The Navy made a movie of this called, “Learn Not To Burn”. They showed it to all new recruits. I spent all my time on aircraft carriers and that movie really shook me up.
I was on the USS Independence CV62 back in ‘83. It was about 1am and we were in the eastern Mediterranean off Lebanon. Syria had been bombing Israel about 50 miles north of Haifa and we were ordered to take up station and prepare to defend Israel.
All of a sudden everything when crazy. The Officer of the Deck came yelling over the 1MC at the top of his lungs, “ALL HANDS THIS IS BRIDGE, DARKEN SHIP DARKEN SHIP!!!”
Two seconds later the alarm went off...
“CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations!!”
“At time plus six set material condition zebra through out the ship! Go forward and up on the starboard side, down and aft on the port side!!”
“CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations!!”
“At time plus six set material condition zebra through out the ship! Go forward and up on the starboard side, down and aft on the port side!! It is now time plus one!!”
We’re sitting there in the middle of the night with a flight deck filled with armed and fueled aircraft.
“All hands this is the bridge, in two minutes will we’ll be going to flank speed, secure all lose gear.”
“Time plus six - set material condition throughout the ship, all departments report readiness to CIC”
“All hands this is the bridge, standby for flank speed and radical turn to port.”
At this point you feel the rumble from deep with in the ship pushing the 90,000 ton carrier as fast as it will go.
Then they get around to the bad news...
“All stations, combat, we have an inbound gunship bearing 042 range 12 miles.”
The marine detachment aboard (MARDET) came running up to the flight deck with all their small arms to try to help.
The bad guys sent a helicopter gunship under radar, which meant Russian made HIND to attack the fleet. Our aircraft were all in the wrong position for a launch. All I could think about was “Learn Not To Burn”. I was so scared I was literally shaking.
“All stations, combat, the Kennedy has launched alert fighters.”
“All stations, bridge, stand by for radical turn to starboard.”
The Kennedy battle group was somewhere to our east and had launched fighters. Two F14s from either V11 or VF31 were screaming at us at high speed. And sure enough a minute or so later, I heard the whine of jet engines growing louder and louder and then the roar as they passed over head. I couldn’t see them of course it was pitch black.
Some minutes later, “All stations, bridge, secure from general quarters.”
The admiral came on the closed circuit TV system the next day and said that the threat had been delt with....Which meant the Tomcats had killed the gunship.
All you heard for a couple days around the ship was, “Learn Not To Burn baby!”
The USS Forrestal fire.... my goodness...
gripping story.
TYFYS
Sounds a little like the action sequence in “Top Gun.”
Was the hostile plane Russian piloted, or just Russian manufactured?
CLANG!CLANG!CLANG!
My cellphone’s ring tone. :)