Carrier (2008) s01e05 Episode Script
Hour 5. Show of Force
This program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.
Thank you.
Uh-huh it's a long road to paradise you know I feel the pain oh, oh They tell me things are different now but I still hurt the same Haze, gray, and underway a world away from you and miles and miles of blue Why are we here? It's cause it's our job and this is what we do.
We show force.
We can take this ship anywhere in the ocean that we want to and take our tactical planes and send them overland to some country that deserves it and drop bombs all over 'em.
When the twin Towers fell, pretty much everybody, all you heard, not just military, but the entire nation was, "all right.
Let's go kill 'em.
" This is not no practice.
This is to use in a mission.
Mission accomplishment.
Enough said.
We're just gonna be dropping bombs on whoever they tell us and having a presence out there kind of like a babysitter.
Because as Americans we feel like we have to baby-sit the rest of the world.
I understand it's our job to be the Big Brother, I guess, but when we went to go look for certain things and they weren't there, I really don't see any reason for us to be here.
Oh, oh My hope is that it will make a difference in the history of the world.
I hope 20 years from now that my children look back at this point and say, "that's the point where democracy took hold in the Middle East.
" Yeah Subs rip, edit, and resnyc by © VJ Me 2010 Parched land on desert sand, sun is against the dark and a little bit of water goes a long way OK, the weather in the Gulf is hot, it's hazy, it's humid.
It just sucks.
It'll probably be like that the next couple of days.
Trying to walk across the flight deck in the middle of the day, it's like walking across a frying pan.
Well over 130 degrees.
With a turtleneck and a flow coat and boots and camis, it's like melting butter.
It's hot plus.
It is so hot.
I saw the devil the other day with a hot weather t-shirt and a bottle of Gatorade.
You don't beat the heat.
You try to find a compromise with the heat, 'cause the heat gonna win every day.
Tell 'em what happens if you actually do get, like, heat exhaustion or something like that.
You gotta go down to medical.
What do they do to you? They take your core temperature.
Ha ha! Core temperature.
Hey, what you gonna do? We're gonna take his core temperature.
Ok.
Cool.
What are you doing? What are you taking his pants off for? Actually, I taught my guys that.
They immediately started drinking in the camo bags.
And not he freaked me out, 'cause he was laying down.
Yeah, he was all cramped up.
And then when they took his body core temperature, it was like 106.
Wow.
But you can't stop 'em from going up there.
Ready? GBU-12, 500 pound gutted bomb unit.
They'll take out small targets like a house.
All the large targets are gone, so in the event that we got called in, 90% chance would be it's a small target.
We don't want to take out innocents.
That's gonna be a good one.
We got a gun, Maverick, and a Weiner that I'd have to arm.
These are the detent pins What I pull out to arm the missile.
This is from the AGM-65 Maverick.
Maverick.
We expended one in the war, went into a building.
Pinpoint accuracy.
Phenomenal.
To sustain operations that we could do is enough to be able to basically make a city disappear.
Enough pounding to make a small city complete flat.
It's my first cruise.
I had never been in anything like this before.
You could tell that it was a total mind shift as soon as we got into the Gulf.
It was like game time, you know? The skipper made it clear that it was gonna be marines on the ground and they're gonna need you to have your bombs on target and on time, you know, to stop your buddies on the ground from dying.
I love dropping bombs.
It's instant gratification.
I love feeling the ordnance come off the jet when you pickle and you can actually feel it come off the wings.
When I joined the Marine Corps, I joined primarily to be a pilot.
I was kind of seeking that distance between myself and the actual combat, a distance where you didn't have to be up close and personal with it.
And being on the ground in Iraq, I was very up close and personal.
In 2003, we were there for the initial invasion of Iraq.
I was a forward air controller, which is a pilot that is on the ground calling in air strikes for close air support.
I don't think when I went to Iraq that I was quite ready for what, for what I saw.
After having seen people die on the ground from bombs that I called in, how am I gonna be able to drop the bombs in the future? If there's a guy on the ground calling my airplane in to drop bombs for him, in all likelihood it's either him or the people that I'm dropping bombs on.
I would most certainly drop bombs for those guys at any time at any place on anyone if their lives are at stake.
If it was up to me, if I could tape dynamite around my body, go hug these terrorists in a big group hug and waste them all, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
I believe we're here to support the Iraqi people in giving them what we have freedom.
I think a lot of people just see war, war, war, people dying.
However, what we are trying to do, and the vision the president of the United States is trying to build this country back in democracy so we can get some stability out in the Middle East.
Get up! I would like to know what mission that we're going on.
Are we dropping bombs? Nobody really knows.
It has always been in the back of my mind when I salute a pilot "Is he gonna drop bombs?" "What is he gonna go do," you know? Right now we're called triple cycle.
So you launch, you rendezvous with your wingman You push in a country The first thing you always do is you go hit the tanker.
The part that I least look forward to in a flight right now is tanking on the KC-135s, which have a very short hose.
Be like driving down the freeway behind another car and trying to put a key in his trunk.
It's a lot of concentration.
Between 6 and 10 minutes to fill up.
Probably close to 10,000 pounds of gas.
And we'll fly to whatever part of the country they want us to go to.
The country of Iraq is brown.
There aren't really any trees.
It's just it's ugly.
There's fires everywhere, oil rig fires.
People burning trash.
There's a lot of smoke, a lot of haze.
And then the wind just kicks up all the dust and sand.
I wouldn't want to live there.
You know, I was called into a situation where troops are getting shot at, sniper fire.
We were above and we were directing them to where we'd seen the sniper, and you could hear the anxiety in their voice.
You could hear the gunshots behind them; You could hear people yelling.
Really gives you kind of context of what it's like to be troops on the ground in constant peril.
It's never the same as what the guys on the ground are going through.
Our war's a different kind of war.
We were in Rawah in Northwestern Iraq, and this IED goes off right there.
Did you see that? What the hell was that? And then, and now you're worried about the guys on the ground, because you know, you haven't were they there? Were they right there at that intersection at that time? But they came back immediately and asked us to do a show of force, which is basically you come down low and fast and try to get the guys to stop doing what they're doing or start running away so that units on the ground can go get 'em.
And that's when all the buildings up the other side of the road opened up with machine gunfire.
And, uh, it it was the first time I'd seen something like that up close.
But it's such an urban environment out there.
One building has got bad guys in it; The next building's got children in it.
So we weren't able to roll back in on them.
You go to your area for about an hour.
You go back, you hit the tanker, you fill up again.
You go back to your assigned area, to tank, area, tank, area, tank, back home.
The 5 and a half -6 hour missionsit's just so uncomfortable.
It's kind of tough on the body.
"Hey, buddy.
I just wanted to drop you a letter and tell you" that I'm thinking about you and miss you lots.
I'm working in my airplane on the big ship, but that doesn't mean I don't think about you and mommy all the time.
I look at your pictures every morning when I wake up and every night when I go to bed.
Please be good and mind mommy, and also be good to Bandit.
He loves you very much and let's you be rough with him, but don't do that too much as you might hurt him.
Well, pal, I need to go.
I love you very, very, very much and will talk with you soon.
Be good and please give mommy a big hug and a kiss from me.
"I love you!! Daddy.
" My name is lieutenant commander Kevin McLaughlin.
This is the first deployment that I've had as a parent.
Got on the phone the second day and he he does this whole "daddy home" routine.
"Daddy home? Daddy home?" Daddy home?" And I said, you know, "no, buddy.
I'm not coming home.
" And he started crying.
And I was like, "oh, man!" When I left, I mean, I still looked at him as kind of a baby.
Now I look at these pictures Pretty much looking like a little boy.
I was talking to my dad; He's like, "oh, yeah.
He's all boy now.
" That's daddy right there.
He gives the biggest smile.
Does he? It feels weird to be away with Jen being pregnant, because I'm missing the process.
I'm missing the doctor's visits and the ultrasounds.
Did you even know that I went? I'd love to have a girl, but if we had another boy, too, that would be great, great by me, too.
A bit off the subject, do you think the EPA did a good job post 9/11 here in New York City? Because I live down there in battery park city area, and initially they said the air was fine and all of a sudden reports came out and it really wasn't fine.
Things weren't good down there.
We all take a lot of pride in our squadron.
It's a tough love atmosphere.
You mess up, you're gonna hear about it.
They're winners.
They don't like to lose; They don't like to be second.
My name is Jeremy Newton.
I'm a lieutenant in VFA-41 flying the F-18 Foxtrot.
Remember, a super Hornet can fly down to about 40 pounds-ish.
I think what the training does is they always talk about working on brain stem power, which means that whenever you get in the jet, you automatically lose about 50% of your brain power.
Using 500 pounds a pass.
They're gonna use 3.
3 for You know, you're sitting on the deck, you're like, "we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that.
" All right? It sounds simple.
You get up there, it's nighttime, you're scared.
You know, what's going on? Out the window.
And you come back, and you're like, "why did I do that? Why did I make that mistake? Why couldn't I see this taking place? " It's just amazing how it works like that.
So, I mean, and that's why we do it over and over again.
The aviation community, especially the tactical aviation community, it's a lot like High School, and you develop a bad reputation for your flying or your work ethic or your attitude.
And when you get back to the beach, you get assigned your next command.
People are gonna ask about you.
"Hey, how's Jeremy? Is he a good" guy?" You come back off a cruise, you should be solid with landings and professional knowledge.
You should be at the top of your game.
I feel that this war on terrorism is it's a war that's necessary.
Are we going about it the right way? I don't know.
I'm not supposed to question it, but do I question it? Yes.
To me, the operation Iraqi Freedom and September 11th.
One thing has virtually absolutely nothing to do with the other.
Iraq wasn't the enemy there.
That was aA terrorist act.
It was carried out by individuals, cowards.
It can't be fought conventionally.
Good morning, shipmates.
Where were you 4 years ago this morning? What were you doing? Your answers may comme more easily if you recall that today is September 11th.
On this day in the year 2001, at precisely 08:46 hours, the first of two planes deliberately crashed into the World Trade Towers in New York City.
Soon afterwards, a third aircraft plied into the Pentagon.
And a fourth failed to reach its intended target and crashed in a farmer's field in Shankstown.
It certainly brings it right to home September 11th to know exactly why we're doing it.
It makes it extremely black and white.
I'm going over Baghdad.
We're gonna look for some folks that are shooting mortars.
There's also a couple of convoys moving to capture some bad guys, and we'll fly overhead them.
And keep the bad guys away from them as they're doing their business.
Are these insurgents? Indeed.
Yeah.
That's a big word for Dell.
Bad guys is easier.
I try to speak to my audience.
I'm Dell David Bull, and I'm the executive officer of VFA-41.
I came from a military family.
My dad spent 37 years in the Navy.
He's a naval aviator as well.
We're gonna go out this way and up and over.
He retired as a two-star admiral.
All set? I was raised as a black and white person right or wrong, very little gray area.
And in today's world, there's a lot of gray, and you have to work to make the gray black and white, and it takes commitment, I think, and some decisions that aren't necessarily easy.
I'm very proud of what the Americans and the allies are doing to help the people of Iraq.
And I find it very hard It's hard to swallow anybody, um, saying anything to the contrary.
September 11th keeps me motivated, knowing that we are out here doing what we need to do to keep our families back home safe.
The "USS Carl Vinson," because they were involved in the initial strike of 9/11 on Iraq, they actually wrote the names of all the firefighters and the police officers that perished on a bomb and it actually got expended with their name on there.
Me and my older sister Brandy had grown up with Josh and his little brother Rick pretty much throughout our lives.
Josh was killed in an explosion in Iraq.
I just wanted to do something for the family that, I mean, there wasn't too much I could do out here.
Then I came up with the idea if it would be possible for the command to support me to have a flag flown over Iraq in honor of Josh.
You know, I'm kind of hoping that the bomb will find a worthy target.
Close? Yeah.
Close to dropping.
Oh.
About that close.
It was good.
We came close to dropping.
Troops in contact with some guys that were shooting mortars at them, so they asked us, you know, GB-38.
And I said, "and then some.
" I gauged the Maverick.
Ted goes, "You're salivating.
" It was perfect targets.
It was wild West.
Out in the middle of nowhere.
It's not up it's up to the ground combat element.
He's gonna take a GPS ref and command the lead.
Yeah.
Well, he took a helo with a cannon.
So it was interesting.
Coming out 3, 1, 2, 3.
Nobody has dropped so far, and actually, I think that's a good thing.
It means that the guys on the ground are actually going door to door and really flushing out the insurgents andI'm glad that we're not dropping.
I mean, it would be exciting.
I can't wait till we head back and I'm able to drop, practice, just 'cause it's fun.
One day I was just like, "why am I here? Why am I in the" Persian Gulf? Why am I burning "up for no reason?" I don't know why we're in the Gulf.
Heh.
I don't know.
I mean, I've heard different stories from marines.
I've heard different stories from just people talking oil.
Terrorism and all that.
It's kind of hard to find those guys, I guess, andI don't know.
It just seems like it'd be never-ending.
My name's lieutenant Bohr.
I'm a pilot in the Black Aces.
I think the war on terror was a response that needed to happen, a response that was appropriate in Afghanistan.
As to whether or not Iraq is the inappropriate decision, I don't know.
I'm not the judge of that.
I'm a faithful and loyal servant to whatever the president and this country and the will of the people say I should be doing.
But I think that the idea that we're keeping the terrorists at bay by keeping them in Iraq is not necessarily true.
You know, and you know, the balance between having an opinion like that and doing my job is definitely in conflict.
It's definitely a contradiction.
I was saving it.
I'm like, "somebody's got to bust it out.
" I think all of us have different opinions.
I think not a lot of us discuss it, but I would say that most people wouldn't share my opinions.
I know I've certainly got into some great discussions that I've pretty much always gotten slammed.
My parents tried to raise me to think differently.
It's hard to get specific about it.
They just weren't, you know, the mainstream.
And so it rubbed off on me.
So when I got out into the world and kind of started expressing that, I kind of ran into trouble because oftentimes it wasn't accepted very well.
Unique thing about aviation is that a lot of us have this very same personality.
And Doug doesn't.
He's a blue guy.
Our enemies, those who do not wish us well in this world are counting on the fact that we're not true believers, that we are too soft, that we are not willing to give up the consumption society that we live in, they're counting on the fact that we won't show up.
My name is rear admiral Pete Daley.
I serve as commander of carrier strike group 11th, a "Nimitz" strike group and its 6,000 plus sailors and marines.
I came from a family of 6 kids, and I had a choice of taking the ROTC scholarship and I also was competing for an academic scholarship in classics, in, you know, Greek and Latin.
I've often thought, well, in the sense of the road not taken, you know, I'd probably be teaching High School in Cincinnati at some Jesuit high school.
Good morning, Miriam.
Taking a look at Iraq.
The current situation, obviously the bombings yesterday upwards of a total of 11 attacks in Baghdad itself.
Multiple vb-IEDs.
This is a different type of war from the war that our Navy was built for.
Second and third generation warfare had fixed battle lines, but the character of fourth generation warfare is that you're not fighting a state.
You might be fighting a group, an insurgency, who don't have the same vulnerabilities a state has.
Looking at probably additional sectarian violence upcoming here in the future.
In fourth generation warfare, often we're in a more reactive mode, where our opponents can get control of the timeline.
So we need to improve in the ability to recognize activity, move information, and act on it quickly.
Bonds, you my boss? Exactly.
Oh, his boy is pretending he's talking to somebody on the phone.
This is operations.
Operations' job is we're supposed to plan all the moves in a battle of the strike group.
I'm the one Navy SEAL on the whole battle group.
Which means he plays a lot of x-box.
Yeah.
I play a lot of x-box.
We've got to be honest.
You know, being on the staff is not as fun as we're used to.
I don't think anybody ever joined to be a staff member.
But there comes a time when there's nothing left, you know, you're like, well, pin the tail on the donkey.
All of a sudden you go from steely-eyed killer to glassy-eyed typer.
Once we got in the Gulf, the combined backgrounds between Art as a Navy SEAL, myself as a backseater in super Hornets, and that experience was really good in drawing up some good missions and scenarios to help train these guys up.
For the hornets, it's kind of a new mission set, using their eyes and their scanners to visually pick up information and relay it to people on the ground.
And being a ground force guy, that's invaluable information.
It was real good training, 'cause up to that point, our air wings really weren't trained in all those kind of fourth generation warfare missions.
They were specifically asking us to look around the edge of the town there, sir, to look for any suspicious activity.
Right.
And then when they actually pushed to go grab the guys, providing security for the friendlies.
How long did it take all this to play out? 45 minutes.
And then when the Humvees pushed, had us go to the target area to make sure nobody was getting away before they got there.
We're working up north near Mosul.
We were doing some good work.
There were some cars doing some very suspicious things.
They were pretty excited about that, 'cause they'd been looking for these guys, you know.
And then our time came to go.
So we left.
One thing in aviation is that you always leave yourself options.
You're supposed to have 2, 3, even 4 different options.
We put all of our faith in being able to get gas from that KC-135 tanker.
The tanker was moving around pretty good.
And I, uh, I couldn't really get in the basket.
Which, if that was to happen, you should have a backup.
And we kind of allowed ourselves to get painted into a corner, which left us the only option of making an emergency landing in Baghdad International.
Baghdad's not one of our diverts; It's not where they want us to go.
I mean, if you run out of gas, you're done with jets.
You're not going to be able to fly that thing, because everything runs off of the engines and the generators.
There was I didn't think we were gonna make it.
I was really impressed with the guy in my backseat being cool.
You know, "this is the situation we're in, but now "we've just got to go from here.
" As we were coming in there, they were saying that people were shooting in the area.
I saw the runway; I just wanted to get there.
It was close.
It was really scary at that point, too, because the tire blew on the landing rollout.
We were still probably going about 70 knots.
Jet takes a real quick veer to the left.
So it was all I could do just to kind of keep it on the runway, kind of dancing on the right brake, and we just kind of worked it, just kind of worked it down the left side.
Yeah, there was a split second there I thought we might have done all that work and then lose it there on the runway, you know, which would have been even worse.
Standing on the side of the runway and looking at your jet.
It's got a tire blown, so it's kind of sideways, you know.
And that's when you can finally just look around and take in the gravity of the situation.
And it was just one of those things, there was no way that just happened.
How could how could I have allowed something like this to happen? This is bad.
This is real bad.
We cut it way too close.
Tommy, will you tell them about Iraq? It was hot.
It was Sandy.
One of our jets broke down there, and Tommy had to go fix it.
I got to pack a gun.
It was cool.
I'm always packing a gun, dude.
Tommy's always one to hold a gun.
It ran out of fuel and had to divert to Baghdad.
And then when it landed, it blew a tire.
So we had to go there and change the tire.
I'm not flying right now.
Kind of in a probationary period.
It could be awhile before I start flying again.
What's up, sir? Drug your ass out of Iraq, huh? It wasn't that they diverted into Baghdad.
It was the fact that they were pretty low on gas.
It was my decision to conduct a FNAEB a field naval aviator evaluation board.
You basically look at the whole person.
You look at their past record.
You know, is this a trend? Is he unsafe? And I don't think that Jeremy is unsafe.
I think there were some flawed decisions.
It's a very formal process, but once I make that decision, the process has to flow all the way through it.
You cannot stop it.
Hopefully, he'll come out of this OK and better for it, but it needed to be done.
Pretty slow day.
Pretty slow day up there.
I did one missile.
That's gonna be it pretty much for today.
It's all it's looking like is just missiles and maybe a gun here and there.
No bombs.
Just not really dropping anything anyway, so My last hop was my single best chance to do anything.
We see this boat is hugging the shore and pulls up to the dock.
And they're like sprinting, 'cause now they hear us overhead.
They figure it's coming.
And they're using this point to off us.
And I'm thinking, "here we go.
This is it.
" I'm looking at, OK, where's my strafe "z," OK.
"What do you want us to do?" "Can you guys take pictures?" Ok.
If there was ever a case clearly of somebody doing something clearly wrong here I just thought we were gonna be a lot more engaged.
I did.
Anybody else? Not really.
You didn't think we were going to be dropping bombs? You can win the war and lose the peace is the catch phrase.
Sure.
Winning hearts and minds.
And you can't do that if you're dropping bombs on their houses.
And those guys on the ground can take they have sufficient firepower typically to do what they need to do.
I know that sounds like a Kool-Aid speech.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Skipper's gotta say the party line," but I mean, you gotta do that to slowly start fading, phasing yourself out so that the focus is on the ground, ground guys swap over.
You're right.
I mean, the ultimate metric of why we're here is to create a safe society.
But of the bombs that have been dropped, just statistics, you would have to say that we should have dropped probably 50% of the bombs.
Same number of assets, same number of flights.
We've dropped 0%.
Different time of day we're covering.
But we can shift the time.
I think that's why you get a lot of the frustration.
Both And below, I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of heat over it.
Yeah, but see, part of it We've trained; We're here.
We haven't dropped one bomb Not one.
And I think a lot of guys are like, "OK.
Do we really "need to be here?" Ok.
Couple of observations.
First, I think the strike group turnover debriefs are having a good effect.
I talked to admiral Winnefeld yesterday kind of one v.
one "Nimitz" is the platform people associate with the delivery of airpower, but it also is the command and control node for the strike group.
They flew 18 missions over Iraq.
Only had two prowler missions to Tom Cropper, who is the commander of air wing 11, leads some 1,700 people who deliver those 60 airplanes on the deck of the "Nimitz.
" Then we have the sea combat commander, commodore Mike Smith, primarily responsible for the maritime security ops here in the Gulf.
Good morning, admiral.
Morning, Bill.
We also have the C.
O.
of the cruiser "Princeton" Captain Bill Alt.
We talk to him every day by VTC.
And he's in charge of air defense.
We're sending the guys back to the "o" plants today.
We're sending an ht-1, an em-2 And finally, we have the information warfare commander, who is the C.
O.
of the "Nimitz" Ted Branch.
So not only is Ted the C.
O.
of this great warship, he is a warfare commander in his own right.
Ok.
Thanks, appreciate it.
This ship is all about aviation.
But there's other components to the strike group.
We've got a cruiser, the "Princeton," and we've got our two destroyers, "Chafee," "Higgins," and in the Arabian Gulf, we join with other forces U.
S.
and coalition.
We have on any given day 15, 16, 17 ships.
And when I come in here, I command those units as well.
We're in the tactical flight command center on board the "Nimitz.
" This is where we keep situational awareness for the admiral.
But I can see what all of my other ships are seeing as well, which is what allows us to in here be able to track pretty much the entire fifth fleet.
Admiral, battle watch.
Sir, it's 14:40.
Just to let you know, there's two Iranian Boston whalers that have crossed over the operational line.
The admiral likes to know right down to the small detail levels what's happening.
The poor guy gets phone calls probably every hour day and night.
Supporting the forces on the ground in Iraq and protection of the two major oil platforms ABOT and CAOT.
That's a huge source of Iraq's economy, and if you were one of the bad guys trying to destroy Iraq, what are you going to go after? The good times are killing me those poor guys are stuck on those oil platforms.
Those are what we call the hardcore guys up there.
Got to get water and I know you could carry on 43% humidity.
It's 102 temp.
Heat Index is 121.
It's in the danger range.
It's isolated, dusty, it's dirty, it's greasy, it's a pretty nasty environment.
Have one, have 20 more one more, it does not relent the good times are killing me in April of 2004, those oil platforms, ABOT and CAOT, came under attack.
There were 4 small boats.
They were packed with explosives.
A boarding team was sent to investigate one of the boats that was approaching.
And they both blew up.
And it killed two sailors and one coast guard sailor.
Every Dow that is out here to me is a bad guy.
If they were to pack many, many boats with explosives, that would be a very bad thing.
Let's go.
Attention.
The Iraqi marines are screened before they join, but the terminal workers 70-80 personnel that come out every week to work on the platform Have no control over those whatsoever.
The decks will buckle a little bit as you walk, 'cause they are old.
The handrails aren't firm either.
Before, the situation here used to be really bad, but now, he says, the situation is getting really, really good.
Even the fact that Iraq is still in kind of a turmoil, but he feels like things are going in a better way, basically.
At the present time, he says, it's basically almost impossible for him to conceive of a stable Iraq in the next 6-7 months, and he wishes that the Americans, actually, would stay way longer till everything is completely done.
We try to remind them that this is their economy right here these two platforms 'Cause none of us want to go home and see on the news, you know, 6 months from now that the terminal got hit, you know, when and if we do turn over to the Iraqi forces.
The United States Navy has had a presence in the Gulf since about 1947.
There's a lot of American commerce going on here.
This is a very important sea lane, so I see a role for the United States Navy here long after things return to normal.
Continue lap steady on course Continue lap steady, course Is that where the "Nimitz" is bearing? Wait a minute.
The guys over here, forget it.
Just give them left, 20 degrees rudder.
Just say that again.
Left 20 degrees rudder.
I'm Captain Bill Alt, commanding officer of the "USS Princeton" and air defense commander for the "Nimitz" strike group.
Normally, we'll be within 10 miles of the "Nimitz" or whatever ship we're riding shotgun on to make sure nothing happens to them.
We got to slow down, sir.
No! We got to get up there.
Hang out.
The other Dow out there.
You see it, Chris? Yes, sir.
Ok.
It's about, I guess, 5 miles from "Nimitz" and they're concerned about him coming in.
You know, just to get in between him so that they don't come at the "Nimitz" for any reason, really.
Run our midships.
Run our midships.
Run our midships.
For the Navy, the big wakeup call was the "USS Cole," and the terrorist activity against ships.
The whole thing about asymmetric warfare is takes advantage of our vulnerabilities.
20 years ago, when it first became apparent that, hey, you know, these little guys on jet skis or something, they could do us some real harm We will approach them And find out what they're doing out here.
What do they fish for? Where are good areas to fish? Let them know that there's a coalition military presence in the Arabian Gulf.
And return to Doha? Ask them about piracy, smuggling.
Give them pamphlets that tell them who they can contact if they know of any terrorists.
We're operating in their backyard, so we want to fit in and make them know that we're here for their protection and their safety and their interests.
The man can't leave.
What it's really about is understanding what happens in the maritime waters.
And if you study it long enough, you'll notice changes in it.
If something changes, it will stick out.
We're performing reconnaissance missions along the waterways in southeastern Iraq.
Part of our mission is to protect the pipelines since they're so vital to their economy.
We're trying to figure out what is normal activity, what is not.
I don't see it.
Guys are great.
They all ran out into the streets to wave at us.
The question, though, is are they coming out to wave at us because they really like us, or are they coming out to wave at us 'cause they don't want us to shoot them? I'd say a little of both.
Yeah, probably.
Merely by flying missions, sailing these waters, we pressurize the maritime environment.
We make sure our enemies know that we're present and we're ready to do business.
Here's what's going on.
We are going to intercept about 5 nautical miles outside of territorial waters, and we're gonna do simultaneous boardings of the two ships.
New search for unregistered vehicles.
Maritime security ops are designed to deny international terrorist organizations the use of the sea as a venue for attacks or to transport people, weapons All right, everybody on team one, if you find anything, you back away from it and you let me know immediately.
All right.
Good to go.
Looking for drugs, arms, terrorist literature, training handbooks, or any ties to international terrorist organizations.
Captain, this is just a questionnaire Yeah.
Good.
Yeah.
Fort Bend.
One more thing is you have a question, "what other masters have you worked with? " What's the meaning of that question? Somebody may be working with somebody else.
Other nationalities.
No.
Maybe.
He may be from Dubai, he may be from India.
It's not just you.
We're looking for any signs that those cars could be converted for use as IEDs.
We're gonna sniff'em.
We're gonna look for any explosives and check for wiring.
And we're also looking at the origins of these vehicles.
We'd like to understand the patterns.
When is the last time that you saw packages? Bring this car.
Are there any further questions you need answered? I haven't got to that yet.
I'm not sure if that's happening.
I've just been running.
I'll be in the Navy 17 years in January.
How many cruises is this for you? Whew.
I'm complaining about 4.
I got nothing to complain about.
Second one married, though.
First one with kids.
Yeah.
It sucks, doesn't it? It's a whole new level of pain.
My wife sat there and wrote me It's been a traumatic 4 months for me and my family.
My wife wasn't feeling very well, and she went to the doctor and the doctor said, "well, I'm not really sure, you know.
This is relatively normal.
"Did this happen last time?" "No.
It didn't happen last" time.
" There's some cause for some concern.
She had a couple ultrasounds and, you know, no heartbeat.
I don't think there's ever a good time for a miscarriage, but this was certainly about the worst husband away, 2-year-old with his hair on fire all the time, running around, dealing with the house and the car and the dog, the bills and everything else.
It's pretty much one of those things that there's nothing you can say or do that can actually help.
"I'm sorry.
I love you.
" I'm sorry.
I love you.
What do you want me to do?" Short of going home, which I could do, what can you do? You knowI mean, she's so 1-o-1.
I'm just not flying right now.
So I come up here and stand this duty partly 'cause I don't really have anything else going on right now.
2-0-6.
I'm gonna miss out on, like, the 100 hours or something like that.
As soon as the whole process got going, I already knew that I wasn't gonna fly again on this cruise.
It has to go through the admiral here and the admiral back in San Diego.
Those guys have a lot on their plate, obviously.
So it just takes time, which is the worst part.
It's kind of the waiting game, seeing what they want to do.
He's a new pilot.
I think I'm gonna go with you guys for Thanksgiving.
And when someone gets to the point where they're flying a $60 million aircraft, we expect them to make the right decisions all the time.
When someone gets behind, it's our obligation to sort out why that happened.
5-0-1.
It may be training; It may be attitude, motivation.
You have to look at their potential as well, so it's really an obligation on our part to make sure that we can prevent that from happening again.
The future's kind of up in the air.
And I'm not really sure what's gonna happen at this point.
6-1-4.
Is he going up? No.
You were up there and nothing went on? I know.
Nothing.
Did you, like, go up, drop flares, try and instigate a riot? They didn't want anything.
I told 'em there's a whole bunch of going on, but they didn't buy it.
Where were you at? Mosul.
I'm going tomorrow.
Now when we're in a support role for the folks on the ground, if we don't drop any bombs, then that means things are going well in Iraq.
So, although it's not quite as much fun, it's That's the goal.
It's just ridiculous that we would come here for over two months and drop nothing.
The missions that we perform are kind of a morale buster.
We're still in the same ballgame.
It's just that it's not our turn to be at bat.
And we're just supporting.
I guess some of the times they said they came close to dropping, but there's not that much of a need.
I'm a naval officer flying a very expensive piece of equipment that I've never used in its role.
Maybe I have.
Maybe I've deterred guys on the ground or maybe I've helped guys on the ground just being there.
And I think that's what we're doing these days.
However, I think it's a very expensive and costly way to do that.
And I think that the way that wars are being fought are changing.
Seems like aircraft carriers are not the way to do it.
Ok.
Swim call from 12:30 15:00.
I'll be the first one in at 12:30, so get your suit out, get your rubber ducky.
Get ready to go.
Swim call in the Arabian Gulf.
Hey, we got a floater down here.
Hey, you know, if you come down and jump in now, you won't even need to put on any sunscreen.
I just hope I don't get any sea snakes or sharks in my mouth.
I fly over this every day.
I see the oil slicks.
Think I'll pass on it this time.
Not if you paid me.
It's just gross.
Sea snakes and jellyfish.
Naw, I mean.
And, oh, by the way, we dump about a million pounds of fuel per squadron, you know, over the span of the time we've been here.
It's a soothing delight and it's moving my life everyone, every sinner and every Saint it's so cold, cold yeah, beautiful everybody knows that life can be wonderful it's a soothing delight and it's moving my life it's a soothing delight.
Subs rip, edit, and resnyc by © VJ Me 2010
Thank you.
Uh-huh it's a long road to paradise you know I feel the pain oh, oh They tell me things are different now but I still hurt the same Haze, gray, and underway a world away from you and miles and miles of blue Why are we here? It's cause it's our job and this is what we do.
We show force.
We can take this ship anywhere in the ocean that we want to and take our tactical planes and send them overland to some country that deserves it and drop bombs all over 'em.
When the twin Towers fell, pretty much everybody, all you heard, not just military, but the entire nation was, "all right.
Let's go kill 'em.
" This is not no practice.
This is to use in a mission.
Mission accomplishment.
Enough said.
We're just gonna be dropping bombs on whoever they tell us and having a presence out there kind of like a babysitter.
Because as Americans we feel like we have to baby-sit the rest of the world.
I understand it's our job to be the Big Brother, I guess, but when we went to go look for certain things and they weren't there, I really don't see any reason for us to be here.
Oh, oh My hope is that it will make a difference in the history of the world.
I hope 20 years from now that my children look back at this point and say, "that's the point where democracy took hold in the Middle East.
" Yeah Subs rip, edit, and resnyc by © VJ Me 2010 Parched land on desert sand, sun is against the dark and a little bit of water goes a long way OK, the weather in the Gulf is hot, it's hazy, it's humid.
It just sucks.
It'll probably be like that the next couple of days.
Trying to walk across the flight deck in the middle of the day, it's like walking across a frying pan.
Well over 130 degrees.
With a turtleneck and a flow coat and boots and camis, it's like melting butter.
It's hot plus.
It is so hot.
I saw the devil the other day with a hot weather t-shirt and a bottle of Gatorade.
You don't beat the heat.
You try to find a compromise with the heat, 'cause the heat gonna win every day.
Tell 'em what happens if you actually do get, like, heat exhaustion or something like that.
You gotta go down to medical.
What do they do to you? They take your core temperature.
Ha ha! Core temperature.
Hey, what you gonna do? We're gonna take his core temperature.
Ok.
Cool.
What are you doing? What are you taking his pants off for? Actually, I taught my guys that.
They immediately started drinking in the camo bags.
And not he freaked me out, 'cause he was laying down.
Yeah, he was all cramped up.
And then when they took his body core temperature, it was like 106.
Wow.
But you can't stop 'em from going up there.
Ready? GBU-12, 500 pound gutted bomb unit.
They'll take out small targets like a house.
All the large targets are gone, so in the event that we got called in, 90% chance would be it's a small target.
We don't want to take out innocents.
That's gonna be a good one.
We got a gun, Maverick, and a Weiner that I'd have to arm.
These are the detent pins What I pull out to arm the missile.
This is from the AGM-65 Maverick.
Maverick.
We expended one in the war, went into a building.
Pinpoint accuracy.
Phenomenal.
To sustain operations that we could do is enough to be able to basically make a city disappear.
Enough pounding to make a small city complete flat.
It's my first cruise.
I had never been in anything like this before.
You could tell that it was a total mind shift as soon as we got into the Gulf.
It was like game time, you know? The skipper made it clear that it was gonna be marines on the ground and they're gonna need you to have your bombs on target and on time, you know, to stop your buddies on the ground from dying.
I love dropping bombs.
It's instant gratification.
I love feeling the ordnance come off the jet when you pickle and you can actually feel it come off the wings.
When I joined the Marine Corps, I joined primarily to be a pilot.
I was kind of seeking that distance between myself and the actual combat, a distance where you didn't have to be up close and personal with it.
And being on the ground in Iraq, I was very up close and personal.
In 2003, we were there for the initial invasion of Iraq.
I was a forward air controller, which is a pilot that is on the ground calling in air strikes for close air support.
I don't think when I went to Iraq that I was quite ready for what, for what I saw.
After having seen people die on the ground from bombs that I called in, how am I gonna be able to drop the bombs in the future? If there's a guy on the ground calling my airplane in to drop bombs for him, in all likelihood it's either him or the people that I'm dropping bombs on.
I would most certainly drop bombs for those guys at any time at any place on anyone if their lives are at stake.
If it was up to me, if I could tape dynamite around my body, go hug these terrorists in a big group hug and waste them all, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
I believe we're here to support the Iraqi people in giving them what we have freedom.
I think a lot of people just see war, war, war, people dying.
However, what we are trying to do, and the vision the president of the United States is trying to build this country back in democracy so we can get some stability out in the Middle East.
Get up! I would like to know what mission that we're going on.
Are we dropping bombs? Nobody really knows.
It has always been in the back of my mind when I salute a pilot "Is he gonna drop bombs?" "What is he gonna go do," you know? Right now we're called triple cycle.
So you launch, you rendezvous with your wingman You push in a country The first thing you always do is you go hit the tanker.
The part that I least look forward to in a flight right now is tanking on the KC-135s, which have a very short hose.
Be like driving down the freeway behind another car and trying to put a key in his trunk.
It's a lot of concentration.
Between 6 and 10 minutes to fill up.
Probably close to 10,000 pounds of gas.
And we'll fly to whatever part of the country they want us to go to.
The country of Iraq is brown.
There aren't really any trees.
It's just it's ugly.
There's fires everywhere, oil rig fires.
People burning trash.
There's a lot of smoke, a lot of haze.
And then the wind just kicks up all the dust and sand.
I wouldn't want to live there.
You know, I was called into a situation where troops are getting shot at, sniper fire.
We were above and we were directing them to where we'd seen the sniper, and you could hear the anxiety in their voice.
You could hear the gunshots behind them; You could hear people yelling.
Really gives you kind of context of what it's like to be troops on the ground in constant peril.
It's never the same as what the guys on the ground are going through.
Our war's a different kind of war.
We were in Rawah in Northwestern Iraq, and this IED goes off right there.
Did you see that? What the hell was that? And then, and now you're worried about the guys on the ground, because you know, you haven't were they there? Were they right there at that intersection at that time? But they came back immediately and asked us to do a show of force, which is basically you come down low and fast and try to get the guys to stop doing what they're doing or start running away so that units on the ground can go get 'em.
And that's when all the buildings up the other side of the road opened up with machine gunfire.
And, uh, it it was the first time I'd seen something like that up close.
But it's such an urban environment out there.
One building has got bad guys in it; The next building's got children in it.
So we weren't able to roll back in on them.
You go to your area for about an hour.
You go back, you hit the tanker, you fill up again.
You go back to your assigned area, to tank, area, tank, area, tank, back home.
The 5 and a half -6 hour missionsit's just so uncomfortable.
It's kind of tough on the body.
"Hey, buddy.
I just wanted to drop you a letter and tell you" that I'm thinking about you and miss you lots.
I'm working in my airplane on the big ship, but that doesn't mean I don't think about you and mommy all the time.
I look at your pictures every morning when I wake up and every night when I go to bed.
Please be good and mind mommy, and also be good to Bandit.
He loves you very much and let's you be rough with him, but don't do that too much as you might hurt him.
Well, pal, I need to go.
I love you very, very, very much and will talk with you soon.
Be good and please give mommy a big hug and a kiss from me.
"I love you!! Daddy.
" My name is lieutenant commander Kevin McLaughlin.
This is the first deployment that I've had as a parent.
Got on the phone the second day and he he does this whole "daddy home" routine.
"Daddy home? Daddy home?" Daddy home?" And I said, you know, "no, buddy.
I'm not coming home.
" And he started crying.
And I was like, "oh, man!" When I left, I mean, I still looked at him as kind of a baby.
Now I look at these pictures Pretty much looking like a little boy.
I was talking to my dad; He's like, "oh, yeah.
He's all boy now.
" That's daddy right there.
He gives the biggest smile.
Does he? It feels weird to be away with Jen being pregnant, because I'm missing the process.
I'm missing the doctor's visits and the ultrasounds.
Did you even know that I went? I'd love to have a girl, but if we had another boy, too, that would be great, great by me, too.
A bit off the subject, do you think the EPA did a good job post 9/11 here in New York City? Because I live down there in battery park city area, and initially they said the air was fine and all of a sudden reports came out and it really wasn't fine.
Things weren't good down there.
We all take a lot of pride in our squadron.
It's a tough love atmosphere.
You mess up, you're gonna hear about it.
They're winners.
They don't like to lose; They don't like to be second.
My name is Jeremy Newton.
I'm a lieutenant in VFA-41 flying the F-18 Foxtrot.
Remember, a super Hornet can fly down to about 40 pounds-ish.
I think what the training does is they always talk about working on brain stem power, which means that whenever you get in the jet, you automatically lose about 50% of your brain power.
Using 500 pounds a pass.
They're gonna use 3.
3 for You know, you're sitting on the deck, you're like, "we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that.
" All right? It sounds simple.
You get up there, it's nighttime, you're scared.
You know, what's going on? Out the window.
And you come back, and you're like, "why did I do that? Why did I make that mistake? Why couldn't I see this taking place? " It's just amazing how it works like that.
So, I mean, and that's why we do it over and over again.
The aviation community, especially the tactical aviation community, it's a lot like High School, and you develop a bad reputation for your flying or your work ethic or your attitude.
And when you get back to the beach, you get assigned your next command.
People are gonna ask about you.
"Hey, how's Jeremy? Is he a good" guy?" You come back off a cruise, you should be solid with landings and professional knowledge.
You should be at the top of your game.
I feel that this war on terrorism is it's a war that's necessary.
Are we going about it the right way? I don't know.
I'm not supposed to question it, but do I question it? Yes.
To me, the operation Iraqi Freedom and September 11th.
One thing has virtually absolutely nothing to do with the other.
Iraq wasn't the enemy there.
That was aA terrorist act.
It was carried out by individuals, cowards.
It can't be fought conventionally.
Good morning, shipmates.
Where were you 4 years ago this morning? What were you doing? Your answers may comme more easily if you recall that today is September 11th.
On this day in the year 2001, at precisely 08:46 hours, the first of two planes deliberately crashed into the World Trade Towers in New York City.
Soon afterwards, a third aircraft plied into the Pentagon.
And a fourth failed to reach its intended target and crashed in a farmer's field in Shankstown.
It certainly brings it right to home September 11th to know exactly why we're doing it.
It makes it extremely black and white.
I'm going over Baghdad.
We're gonna look for some folks that are shooting mortars.
There's also a couple of convoys moving to capture some bad guys, and we'll fly overhead them.
And keep the bad guys away from them as they're doing their business.
Are these insurgents? Indeed.
Yeah.
That's a big word for Dell.
Bad guys is easier.
I try to speak to my audience.
I'm Dell David Bull, and I'm the executive officer of VFA-41.
I came from a military family.
My dad spent 37 years in the Navy.
He's a naval aviator as well.
We're gonna go out this way and up and over.
He retired as a two-star admiral.
All set? I was raised as a black and white person right or wrong, very little gray area.
And in today's world, there's a lot of gray, and you have to work to make the gray black and white, and it takes commitment, I think, and some decisions that aren't necessarily easy.
I'm very proud of what the Americans and the allies are doing to help the people of Iraq.
And I find it very hard It's hard to swallow anybody, um, saying anything to the contrary.
September 11th keeps me motivated, knowing that we are out here doing what we need to do to keep our families back home safe.
The "USS Carl Vinson," because they were involved in the initial strike of 9/11 on Iraq, they actually wrote the names of all the firefighters and the police officers that perished on a bomb and it actually got expended with their name on there.
Me and my older sister Brandy had grown up with Josh and his little brother Rick pretty much throughout our lives.
Josh was killed in an explosion in Iraq.
I just wanted to do something for the family that, I mean, there wasn't too much I could do out here.
Then I came up with the idea if it would be possible for the command to support me to have a flag flown over Iraq in honor of Josh.
You know, I'm kind of hoping that the bomb will find a worthy target.
Close? Yeah.
Close to dropping.
Oh.
About that close.
It was good.
We came close to dropping.
Troops in contact with some guys that were shooting mortars at them, so they asked us, you know, GB-38.
And I said, "and then some.
" I gauged the Maverick.
Ted goes, "You're salivating.
" It was perfect targets.
It was wild West.
Out in the middle of nowhere.
It's not up it's up to the ground combat element.
He's gonna take a GPS ref and command the lead.
Yeah.
Well, he took a helo with a cannon.
So it was interesting.
Coming out 3, 1, 2, 3.
Nobody has dropped so far, and actually, I think that's a good thing.
It means that the guys on the ground are actually going door to door and really flushing out the insurgents andI'm glad that we're not dropping.
I mean, it would be exciting.
I can't wait till we head back and I'm able to drop, practice, just 'cause it's fun.
One day I was just like, "why am I here? Why am I in the" Persian Gulf? Why am I burning "up for no reason?" I don't know why we're in the Gulf.
Heh.
I don't know.
I mean, I've heard different stories from marines.
I've heard different stories from just people talking oil.
Terrorism and all that.
It's kind of hard to find those guys, I guess, andI don't know.
It just seems like it'd be never-ending.
My name's lieutenant Bohr.
I'm a pilot in the Black Aces.
I think the war on terror was a response that needed to happen, a response that was appropriate in Afghanistan.
As to whether or not Iraq is the inappropriate decision, I don't know.
I'm not the judge of that.
I'm a faithful and loyal servant to whatever the president and this country and the will of the people say I should be doing.
But I think that the idea that we're keeping the terrorists at bay by keeping them in Iraq is not necessarily true.
You know, and you know, the balance between having an opinion like that and doing my job is definitely in conflict.
It's definitely a contradiction.
I was saving it.
I'm like, "somebody's got to bust it out.
" I think all of us have different opinions.
I think not a lot of us discuss it, but I would say that most people wouldn't share my opinions.
I know I've certainly got into some great discussions that I've pretty much always gotten slammed.
My parents tried to raise me to think differently.
It's hard to get specific about it.
They just weren't, you know, the mainstream.
And so it rubbed off on me.
So when I got out into the world and kind of started expressing that, I kind of ran into trouble because oftentimes it wasn't accepted very well.
Unique thing about aviation is that a lot of us have this very same personality.
And Doug doesn't.
He's a blue guy.
Our enemies, those who do not wish us well in this world are counting on the fact that we're not true believers, that we are too soft, that we are not willing to give up the consumption society that we live in, they're counting on the fact that we won't show up.
My name is rear admiral Pete Daley.
I serve as commander of carrier strike group 11th, a "Nimitz" strike group and its 6,000 plus sailors and marines.
I came from a family of 6 kids, and I had a choice of taking the ROTC scholarship and I also was competing for an academic scholarship in classics, in, you know, Greek and Latin.
I've often thought, well, in the sense of the road not taken, you know, I'd probably be teaching High School in Cincinnati at some Jesuit high school.
Good morning, Miriam.
Taking a look at Iraq.
The current situation, obviously the bombings yesterday upwards of a total of 11 attacks in Baghdad itself.
Multiple vb-IEDs.
This is a different type of war from the war that our Navy was built for.
Second and third generation warfare had fixed battle lines, but the character of fourth generation warfare is that you're not fighting a state.
You might be fighting a group, an insurgency, who don't have the same vulnerabilities a state has.
Looking at probably additional sectarian violence upcoming here in the future.
In fourth generation warfare, often we're in a more reactive mode, where our opponents can get control of the timeline.
So we need to improve in the ability to recognize activity, move information, and act on it quickly.
Bonds, you my boss? Exactly.
Oh, his boy is pretending he's talking to somebody on the phone.
This is operations.
Operations' job is we're supposed to plan all the moves in a battle of the strike group.
I'm the one Navy SEAL on the whole battle group.
Which means he plays a lot of x-box.
Yeah.
I play a lot of x-box.
We've got to be honest.
You know, being on the staff is not as fun as we're used to.
I don't think anybody ever joined to be a staff member.
But there comes a time when there's nothing left, you know, you're like, well, pin the tail on the donkey.
All of a sudden you go from steely-eyed killer to glassy-eyed typer.
Once we got in the Gulf, the combined backgrounds between Art as a Navy SEAL, myself as a backseater in super Hornets, and that experience was really good in drawing up some good missions and scenarios to help train these guys up.
For the hornets, it's kind of a new mission set, using their eyes and their scanners to visually pick up information and relay it to people on the ground.
And being a ground force guy, that's invaluable information.
It was real good training, 'cause up to that point, our air wings really weren't trained in all those kind of fourth generation warfare missions.
They were specifically asking us to look around the edge of the town there, sir, to look for any suspicious activity.
Right.
And then when they actually pushed to go grab the guys, providing security for the friendlies.
How long did it take all this to play out? 45 minutes.
And then when the Humvees pushed, had us go to the target area to make sure nobody was getting away before they got there.
We're working up north near Mosul.
We were doing some good work.
There were some cars doing some very suspicious things.
They were pretty excited about that, 'cause they'd been looking for these guys, you know.
And then our time came to go.
So we left.
One thing in aviation is that you always leave yourself options.
You're supposed to have 2, 3, even 4 different options.
We put all of our faith in being able to get gas from that KC-135 tanker.
The tanker was moving around pretty good.
And I, uh, I couldn't really get in the basket.
Which, if that was to happen, you should have a backup.
And we kind of allowed ourselves to get painted into a corner, which left us the only option of making an emergency landing in Baghdad International.
Baghdad's not one of our diverts; It's not where they want us to go.
I mean, if you run out of gas, you're done with jets.
You're not going to be able to fly that thing, because everything runs off of the engines and the generators.
There was I didn't think we were gonna make it.
I was really impressed with the guy in my backseat being cool.
You know, "this is the situation we're in, but now "we've just got to go from here.
" As we were coming in there, they were saying that people were shooting in the area.
I saw the runway; I just wanted to get there.
It was close.
It was really scary at that point, too, because the tire blew on the landing rollout.
We were still probably going about 70 knots.
Jet takes a real quick veer to the left.
So it was all I could do just to kind of keep it on the runway, kind of dancing on the right brake, and we just kind of worked it, just kind of worked it down the left side.
Yeah, there was a split second there I thought we might have done all that work and then lose it there on the runway, you know, which would have been even worse.
Standing on the side of the runway and looking at your jet.
It's got a tire blown, so it's kind of sideways, you know.
And that's when you can finally just look around and take in the gravity of the situation.
And it was just one of those things, there was no way that just happened.
How could how could I have allowed something like this to happen? This is bad.
This is real bad.
We cut it way too close.
Tommy, will you tell them about Iraq? It was hot.
It was Sandy.
One of our jets broke down there, and Tommy had to go fix it.
I got to pack a gun.
It was cool.
I'm always packing a gun, dude.
Tommy's always one to hold a gun.
It ran out of fuel and had to divert to Baghdad.
And then when it landed, it blew a tire.
So we had to go there and change the tire.
I'm not flying right now.
Kind of in a probationary period.
It could be awhile before I start flying again.
What's up, sir? Drug your ass out of Iraq, huh? It wasn't that they diverted into Baghdad.
It was the fact that they were pretty low on gas.
It was my decision to conduct a FNAEB a field naval aviator evaluation board.
You basically look at the whole person.
You look at their past record.
You know, is this a trend? Is he unsafe? And I don't think that Jeremy is unsafe.
I think there were some flawed decisions.
It's a very formal process, but once I make that decision, the process has to flow all the way through it.
You cannot stop it.
Hopefully, he'll come out of this OK and better for it, but it needed to be done.
Pretty slow day.
Pretty slow day up there.
I did one missile.
That's gonna be it pretty much for today.
It's all it's looking like is just missiles and maybe a gun here and there.
No bombs.
Just not really dropping anything anyway, so My last hop was my single best chance to do anything.
We see this boat is hugging the shore and pulls up to the dock.
And they're like sprinting, 'cause now they hear us overhead.
They figure it's coming.
And they're using this point to off us.
And I'm thinking, "here we go.
This is it.
" I'm looking at, OK, where's my strafe "z," OK.
"What do you want us to do?" "Can you guys take pictures?" Ok.
If there was ever a case clearly of somebody doing something clearly wrong here I just thought we were gonna be a lot more engaged.
I did.
Anybody else? Not really.
You didn't think we were going to be dropping bombs? You can win the war and lose the peace is the catch phrase.
Sure.
Winning hearts and minds.
And you can't do that if you're dropping bombs on their houses.
And those guys on the ground can take they have sufficient firepower typically to do what they need to do.
I know that sounds like a Kool-Aid speech.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Skipper's gotta say the party line," but I mean, you gotta do that to slowly start fading, phasing yourself out so that the focus is on the ground, ground guys swap over.
You're right.
I mean, the ultimate metric of why we're here is to create a safe society.
But of the bombs that have been dropped, just statistics, you would have to say that we should have dropped probably 50% of the bombs.
Same number of assets, same number of flights.
We've dropped 0%.
Different time of day we're covering.
But we can shift the time.
I think that's why you get a lot of the frustration.
Both And below, I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of heat over it.
Yeah, but see, part of it We've trained; We're here.
We haven't dropped one bomb Not one.
And I think a lot of guys are like, "OK.
Do we really "need to be here?" Ok.
Couple of observations.
First, I think the strike group turnover debriefs are having a good effect.
I talked to admiral Winnefeld yesterday kind of one v.
one "Nimitz" is the platform people associate with the delivery of airpower, but it also is the command and control node for the strike group.
They flew 18 missions over Iraq.
Only had two prowler missions to Tom Cropper, who is the commander of air wing 11, leads some 1,700 people who deliver those 60 airplanes on the deck of the "Nimitz.
" Then we have the sea combat commander, commodore Mike Smith, primarily responsible for the maritime security ops here in the Gulf.
Good morning, admiral.
Morning, Bill.
We also have the C.
O.
of the cruiser "Princeton" Captain Bill Alt.
We talk to him every day by VTC.
And he's in charge of air defense.
We're sending the guys back to the "o" plants today.
We're sending an ht-1, an em-2 And finally, we have the information warfare commander, who is the C.
O.
of the "Nimitz" Ted Branch.
So not only is Ted the C.
O.
of this great warship, he is a warfare commander in his own right.
Ok.
Thanks, appreciate it.
This ship is all about aviation.
But there's other components to the strike group.
We've got a cruiser, the "Princeton," and we've got our two destroyers, "Chafee," "Higgins," and in the Arabian Gulf, we join with other forces U.
S.
and coalition.
We have on any given day 15, 16, 17 ships.
And when I come in here, I command those units as well.
We're in the tactical flight command center on board the "Nimitz.
" This is where we keep situational awareness for the admiral.
But I can see what all of my other ships are seeing as well, which is what allows us to in here be able to track pretty much the entire fifth fleet.
Admiral, battle watch.
Sir, it's 14:40.
Just to let you know, there's two Iranian Boston whalers that have crossed over the operational line.
The admiral likes to know right down to the small detail levels what's happening.
The poor guy gets phone calls probably every hour day and night.
Supporting the forces on the ground in Iraq and protection of the two major oil platforms ABOT and CAOT.
That's a huge source of Iraq's economy, and if you were one of the bad guys trying to destroy Iraq, what are you going to go after? The good times are killing me those poor guys are stuck on those oil platforms.
Those are what we call the hardcore guys up there.
Got to get water and I know you could carry on 43% humidity.
It's 102 temp.
Heat Index is 121.
It's in the danger range.
It's isolated, dusty, it's dirty, it's greasy, it's a pretty nasty environment.
Have one, have 20 more one more, it does not relent the good times are killing me in April of 2004, those oil platforms, ABOT and CAOT, came under attack.
There were 4 small boats.
They were packed with explosives.
A boarding team was sent to investigate one of the boats that was approaching.
And they both blew up.
And it killed two sailors and one coast guard sailor.
Every Dow that is out here to me is a bad guy.
If they were to pack many, many boats with explosives, that would be a very bad thing.
Let's go.
Attention.
The Iraqi marines are screened before they join, but the terminal workers 70-80 personnel that come out every week to work on the platform Have no control over those whatsoever.
The decks will buckle a little bit as you walk, 'cause they are old.
The handrails aren't firm either.
Before, the situation here used to be really bad, but now, he says, the situation is getting really, really good.
Even the fact that Iraq is still in kind of a turmoil, but he feels like things are going in a better way, basically.
At the present time, he says, it's basically almost impossible for him to conceive of a stable Iraq in the next 6-7 months, and he wishes that the Americans, actually, would stay way longer till everything is completely done.
We try to remind them that this is their economy right here these two platforms 'Cause none of us want to go home and see on the news, you know, 6 months from now that the terminal got hit, you know, when and if we do turn over to the Iraqi forces.
The United States Navy has had a presence in the Gulf since about 1947.
There's a lot of American commerce going on here.
This is a very important sea lane, so I see a role for the United States Navy here long after things return to normal.
Continue lap steady on course Continue lap steady, course Is that where the "Nimitz" is bearing? Wait a minute.
The guys over here, forget it.
Just give them left, 20 degrees rudder.
Just say that again.
Left 20 degrees rudder.
I'm Captain Bill Alt, commanding officer of the "USS Princeton" and air defense commander for the "Nimitz" strike group.
Normally, we'll be within 10 miles of the "Nimitz" or whatever ship we're riding shotgun on to make sure nothing happens to them.
We got to slow down, sir.
No! We got to get up there.
Hang out.
The other Dow out there.
You see it, Chris? Yes, sir.
Ok.
It's about, I guess, 5 miles from "Nimitz" and they're concerned about him coming in.
You know, just to get in between him so that they don't come at the "Nimitz" for any reason, really.
Run our midships.
Run our midships.
Run our midships.
For the Navy, the big wakeup call was the "USS Cole," and the terrorist activity against ships.
The whole thing about asymmetric warfare is takes advantage of our vulnerabilities.
20 years ago, when it first became apparent that, hey, you know, these little guys on jet skis or something, they could do us some real harm We will approach them And find out what they're doing out here.
What do they fish for? Where are good areas to fish? Let them know that there's a coalition military presence in the Arabian Gulf.
And return to Doha? Ask them about piracy, smuggling.
Give them pamphlets that tell them who they can contact if they know of any terrorists.
We're operating in their backyard, so we want to fit in and make them know that we're here for their protection and their safety and their interests.
The man can't leave.
What it's really about is understanding what happens in the maritime waters.
And if you study it long enough, you'll notice changes in it.
If something changes, it will stick out.
We're performing reconnaissance missions along the waterways in southeastern Iraq.
Part of our mission is to protect the pipelines since they're so vital to their economy.
We're trying to figure out what is normal activity, what is not.
I don't see it.
Guys are great.
They all ran out into the streets to wave at us.
The question, though, is are they coming out to wave at us because they really like us, or are they coming out to wave at us 'cause they don't want us to shoot them? I'd say a little of both.
Yeah, probably.
Merely by flying missions, sailing these waters, we pressurize the maritime environment.
We make sure our enemies know that we're present and we're ready to do business.
Here's what's going on.
We are going to intercept about 5 nautical miles outside of territorial waters, and we're gonna do simultaneous boardings of the two ships.
New search for unregistered vehicles.
Maritime security ops are designed to deny international terrorist organizations the use of the sea as a venue for attacks or to transport people, weapons All right, everybody on team one, if you find anything, you back away from it and you let me know immediately.
All right.
Good to go.
Looking for drugs, arms, terrorist literature, training handbooks, or any ties to international terrorist organizations.
Captain, this is just a questionnaire Yeah.
Good.
Yeah.
Fort Bend.
One more thing is you have a question, "what other masters have you worked with? " What's the meaning of that question? Somebody may be working with somebody else.
Other nationalities.
No.
Maybe.
He may be from Dubai, he may be from India.
It's not just you.
We're looking for any signs that those cars could be converted for use as IEDs.
We're gonna sniff'em.
We're gonna look for any explosives and check for wiring.
And we're also looking at the origins of these vehicles.
We'd like to understand the patterns.
When is the last time that you saw packages? Bring this car.
Are there any further questions you need answered? I haven't got to that yet.
I'm not sure if that's happening.
I've just been running.
I'll be in the Navy 17 years in January.
How many cruises is this for you? Whew.
I'm complaining about 4.
I got nothing to complain about.
Second one married, though.
First one with kids.
Yeah.
It sucks, doesn't it? It's a whole new level of pain.
My wife sat there and wrote me It's been a traumatic 4 months for me and my family.
My wife wasn't feeling very well, and she went to the doctor and the doctor said, "well, I'm not really sure, you know.
This is relatively normal.
"Did this happen last time?" "No.
It didn't happen last" time.
" There's some cause for some concern.
She had a couple ultrasounds and, you know, no heartbeat.
I don't think there's ever a good time for a miscarriage, but this was certainly about the worst husband away, 2-year-old with his hair on fire all the time, running around, dealing with the house and the car and the dog, the bills and everything else.
It's pretty much one of those things that there's nothing you can say or do that can actually help.
"I'm sorry.
I love you.
" I'm sorry.
I love you.
What do you want me to do?" Short of going home, which I could do, what can you do? You knowI mean, she's so 1-o-1.
I'm just not flying right now.
So I come up here and stand this duty partly 'cause I don't really have anything else going on right now.
2-0-6.
I'm gonna miss out on, like, the 100 hours or something like that.
As soon as the whole process got going, I already knew that I wasn't gonna fly again on this cruise.
It has to go through the admiral here and the admiral back in San Diego.
Those guys have a lot on their plate, obviously.
So it just takes time, which is the worst part.
It's kind of the waiting game, seeing what they want to do.
He's a new pilot.
I think I'm gonna go with you guys for Thanksgiving.
And when someone gets to the point where they're flying a $60 million aircraft, we expect them to make the right decisions all the time.
When someone gets behind, it's our obligation to sort out why that happened.
5-0-1.
It may be training; It may be attitude, motivation.
You have to look at their potential as well, so it's really an obligation on our part to make sure that we can prevent that from happening again.
The future's kind of up in the air.
And I'm not really sure what's gonna happen at this point.
6-1-4.
Is he going up? No.
You were up there and nothing went on? I know.
Nothing.
Did you, like, go up, drop flares, try and instigate a riot? They didn't want anything.
I told 'em there's a whole bunch of going on, but they didn't buy it.
Where were you at? Mosul.
I'm going tomorrow.
Now when we're in a support role for the folks on the ground, if we don't drop any bombs, then that means things are going well in Iraq.
So, although it's not quite as much fun, it's That's the goal.
It's just ridiculous that we would come here for over two months and drop nothing.
The missions that we perform are kind of a morale buster.
We're still in the same ballgame.
It's just that it's not our turn to be at bat.
And we're just supporting.
I guess some of the times they said they came close to dropping, but there's not that much of a need.
I'm a naval officer flying a very expensive piece of equipment that I've never used in its role.
Maybe I have.
Maybe I've deterred guys on the ground or maybe I've helped guys on the ground just being there.
And I think that's what we're doing these days.
However, I think it's a very expensive and costly way to do that.
And I think that the way that wars are being fought are changing.
Seems like aircraft carriers are not the way to do it.
Ok.
Swim call from 12:30 15:00.
I'll be the first one in at 12:30, so get your suit out, get your rubber ducky.
Get ready to go.
Swim call in the Arabian Gulf.
Hey, we got a floater down here.
Hey, you know, if you come down and jump in now, you won't even need to put on any sunscreen.
I just hope I don't get any sea snakes or sharks in my mouth.
I fly over this every day.
I see the oil slicks.
Think I'll pass on it this time.
Not if you paid me.
It's just gross.
Sea snakes and jellyfish.
Naw, I mean.
And, oh, by the way, we dump about a million pounds of fuel per squadron, you know, over the span of the time we've been here.
It's a soothing delight and it's moving my life everyone, every sinner and every Saint it's so cold, cold yeah, beautiful everybody knows that life can be wonderful it's a soothing delight and it's moving my life it's a soothing delight.
Subs rip, edit, and resnyc by © VJ Me 2010