SEA OF CONTENTION

given the might of the great ship given the alliance of Nations she represents given the lessons of history in the technology of war one hopes there are better ways of settling problems than by trial at arms but one never knows the attack carrier then moves across the single see that rounds the world across the root of the Spanish Armada beyond Trafalgar through the gates of hercules and into the center of a Mediterranean Sea the very air here seems to breathe of peace war and history itself seem far away and long ago this tiny island Malta is a microcosm of European history phoenicians were overcome by Greeks Greeks by Carthaginians Carthaginians by Romans Romans by Saracens Saracens by Sicilians who yielded it to the Knights of Malta the Turks failed to capture it but Napoleon did only to give it up to the British 2,200 times during World War two German and Italian planes attacked tiny Malta the midpoint of the embattled Mediterranean men women and children died palms crumbled into dust ships went to the bottom the agony of Malta was matched throughout occupied Europe and Asia the Mediterranean as seen from the limbo of near space that makes man and all his works invisible would seem to be a kind of nearly landlocked saltwater lake yet three continents share its coastline it is the south of Europe the north of Africa the west of Asia it has throughout all recorded human history been a battleground not merely of nation states but of entire civilizations a waterway of contention since 1000 BC often enough the peoples of the Mediterranean fought for selfish and aggressive reasons but the freedom and independence of Nations has also been a recurring persisting cause in Mediterranean and beyond it to this day NATO the north atlantic treaty organization was created and forged in the determination of the victor nations of world war two that never again would they be weakened disunited before a strong and determined enemy that they would stand together to defend one another against aggression nato's three Mediterranean members Italy Greece and Turkey are geographically peninsulas but so dependent are all three on arms and supplies that must come by see that they are practically speaking islands to this extent they are vulnerable to attack on the sea and from the sea on NATO's southern flank the Mediterranean crowded as it is with the seagoing Commerce of the world his international water the high seas that belong to every nation the United States Navy Sixth Fleet is the prime naval force in the Mediterranean unchallenged between the end of World War two and the six-day war of 1967 the Sixth Fleet averages some 40 ships 400 aircraft and twenty-one thousand men it works closely with the fleet's of Britain Italy Greece and Turkey the attack carrier is but a single ship of many ships of the many nations of NATO the center of power at sea it is at the same time the center of awareness of readiness at sea in constant touch with escorting destroyers whose own radar and sonar keep a figurative I and ear on the surface of the sea on the air above on the depths below in constant touch with escorting submarines that searched the thousands of cubic miles of water beneath the surface in constant touch with land-based aircraft that patrolled the great domain of the Mediterranean from shore to shore over more than a million square miles of ocean in constant touch with its own helicopters on stations that discourage and deny any observation approach or attack by an enemy submarine even our own subs that may try for purposes of trained in constant touch with its own airborne early warning system stationed hundreds of miles away using its large radar to scan tremendous areas of sky and sea in constant touch in short with its own task force and Beyond it aloft and ashore it's awareness stretches then from the bottom of the sea to the stratosphere this is the Mediterranean realm in our time a new force upon the waters the Navy of the Soviet Union is here today perhaps here to stay only a short time ago she was forced publicly invisible to withdraw from Cuban soil the missile she had established there their response was to build up the Soviet Navy as quickly as effectively as possible thus only five years after Cuba the Soviet Union was able to show the world what she had accomplished the new Soviet Mediterranean fleet even to the unpracticed I his trim sleek fast and designed for a single purpose to confront the long-standing naval superiority of NATO in the Mediterranean the Navy of the Soviet Union boasts nearly 1600 fighting ships and support vessels nearly twice the number in the United States Navy their ships are for newer pack more firepower per pound and often move faster than their American counterparts but the Soviet fleet in the Mediterranean dangerous as it is to the Peace of the area and of the world builds her sea power with more than fighting ships alone in Merchant Shipping and oceanographic their fleet grows apace new ships using innovative technology shallow water ships for the harbors of undeveloped hopefully susceptible nations they're offering long-term grants and credits inflated sums for local product excellent barter arrangements and other economic considerations deeply imbued with Soviet political ambitions the Soviets hope then through a combination of military power and political economic influence to build a strong military economic and political presence in North Africa particularly thus even without a single shot fired in anger between the two great non mediterranean nations in the Mediterranean the contention becomes a matter of visible believable power the magnet that through all history has helped men make up their minds on what side to take to confront the new Soviet threat at sea the free worlds unique weapon is the attack carrier a kind of summation of all that men have learned on the sea it's is to show how far we've come since the ancestors of this fast tough capital ship helped to win the Pacific War a generation ago the attack carrier is power at sea power the free world can bring to bear from anywhere upon the oceans of the world at any time on this single ship you can focus the will the wisdom and the purposes of the American people the ship is an instrument of policy not it's creative will then proceed back in towards the ship simulating running to the ship every mission from reconnaissance to simulated attack from anti-submarine warfare two routine patrol Springs from the briefing one of pabst 10 going on at the same time somewhere within the ship keeping to the port side of the ship at that time they'll talk to you to your cap station the cap station will be located there 90 the briefing is a flight plan in almost infinite detail it is the working agreement for this specific day or night for this specific mission no other briefing will be quite like it three take up station life at sea is not quaint or easy this is a structured society a special-purpose community answerable to a chain of command where each man on the ship knows his job and his place ahead of them the mission varying from reconnaissance and submarine hunting to training for specific target seeking in the event of shooting war which is by no means without precedent in man's violent history it takes trained tough taught men come together to create a fighting ship with all its potential for peace protection for poise destruction men interacting with technology tuned to circumstance a place where tradition persists where the sea and forces an ongoing respect for its power to treat everything man made as flotsam and jetsam call it routine if you will but any Airport at sea is bound to be a tight fit even without an enemy the situation itself has built-in dangers of its own the pilots reached to the last foreseeable detail of this particular mission a company there 20 tons of aircraft from a standing start to flying speed in two seconds flat it's all in the daily routine but it's somewhat too intricate and dangerous to become cliche the flight deck now far behind and below for all its own inherent apparel is but the preliminary to the real thing for now hopefully forever it's just training intricate enough dangerous enough even in its own right but this make-believe war is preferable to any other kind you can name the carrier task force can project the purposes of the free world across any span of ocean on the planet more precisely the men of the carrier task force project these purposes but men need training persistent repeated sharpened training to send the power of the great ship far above the sea to send it over the land to attack targets of any kind with firepower of many kinds ranging from the conventional to the Newport in essence the ship is a flexible weapon system a spectrum of choices the attack carrier can bring to bear if a shooting war should break out yet again in man's troubled and combative history nothing guarantees that no one will ever dare to attack us or then it can't happen here nothing man-made is infallible or invulnerable no ship no army navy or Air Force no city or nation in this world of ours the flight deck for all its relative immensity among man-made object is a tiny tossing iota within the real immensity of the sea perhaps given the basic danger of taking things for granted we've forgotten how utterly fantastic at once seemed to keep a seaborne Air Force flying and fighting it will never be easy but you don't justify it on the grounds of difficulty only necessity on the whole as WC Fields said they'd rather be in Philadelphia the attack carrier certainly is the biggest target on the sea it may seem then to be the easiest but don't be misled the carrier has no fixed address no one location where you can hope to find it because the location is always changing you might call this unpredictability of kind of constant variable in essence the carrier's whole purpose is to stand in harm's way between the alliance of three nations and its potential enemy must by the nature of the carrier puzzle out how they can eliminate it before they can plan anything drastic not only to attack the enemy but to hold him off to prevent him from attacking it the carrier is an ever-evolving ever-moving island of electronic instrumentation never closed for business the combat Information Center operates round-the-clock it is a computerized center of tactical awareness allowing us to know what's going on right now how the total tactical situation is changing from second to second permitting a full assessment of any problem and a reasonable solution at any given moment we know where our planes are and where other planes are of these we must sort out the nature and the nationality whether civilian or military friendly or neutral or potentially hostile air speed course and altitude not soon but right now so also with surface ships within a radius of hundreds of miles every one of these determinations is different from one second to the next a newcomer will emerge onto the screen even as an identified transient departs for further places beyond the scan beneath the surface of the sea however lies the greatest threat the Soviet Union poses upon the waters of the Mediterranean as elsewhere in the world some six to eight Soviet submarines are on constant duty in the men searching out these subs locating identifying and keeping track of them is a full-time operation anti-submarine warfare employs some of the most advanced technology of this technological age land-based patrol planes covered thousands of square miles every day to search hundreds of thousands of cubic miles of water the carrier's own anti-submarine helicopters search continuously in waters closer to the ship sometimes in concert with escorting destroyers sonar ears are always comped beneath the surface thus the carrier whatever help it receives from land-based planes is an anti submarine force in her own right no sub right now doesn't mean there won't be one within an hour or next day or next week anti-submarine warfare is as relentless as anything on this earth the great ship for all her size is no sitting duck no simple target as much as the combat Information Center is the focus of tactical awareness the carrier's integrated operations intelligence center manages the details of strategic awareness each recovery brings new information back to the ship film will be automatically processed other onboard sensors and recorders will disclose more evidence this information is memorized and translated to a language computers can use and back into data men can use information is constantly updated the track of a ship the finite study of vessels at sea or the comings and goings of ships at ports we need to know about computers retain in their memories vast banks of data constantly renewed and updated instantly available the data add up to the attack carriers memory what's new right now what's different today from what we've noted yesterday or last month ships aircraft submarine land installations of all kinds these are the very journalism of carrier operations what potentially to attack what potentially to be ready for thus the combination of men's eyes minds and experience with the findings of sensitive electronic and photographic instruments adds up to awareness and readiness at any moment at any time readiness is a multitude of things to do as they say in the British Army there is always something yet to do maintenance sums up a lot of it from the most complicated electronic equipment advanced technology to the inner workings of powerful jet engines themselves the single word maintenance covers a multitude of imperatives Oh it's in the nature of things especially systems of things to go out of whack every now and then you practice against the possibility of fire for example against the malfunctions an enemy would create on purpose damage control you might say is maintenance on the double maintenance of the physical ship gives way to maintenance of what you might call the spirit of the ship the reasons behind it people are the biggest reasonable their security once and for all from the terrible exactions of war their friendship as peacetime partners in the unity of the NATO nations before the persisting dangers of our century in a national sense we were there to help them in a hot shooting war we're still there hoping with them that our presence and our power will make war much less likely in the future than it's been in the past there is a generation now grown up to whom the memories of World War two are ancient history we're at best the tales told by others perhaps most of our own youth can barely believe what happened to these nations to these peoples who could not defend themselves against a relentless powerful enemy our presence in the Mediterranean for two decades has served to preserve the free use of the water waves to assure continued Western access to NATO allies and more particularly to maintain the region's orderly and peaceful development but imperfect and struggling as it often appears the freedom that was born beneath these colonnades still needs defenders in a troubled world on this relatively tiny sea and on the great single see that Ron's the planet it is the deepest hope of 20th century man that the future will be different from the past but because we don't know we have to be sure we are ready our fondest hopes for peace on earth may not in fact be what the future will offer us in the meantime one thing is certain readiness is indeed the greatest of all possible economies we can afford nothing less you