Cold War revisited

[hlg6016]

Wake is really cool to explore. Tons of evidence of the battle, ruins of the Pan Am clipper base, etc. Got stuck there on the way to Japan and on the way back so probably a little over two weeks there total. There were a shitload of rats the first time, so many that it was more remarkable to say where you didn’t see a rat than where you did. No rats the second time, just poison everywhere that they had scattered from the air. I haven’t been back since but I hear the rats are still there.

I picked up some old 30.06 brass i found in the coral up by the bridge, The Mrs. through them out on me after a tiff.
At the time (mid 80's) we could not make the hike to POW rock due to OPS. I did spend some time with some brasso on the HQ plaque.

 

[zipmartin]

.....I see there are some burn marks visible on the runway on Wake that look like the very distinctive hot nozzles of a harrier.

We used to joke about returning from cruise, looking forward to seeing our wives, but looking for Harrier burn marks in our lawns. Is that still a thing?

 

[hlg6016]

We used to joke about returning from cruise, looking forward to seeing our wives, but looking for Harrier burn marks in our lawns. Is that still a thing?

Better a harrier than a tour bus I guess ?

 

[Max the Mad Russian]

To be fair, it was the Cold WAR.

Yes but the orders differ. HQ orders from Moscow were along "deny the NATO recco assets to survey the sensitive areas". Navy took it as such, and never fired but sometimes rammed the NATO ships (Black Sea USS Yorktown incident for example), while Air Force and AAW Force (independent branch then) transformed those orders in "when discovered within sensitive zones, the NATO air recco assets are to be shot down". Rather than to develop radar covering to oversee the approaching ways to noted areas and stop those recco birds by BARCAPs right before they can get something hidden, it was chosen to lure them first, then shot down, in fact.

Yeah, both sides fired live (during Korean War several Soviet A-20s from Port Arthur naval base shadowed USN carrier forces and two birds were killed by F9Fs), but it'd be better to divide systematic attacks on unarmed recco planes from the firing in the heat of poor SA.

 

[HeyJoe]

Cold War...Indian Ocean style. No Tu-95RTs action while I was there about on 3 deployments but we did see weekly visits by Il-38 May aircraft that operated in pairs like the Bears did. The summer monsoon weather made their searching for the carrier a challenge and sometimes a sporty proposition for us as they were usually quite aggressive in the poor visibility sometimes causing the escorting Tomcat to lose sight as they maneuvered into the escort or tried to scrape of the Tomcat on a merchant ship mast. This guy was fairly docile during my intercept in 1984 but the leader turned into our Skipper who lost sight of him after pulling up to avoid a midair. He then called me for a vector to his May which was something unexpected but easily done with our superb pulse radar on which I was watching them continuously so we did not run into them. He could have called the E-2C that was monitoring us but this was more expeditious since he knew I was watching them both whereas the E-2C would have to sort 4 contacts that looked like bananas on their scope with slower update rate than our radar. We had heard that Iran used their Tomcats as a AEW platform at times and I can see why since we could rival the E-2C in some aspects of detection and tracking capability.

 

[Max the Mad Russian]

Before 1960, Soviet naval aviation had its own fighter squadrons, and that Privateer over Baltic (8th Apr 1950, CAP of four pistoned La-11s) as well as Swedish PBY stiffed with recievers (16th June 1952, a pair of MiG-15) were shot down by Navy fighters, but it is unclear which orders the pilots had, since they in pursuit had reportedly lost comms to the shore command in both cases. But they - officially - intercepted that PB4Y (they stated it was RB-29) overland, 21 km inside the Soviet territory near Liepaja (now Latvia), and USN airplane fired at them. It seems to me all was good with comms since no fighter pilot will fire at his own decision is such sircumstances. Yosef Stalin still alive then, so those guys in command ashore had to choose either order to shot it down or get CMed for "lack of readiness". After that, in 1961, Navy was stripped of all fighter aviation.

 

[Max the Mad Russian]

the leader turned into our Skipper who lost sight of him after pulling up to avoid a midair.

May, being derivative from civilian airliner just like Orion, is much more comfortable in every aspect than the Bear. WC, small kitchen, roomy seats and stations, smooth, stable and forgiving behaviour in the air, reliable engines - all that Bear lacked. Able to fly on just two engines for gas conservation, which is unthinkable for Bear. Good airplane. As a result - sligtly more agressive crews. Yet May is ASW airplane and is mostly configured for this job.

 

[HeyJoe]

Yet May is ASW airplane and is mostly configured for this job.

The May may be an ASW platform but it was only Soviet aircraft we saw in area except for an occasional An-12 we would encounter at altitude transiting the area. Every May I escorted was moving methodically from surface contact to surface contact that I could easily predict by watching my pulse radar scope. They would only show up once a week unlike the Bears in North Atlantic or North Sea that were daily visitors, but we were also much closer to the Motherland with target folders updated whereas we had no routes/targets planned in IO other than Iran. Pretty sure they knew that.

 

[jmcquate]

After that, in 1961, Navy was stripped of all fighter aviation.

Yak-38s weren't Navy

 

[Max the Mad Russian]

The May may be an ASW platform but it was only Soviet aircraft we saw in area except for an occasional An-12 we would encounter at altitude transiting the area.

That's because Mays were permanently based in Vietnamese Cam Rahn and having very moderate consumption rate (though just like P-3 unrefuelable in the air) they could serve the recco/survey missions over almost entire Indian ocean. The ELINT equipment there was the same as on Bear Ds, a set called "Cherry", so the ELINT WSOs from Bears sometimes obtained the tour with May squadron, after which many of them tried a transfer there. Bears, except for short tenure of couple D-models in some African strip, were never constantly deployed overseas.

 

[Max the Mad Russian]

Yak-38s weren't Navy

Yak-38s weren't fighters. Light attack airplane. In USSR there were both administrative and doctrinal borders between fighter, fighter-bomber and attack communities. An attack aviation was within naval aviation, mostly shore-based units with Su-7 then Su-17 then Su-24 (yes while a bomber in AF, in NavAir the latter was and is attack airplane) and two regiments of those fucking Yak-38s, 279th on the North Fleet and 311th on Pacific.

 

[Max the Mad Russian]

BTW, Kirov-class VSTOL carriers' CAGs (though rather "Commander, Air"s according to old British manner) had never counted on those Yaks as a primary strike asset. Firstly the cruiser (officially "cruiser, carrying aircraft", till today for Kuznetsov too) fires her antiship missiles, then - and if some success achieved - Yaks might take part in damage assesment and secondary strikes, though it was funny enough since the range with two freefall halftonners was just 90 km. The only scheme to use them as fighters with two R-60 missiles (heat-seakers, akin to Sidewinder) was supposed to be against sole P-3 or Nimrod or Atlantik, if and when such MPRA bird's PPC or MC would be either stupid or crazy to get so close, but it had never been exercised.

 

[HeyJoe]

Ahhhhhhhh......
Backfires: well, on a straight line in burner we can outran SR-71 (false) and F-14 (true). Badgers: yeah, and when it comes to think for what to do so - you're on fumes, near the opposite end of the ocean, trying to remember why you are there"

Endless military mutual jockes, probably the best thing in any military.

Well...speed is often overrated and can be detrimental especially in depleting fuel rapidly.

The Tomcat was designed to be a Mach 2+ interceptor, but practically, that dash speed was NEVER used, ever and added unnecessary, complicated ramps to our inlets. Our tactics evolved to get our Outer Air Battle defense in depth established well before Backfires or Badgers came near so a tailchase wasn’t even a consideration AND we would be orbiting waiting and searching at max conserve to maximize time on station.

The Phoenix Missile was designed to do all the work dealing with the speed of the target arcing to over 100K before hurtling down on the intended target. You want to go fast? Thanks for juicy Doppler to detect and track you. You want to jam us, Phoenix can tap you out even further then. Your turn radius also increases considerably so speed isn’t all the designing engineers thought it would be.

We could carry six and fire them at six different targets. As Max states, the Soviet Tactics weren’t going to make that easy or likely for a single Tomcat by attacking from different headings. The leading Tomcat strategist, the late VADM Art Cebrowski (appropriately acknowledged by Max) developed tactics to introduce extremely long range intercepts with “Chainsaw” tactics and defense of a wide Arc using Vector Logic and semi-independent Tomcats managing their own parts of the Grid for hours on end.

I took this picture on my last flight with VF-32 in 1991 at request of the Skipper, Bob Davis. The Ordies loved it even though our tactics in response to Soviet tactics made it impractical a decade earlier. We jokingly said if you saw six Phoenix on your airplane, it was Doomsday because the Backfires were coming! Makes for a great picture, but just not realistic...operationally as it turned out nor would we be flying in the vertical if Manning a CAP station either. I suppose it made for a great deterrent, but Max would be the one to ask about that!

 

[HAL Pilot]

@HeyJoe

Did Chainsaw really work or did it burn through too many aircraft to be sustainable? When I taught TAO school at Dam Neck, that was always the question. There was a RIO on staff with me (Scott Shepard seems like the name I remember) who said it was basically a 1 or 2 raid counter at most where the "book" talked about keeping it going for long periods.

 

[HeyJoe]

@HeyJoe

Did Chainsaw really work or did it burn through too many aircraft to be sustainable?

We experimented with it at sea with VAQ-33 and even Soviet “participants” in the North Sea and variations of long range intercepts up to 1000 miles from the carrier disrupting the attacking platforms and targeting aircraft well before they could target or launch missiles. I was far more worried about taking out the Charlie Class Sub lurking about before it could launch its load prior to getting tapped itself. “Clem” tells the story best in his recollection of the late Admiral in this paper he wrote: Chainsaw and NCW


As to numbers of aircraft, we deployed with 20-24 Tomcats. It all depended on how long we needed to set the Grid. I’ll always remember breaking in a former Phantom driver on his first Vector Logic problem in PROA. VAQ-33 was flooding another sector so we were left without any customers for over 4 hours while others shot their missiles (virtually) and were replaced. He started whining at the 3 hour mark saying he had a 1.0 butt from his prior tour in Key West as an Adversary flying 1.0 hops. He really started whining at the 4.0 mark. I was really getting worried as hit 5.0 hours. He wanted me to report our radar was inop or we were Winchester. We ended up logging 5.2 hours on that one.

Another shot of the Doomsday loadout...from my last flight as a Gypsy