Air Strikes Are Why the America Was Built : Thousands Aboard Carrier Participate in Missions Over Bosnia

The night is dark. No moon. Which means no horizon line for orientation. But the armed aircraft and pilots still are being launched, flung over this huge carrier’s bow into the blackness.

Their target: “in country”-- Bosnia-Herzegovina, that is.

Although NATO air strikes against rebel Serb positions have been suspended, squadrons of Carrier Air Wing One have been flying missions over Bosnia, laden with bombs and missiles. Their labors, which they regard as routine, offer an astonishing display of thousands of highly trained individuals working as a team to accomplish incredibly complex tasks at the cutting edge of combat.

In Primary Flight Control, high over the deck, Cmdr. G. K. Starnes, the “Air Boss,” directs the launch on the deck below. It is a Dantesque ballet--an infernal mix of hissing steam catapults, screaming jet engines and scurrying airmen in silver fluorescent stripes. Then there’s the shocking blast--with white fire from afterburners--when jets are hurled from 0 to 150 m.p.h. in a single second.

As the last F-14 Tomcat fighter is shot off the ship, the Boss reports to the captain on the bridge below him: “Launch complete.” Then by loudspeaker and radiophone to his handlers on deck, the Boss announces: “Prepare to recover aircraft.”

Incoming planes, having flown over Bosnia without expending bombs and missiles, must bring the materiel back aboard. “A night carrier landing with ordnance has got to be the most dangerous job in the Navy,” Starnes observes. “What you see below is controlled chaos.”

As he and his team track the incoming flight, the radio crackles: “Boss, 301’s losing oil pressure. He’s declaring emergency.”

“Roger,” says the Boss. He speaks to the pilot of the F/A-18 Hornet fighter in cool, reassuring tones: “OK, we’re giving you priority. You’re too heavy to land. Dump some gas and get back in the groove. We’ll bring you in when you’re ready.”

“Captain,” the Boss says to the bridge. “I need 28 knots. Pilot’s got an emergency.”

“It’s tough out there in the dark,” observes Starnes, of Virginia Beach, Va. “Just instruments. Claustrophobic. Your eyes and brain cry out for some light. . . . The pilot is talked in by the controller. He’s searching ahead to pick up the ball. Having to hit the deck within 50 yards to catch a wire. It is tough.

“Heads up. Here he comes.”

The Hornet roars in and slams onto the steel deck, picking up the arresting cable with its tailhook. It is dragged to a screeching halt.

“301 aboard,” reports an assistant. “Six more to go.”

And in they come, at remarkably brief intervals.

“Recovery complete,” reports the Air Boss to the bridge. “You’re free to turn.”

To the deck, the Boss declares: “Nice one, guys. Good hustle.”

On the America’s bridge, Capt. Ralph E. Suggs, himself a pilot, breathes easier. He has had to maneuver his 90,000-ton, 1,047-foot behemoth within the confines of a 20-by-40-mile “box” at sea, through the tricky winds of the Adriatic.

Suggs, 48, of Whiteville, N.C., calls his carrier “the nation’s flagship” and adds: “This ship is 30 years old with 1 million miles of steaming behind her. She served in Vietnam and the Gulf War.”

Surveying the scene below, he recalls: “We arrived on station on Sept. 9 to relieve the Teddy Roosevelt. . . . We launched combat strikes in Bosnia that same day. We’ve got a great air wing, and you’ve seen what a job those young men on the flight deck do. Hard to believe they’re only 19 and 20, just kids.

“I feel personally responsible for 5,000 men,” he says, but he adds sadly: “This deployment is America’s last deployment; she is being retired. It would be fitting if this ship, with the nation’s name, could provide some progress toward peace in the region on her last cruise.”

While the America has a crew of 2,600 to run the ship, Air Wing One has an additional 2,400 personnel supporting the 75 aircraft.

In Ready Room 7, pilots in flight suits gather for briefings as planes are catapulted overhead.

This evening, Lt. Jeff Haupt--a lean, smiling, mustachioed Tomcat pilot, 34, from Jacksonville, Fla., who flew missions in Operation Desert Storm--says: “We were over Sarajevo [the Bosnian capital] today, fully armed and ready for immediate action. You can get the wrong idea about us from that movie ‘Top Gun.’ True, we’re all competitive pilots. . . . That’s part of our karma. But we are all graded on every landing--whether we come in too high, too low or right in the groove. So there’s no room for showboats and cowboys. Some of that movie stuff, it just doesn’t happen that way.”

Besides the Air Boss, aviators rely on the “landing signal officer” to bring them in. In the old days, the officer used colored paddles to show the pilot the orientation of his incoming plane--or give him the wave-off. Though the officer now uses radio to communicate, he is still called Paddles. His position is precarious, since the incoming planes aim for only a 14-foot clearance crossing the deck.

In the bowels of the America, the massive machinery cranking up more than 200,000 horsepower is the domain of Cmdr. Leo Owens of Glen Falls, N.Y., the chief engineer. Wearing blue coveralls, he says: “We can push the ship in an emergency--say when we’ve got a pilot coming in with no flaps. We can get her up to 34 knots in a pinch, at flank speed, and that’s pushing a lot of water around.”

Tucked into a small space is Flight Deck Control, where Lt. Cmdr. Allan Zweifel of Terreton, Ida., runs what they call the “Ouija board,” a model of the flight and hangar decks, with cutouts made to scale of all the planes aboard.

One of the most touchy tasks is handled by Hans Schaefer, 22, an ordnance man who comes from Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo. He supervises delivery of bombs and missiles from magazines below to planes on deck. His workplace, the “bomb farm,” is a dangerous site.

“We’ve got 500-pound, 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs here,” he says. “I make sure they are armed and ready to attach. But we also have to disarm the ordnance when the planes come back still loaded. That can be tricky. You pray your hands don’t slip up.”

Supervising everything in America’s battle group is Rear Adm. William V. Cross II, 49. A former test pilot, Cross has made 850 carrier landings and flew 175 combat missions in Vietnam. His battle group includes U.S. Marine landing forces and the guided missile cruiser Normandy.

“I’m really impressed with these young men,” he says in his war room, from which he directs his 14-ship force. “They’re working 13-, 14-hour days without break. And the aviators, they’re courageous and intelligent.”