Russell Moran: The Gray Ship

“Any idea what’s going on, Lieutenant?”

“Beats the hell out of me, Commander. The whole ship seems to be out.”

At 0309 Petty Officer Third Class James Randolph sat on a gun turret looking at the sky, playing with a new IPad app to learn astronomy. The screen was darkened, a great idea because if it were backlit it would be no good for viewing at night. A tiny point of light represented each star, with the star’s name appearing at the bottom of the screen when he tapped on the image. He committed himself to learn astronomy, something he could share with his seven year-old son. He looked at the sky, trying to match the star to what he saw on the IPad screen. Suddenly, the sun appeared where his eyes were focused. With a shout he covered his eyes, shaking his head from the sudden pain.

“When was our last good fix, Lieutenant?” Captain Patterson asked.

“At 0250, about 30 minutes before the event, Captain. The quartermaster of the watch tried to get a position right after the event, but that’s when he learned that our navigation systems are out.”

“Well let’s get a land fix now, Lieutenant. I can see the shore lights from here.”

“It gets worse, Captain. The navigator tried to get a fix using the charted landmarks, but the landmarks and buoys aren’t where they should be. We got a position line from the flagpole at Fort Sumter, but that’s it. Our charted buoys and towers just aren’t visible.”

Piloting, or what some call close-in navigation, is a simple matter. You look through a telescope on an instrument called an alidade. You line up your “target,” say a lighthouse, and read the bearing from the ring at the base of the alidade. You then take a parallel ruler, line it up to the bearing on a compass rose on the chart, which is a circle with all points of the compass. Next, you take the parallel ruler and “walk” it over to the dot you’ve made, and then draw a line on the chart on that bearing. One line is not a fix, because your position can be anywhere along the line. With a second line from another known target, you have a fix, but not a great one. Once you have a third line from yet another target, and all three lines intersect, you now have a good fix, or navigational position. All you need are updated charts and a good alidade. If your charts don’t conform to the targets you’re looking at, you can’t get a fix. And that was the California’s problem.

“How’s radar and sonar?” asked Captain Patterson.

“They appear to be working, Captain, but what we see on the scopes isn’t what we expect to see when we look at our charts. Based on the harbor chart, there should be eight buoys in sight or visible from radar, but we can only see three, and they aren’t where should be. We know our approximate position based on our last fix, but another thing looks weird. Our depth readings from sonar are way off. We should be in 200 feet of water according to our charts, but sonar thinks we have only 160 feet under us.”

“Sound General Quarters, Lieutenant.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

The ear splitting clang of the general quarters alarm sounded in every space on the ship, followed by the announcement, “General Quarters, General Quarters, All Hands Man Your Battle Stations. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”

“Order right full rudder and come to course 090, Lieutenant. Until we can figure out what the hell is going on, I want some sea between me and the land.”

“Aye aye, Captain. Right full rudder, steer course zero niner zero.”

At the Pentagon, Duty Officer Frank Orzo was on the phone with Rear Admiral Robert Friese, the Deputy Chief of Naval operations. “Admiral this is Lieutenant Commander Orzo, Duty Officer at NavOps. We’ve lost all contact with one of our ships, the California , off the coast of South Carolina.”

Friese had been celebrating his wife’s birthday all evening and was quite drunk.

“Lizzen up, Luzzenum Cabana Orbo, you’re just not (hiccup) lookin’ hard enough.” Orzo tapped the phone and said, “I’m sorry sir, but we seem to have a bad connection. I’ll call you later.” He heard a loud snore just before he hit the end button. Orzo then called Admiral Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations.

“I tried to call Admiral Friese, Sir, but we were unable to communicate.” (A very true statement, thought Orzo). Roughead asked, “Did any nearby ships report an explosion?”

“Negative, sir. We’ve contacted all ships within 20 miles of the California , and no one saw or heard an explosion.”

“Call the Coast Guard command in Charleston,” Roughead said to Orzo. “Give them the last known position of the California . Tell them to launch helicopters and begin a sea rescue operation immediately.”

“Aye aye, Sir” said Orzo.

Admiral Roughead worked up the chain of command and called the Secretary of the Navy, who then called the called the Secretary of Defense, who placed a call to the White House.

As the phone rang, Roughead wondered how the hell a cruiser could just disappear?

The California has been missing for seven minutes.

The nuclear guided missile cruiser USS California (CGN 36) had been taken out of mothballs and recommissioned as the Navy’s only nuclear powered surface ship except for aircraft carriers. The ship launched in 1971 and was commissioned in 1974.

On the morning of April 10, 2013, under the command of Captain Ashley Patterson, the ship left its homeport in Norfolk, Virginia and steamed toward Charleston, South Carolina. The ship would anchor near Fort Sumter for a ceremony commemorating the first battle of the Civil War on April 12, 1861, the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Civil War reenactors from around the country would be on hand for the ceremonies. The California was scheduled to deploy to the Persian Gulf after the ceremony at Charleston.

The ship has enough fire power to unleash Biblical hell on an enemy. Her armaments include: Harpoon anti-ship missiles; five inch, forty-five caliber Mark 45 guns; the Phalanx anti-ship missile defense system; an ASROC anti-submarine missile system; two Mark 13 guided missile launch systems; Mark 46 anti-submarine torpedoes, and 12 Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. She is also equipped with an Apache attack helicopter and two unmanned drone helicopters, both for surveillance and attack. The USS California was designed to instill fear in an enemy, and if fear didn’t work, to destroy it.

Besides a platoon of 16 SEALs, there is also a platoon of 16 marines scheduled to disembark the California when they arrived in the Gulf. Counting the SEAL and Marine platoons, the ship has a complement of 630 crew members, including 31 officers.

With its nuclear power plant, the USS California can stay at sea for years. The only tether to the world beyond the ship is its need for supplies. The USS California is a key in projecting American power in the world.

On the morning of April 10, 2013, the California was on its own.

Ashley Patterson was scared. Her years in the Navy exposed her to countless challenges, all of which she handled. She had graduated fifth in her class from the United States Naval Academy in 1995. At age 36, as Captain of the USS California , she is the youngest commanding officer in the fleet, and the first African American woman to command a nuclear combat ship. She is six feet tall and strikingly beautiful. During a CBS 60 Minutes segment on women in the military, Ashley was featured. Captain Patterson is a rising star in the Navy, and she’s on a lot of short lists to make admiral.