Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier

What followed was a duplicate of the sailing a month earlier, with Captain Rutheford again at the helm. With an HH-60G helicopter overhead for security and guidance, Chuck Smith ordered the last lines brought over and the brows raised. At precisely 0800 hours (8 A.M.), a signal was given, the American flag was raised, and over a thousand sailors in their best whites manned the sides. This impressive sight was made even more so by the emotions of the people left behind on the dock-some sobbing, some stoically silent, some talking nervously.

As the tugs pushed the GW into the channel, the crowd began to move to various points around the bay to watch the carrier head out. As John and I walked up the dock to our cars, we stopped and chatted with a young woman wearing a cruise jacket that must have belonged to one of the sailors on board. She just sat there watching the ship and her man move into the channel, then walked with us back to the cars. Her Sailor was a member of the CVW-1 staff, and they were planning to meet in Europe for the holidays. As we parted, though, John and I had the terrible feeling that she might not get the chance. The affairs of the world were going their usual chaotic way. Already that morning, the Nimitz battle group had been ordered to the Persian Gulf, to show the flag in the face of renewed tension between Iraq and Iran. And the crisis that would bring the GW to the Gulf was only a month away.

Now, though, the GW began to move down the channel, followed at ten-minute intervals by the Normandy, Guam, South Carolina, and Seattle. Again, at bases up and down the Atlantic coast, other ships of the battle group and ARG were sailing, planning to rendezvous off the Virginia capes the following day. CVW-1 flew aboard that afternoon, and the 24th MEU (SOC) was already loading down at Moorehead City, North Carolina. As I drove out of the Naval station several hours later, I passed by the British aircraft carrier HMS Invincible (R 05) and her battle group, which were making a port visit of their own. Ironically, these same ships would also wind up in the Persian Gulf several months later, along with the Nimitz and GW. Before that, though, there would be some of the planned exercises and port visits that had been scheduled before Saddam's newest troublemaking.

The GW battle group and Guam ARG took part in Operation Bright Star 97, the annual joint U.S./Egyptian maneuvers in the desert west of Cairo. However, by mid-November, the crisis over the UN weapons inspectors had broken, and the plans to split the battle group were already in the works. The GW, Normandy, Carney, Annapolis, and Seattle would make a run through the Suez Canal and Red Sea, following a short port visit to Haifa, Israel. The rest of the group would stay in the Mediterranean with the Guam ARG to support operations in Bosnia, and generally 'show the flag.'[79] On the night of November 20th/21st, the GW and her escorts went to GQ, ran through the Straits of Hormuz, and joined the Nimitz group in flying patrols over Southern Iraq. The men and women of the battle group never did get their Christmas in Europe.

There was a personal cost to the GW and CVW-1 during these operations. On February 6th, two VMFA-251 F/A-18's collided while on patrol. While both pilots ejected (albeit with injuries), Lieutenant Colonel Henry Van Winkle, the XO of VMFA-251, was killed. His would be the only life lost in the crisis with Iraq. The GW and Nimitz continued their vigil, until relieved by the Stennis and Independence groups. The Seattle was left behind for a time because of the need for extra logistics ships in the Persian Gulf. Moving back through the Suez Canal, the GW rendezvoused with the Guam ARG and her escorts, and headed home.

They arrived home several weeks later, and the eighteen-month cycle began anew. Along the way, more changes took place to the people that we had met. Captain Stufflebeem was relieved in late 1997, and became an aide to Admiral Jay Johnson in the CNO's office. Captain Groothousen took over command of the Shreveport about the same time, and continues on the path to command his own carrier someday. Though the various crises continue, the cycle never stops. The battle groups work up, go out, and come back. Let us hope that they continue that way.

Aircraft Carriers in the Real World

As throughout this series, I've reserved a bit of space at the end of this volume to spin a yarn, to try to tell the story of what I think future carrier operations might be like. Though the following story is set some two decades in the future, it is based upon what 1 believe to be solid plans and ideas. I hope that it also says something about the evolution of our world, and how democratic nations will function in the 21st century.

Birth of a Nation: Sri Lanka, 2016

In the terrible summer of 2015, the great powers of the world-the United States, Russia, and China-all knew that the Indo-Pakistani War was likely to go nuclear at some point. They also knew that there was absolutely nothing that anyone could do to prevent it. Yet when India and Pakistan went to war over a series of escalating border clashes in Kashmir, the suddenness and magnitude of the catastrophe took everyone by surprise.

The roots of the conflict lay in over sixty years of deepening hatred. Border raids and warfare, terrorist actions, fighting on every level had been a part of the landscape since Pakistan's separation from India after the end of British colonial rule. By the time fighting escalated in Kashmir in 2015, the more fanatical elements of the Indian military and political leadership saw no way to resolve the conflict using conventional means. Instead, they chose a do-or-die course. India fired eight nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles at Karachi and Islamabad, the two most important cities in Pakistan. The results were terrible, horrifying beyond the most exaggerated expectations of the almost forgotten Cold War back in the 20th century.

Both Karachi and Islamabad were bracketed by a quartet of five-hundred-kiloton warheads, set to airburst over the cities for maximum damage to buildings and people. In a matter of minutes, both cities were destroyed, with firestorms roaring outward from the explosion epicenters at over sixty miles an hour. Over twenty-two million Pakistanis were killed instantly. Retaliation was automatic and immediate. Though somewhat more limited in their arsenal than the Indians, the Pakistani armed forces also had missiles with nuclear warheads, and they used them. They fired a dozen missiles at India, each with its own four-hundred-kiloton warhead. The targets they selected were Bombay, New Delhi, and Bangalore-the high-technology center of India's booming military-industrial complex. Over fifty-two million Indians died in the initial explosions. As prevailing winds carried lethal clouds of fallout over Southeast Asia, an outraged world demanded an immediate cease-fire. The demand was enforced by a unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution. Within days, that demand was backed up by the rapidly growing military presence of its members in the Indian Ocean.

^{A map of the activities in the Indian theater of operations in 2015 and 2016.}

^{JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD., BY LAURA DENINNO}

Pakistan's provisional military regime immediately agreed to the cease-fire. They had seen that country's government and fully ten percent of its population snuffed out, and had their hands full dealing with the aftermath of the Indian attack. India's government, evacuated to a command center tunneled deep beneath a Himalayan mountain hours before its capital was vaporized, grudgingly complied. Nevertheless, they continued to denounce 'external interference in our natural and inevitable leadership of South Asia.' It was clear to everyone in the world that the situation was unstable, likely to explode again at any time. By the time diplomats had ironed out the new cease-fire line in late 2015, the other nations in the region were beginning to consider their options.

Ever since the enforced partition of England's imperial 'Jewel of the Crown' led to the creation of India and