Today is Hump Day (no smart-ass comments Coldfire)!
Hump Day is the exact middle day of the deployment – ergo, it’s all down hill from here. We’re now closer to our return date than our departure date. It’s probably the biggest milestone out here, followed closely by 1/6, 1/4, 1/3, 2/3, 3/4 and 5/6 days. Not that we’re counting – but it’s 89 days and a wake up (89 and a wup, as we say) 'til Norfolk.
We just wrapped up our sixth port visit of the cruise. We spend a lovely five days in Antalya, Turkey. I got a bunch of gifts for everyone on my gift list and they’re going in the mail tonight. There’s no guarantee when they’ll leave the ship, though, as we are presently steaming hot and heavy towards the Suez Canal.
We’ll be doing the Ditch starting Friday evening through Sunday. The Ditch transit is always our most tense evolution as it is the time we are most vulnerable over here. We can’t maneuver nor launch planes. Our only defense is 12 50-mm guns which will be manned 24 hours a day during the transit.
We then start two and a half month of operations in the Persian Gulf – not exactly a cake walk either. We’ll be doing all the operations there during their hottest time of the year. The last few days the temperature in the Gulf has hit 104, 103 and 105 degrees. Right now we’re in the process of cleaning and upkeeping all the A/C plants aboard. The carrier which was here last year did the same thing and they still had problems keeping the ship cool and they are 20 years younger than the IKE! We’ll have our hands full just keeping water in the guys on the flight deck and keeping the spaces below decks at a livable temperature.
We hit six ports in our first three months, and we only have three scheduled for the last three – two visits to Jebel Ali, UAE; and one to Bahrain. Both these places are sandboxes with not a lot to do. It’ll be a chance to rest the ship’s equipment, conduct any overhauls required and give the crew a chance to stretch their legs and let down their hair for a day or two.
Many of the young kids have never been over to this neck of the world before. They don’t know what heat is. They’ve never been involved in actual combat operations either – we’re gonna be enforcing the “no fly zones” over southern and northern Iraq. Most have never been away from home for this long. Most are restless and already want to head back to the states.
Luckily, their training is paying off. We’ve had no stupid mistakes which have cost us aircraft or personnel. Excepting our e-mail servers aboard, we’ve had no major equipment failures on the ship. Regular maintenance is being completed and we’re ready for whatever gets thrown our way in the Gulf.
In the PAO shop, we’ve been busy too. We’ve hosted the Heads of State for Italy, Norway, Croatia and Albania. We’ve hosted half a dozen U.S. Ambassadors and nearly every U.S. military person with more than 2 stars on his shoulders. We outchop from Sixth Fleet tomorrow and inchop to Fifth Fleet. They’ve got a whole batch of new visitors that we are gearing up for. We’re gona hit it hot and heavy and knock as much of the visits out as early as possible. We’ll do this for two reasons. It’s easier for us to arrange these things in intensive bursts rather than dragging them out over a month. Secondly, at a certain point, it gets too hot out here and our visitors spend two days aboard a steel ship in very humid 105 degree heat. They don’t like to get sweaty. They make me miserable when they are miserable.
We’re doing an unrep today bringing aboard 600+ pallets of food and supplies before we outchop so I’m outta here.
'Til next time…
