlling a marionette dance routine.
On touchdown, he was still on the backside of the power curve, nose very high, power coming up but way late. All carrier landings were characterized as “controlled crashes,” and landings in a heavyweight COD were even more so. This was going to be a doozy — a two-wire trap, just fifty feet from the edge of the fantail, slow and wobbly. He was not going to earn any Brownie points for that one. The nose was going to come down like a felled tree if he didn’t fly it down carefully before the arresting wires stopped him short. The pilot felt the jerk of the arresting wire, saw the deck director signal a good catch, pushed the throttles to full power in preparation for a bolter in case of a broken wire, saw the edge of the landing deck coming up to meet him but at the same time saw the airspeed rapidly decreasing, felt his body squished harder and harder against the shoulder straps, jammed the throttles to idle…
… and then his aircraft, his carrier, his world disappeared in a flash of white light.
CHAPTER FIVE
“The most important lesson learned from the Persian Gulf War of 1991 is this: if you are ever to go to war against the United States of America, be sure to bring a nuclear weapon.”