Bumper cars at sea … again

Chinese naval vessel in near collision with US Navy cruiser

Ah, the games that nations play at sea. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt … a couple of times.

Back lo these many years ago, when I did my first tour of duty aboard a beat-up old World War II design destroyer, we used to play the same game that the Chinese seem to want to play in the South China Sea (and probably will start playing in the East China Sea), only we played it with the Russians.

It got to the point that in late 1972 or 1973, the Soviets and the Americans signed an agreement setting out the rules for our “games.” Not that they always followed the rules, but then I did my tour before the rules really went into effect. Life was interesting at those times when the two navies played in close proximity.

As I was explaining to my pretty wife, the old Meredith (DD-890) had a few encounters with the Soviets, both their spy ships and their warships.

The first encounter I remember came shortly after I had joined the ship’s company of the Merry-D and we had put to sea on our journey to the Mediterranean for seven months. We were part of the aircraft carrier USS Franklin D Roosevelt’s escort screen that included a DLG guided missile destroyer (now would be a CG guided missile cruiser), a DDG guided missile destroyer, a guided missile frigate (FFG), a big destroyer (post WWII design, but all guns) and two small destroyers (WWII all gun designs) (Well, everybody had anti-submarine rocket launchers – ASROCs – but only the Gs had surface to surface and surface to air missiles).

Once we passed the 12-mile limit, the FDR picked up another escort: A Soviet trawler. At least that was its cover story … I don’t they ever put a net in the water or pulled any fish from the sea … but in reality it was a Soviet spy vessel that would follow the FDR everywhere it went in the Atlantic. All you had to do to locate it was to look 3,000 yards astern of the carrier and there she would be bobbing along at whatever speed it took for her to keep station.

Well, a couple of days out of our homeport, the Admiral on the FDR wanted to do a “line ahead” formation. I don’t remember how it happened exactly, but it ended up that our “station” in the formation was 3,000 yards astern of the carrier.

Now, you should see what is coming here, but we needed to be where the trawler was and as we came up to take our slot, the trawler – like the band that refused to yield the field in the song of the time – wasn’t budging, despite several efforts to tell it to please move. Well, we got within maybe a ship-length or two, side to side, when the little trawler looked up and blinked and slide away.

It was obvious from some of the actions of the crew on deck they were not particularly happy with us, but nobody swapped any paint and it was a no-harm-no-foul situation.

Another time, however, in the Eastern Mediterranean off the coast of Egypt, things got considerably more tense.

We had been following a Russian heavy missile cruiser for about 10 days to two weeks because Naval Intel had word it was to test fire one of its SSMs – which was going to be the first time they had ever fired a missile of the type outside their Black Sea training areas. It was the day before they did their test shot that things got really dicey.

It started off relatively quiet, with us tagging along with the little Russian task force of five or six ships, with the cruiser at its center. Among its escorts were a mine warfare vessel and a Kashin-class guided missile escort (the equivalent of one of our DLGs at the time) with two double-rail anti-aircraft missile launchers – one fore and one aft – and two twin 76mm gun mounts – one fore and one aft.

Just to set the table, Merry-D carried two twin 5-inch (127-mm) gun mounts, both on the front of the ship. My battle station was the pointer on the No. 2 (Mount 52) mount just in front of the bridge. It also was my work station where I was responsible for its care and feeding. It gave me a ring-side seat for much of what transpired in the next two hours or so.

First, it started with the little (about half our size) mine warfare vessel coming over to signal us by signal lamp that we were “in a missile test area and would we leave”.

Our response was: “We are in international waters and we intend to stay on our present course.”

The Russian then started playing the “rendering honors” game with us. By tradition, when two warships pass at sea, depending on which one is on which side (and I don’t remember which is which), one of them is supposed to have its crew stop and salute the passing ship. The game makes for some interesting maneuvering by ships as they try to force the other ship into rendering honors to them.

During that whole evolution, the Russian kept telling us to leave the area. After about an hour or so of playing this game, the Russian ship headed back to where its task group was milling around, about 10-12 miles away.

Then its big brother, the Kashin comes over to talk to us. As she passed down our port side at about 1500 yards (which is really close at sea) I saw the normal complement of people walking on her deck doing normal things. I watched as the Kashin slid around behind us to come up on our starboard side to parallel our course at about 1000 to 1500 yards off and began to pace our speed.

I immediately started getting suspicious that something wasn’t kosher when I noticed there weren’t any people wandering her weather decks any more. Then, I saw both of the 76mm gun mounts break centerline and begin to traverse in our direction.

Now, I am no rocket scientist, but I already was climbing up to the hatch of Mount 52, when the speaker on the front of the bridge blasted out:

“GENERAL QUARTERS! GENERAL QUARTERS! ALL HANDS, MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS. THIS IS A SILENT GQ. MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS VIA INTERNAL ROUTES. DO NOT RUN ON THE MAIN DECK.”

I hopped into Mount 52, closed the two access hatches to the outside deck, opened the hatch to the handling room below and started lighting off the power drives for the rammers, the shell and powder hoists and the traverse and elevation for the guns. Then I went and sat in my seat at the left side of the left gun and opened my sight box.

The mount quickly filled with the 14 people who manned it at general quarters and a very tense 45 minutes ensued. I could hear the hoist cycle as they brought up powder and shells.

The mount captain opened his top hatch in the armor plate, so we were able to hear much of what transpired from the wing of the bridge.

We couldn’t understand what the Russians were saying with their bull horn, but we heard our captain respond with good American seaman’s English what they could do with their suggestion (and then the intel people had provided us with a Russian translator and it was repeated in Russian).

This bandying back and forth went on for quite awhile and I can remember muttering to myself that I hoped the captain wouldn’t piss the Russians off too much. I wasn’t so much worried about the Kashin, because at that range I knew I wasn’t going to miss when I pulled the trigger if we started firing and our 5 inch shells were going to do a whole heck a lot more damage to him than his 3 inches shells were going to do to us.

I was, however, worried about the heavy cruiser 12-15 miles away that it might want to plop one of the SSMs in our lap and that we probably would not survive.

After about 45 minutes, the Kashin gave up and sailed away and we secured from GQ. The next morning, the cruiser fired its missile, the intel people got their pictures and electronic readings and … well that is a whole other story. There also are other stories of playing with the Russians, but it never got quite as tense as that day off Egypt.

The thing was that I learned that both we and the Russians had enough experience at sea by that time that we weren’t about to do anything really stupid. Unfortunately, from the initial reports, it doesn’t seem like the Chinese have got that experience yet and they face a steep learning curve.

Yes, folks, it does appear that we do live in interesting times … it just may be possible that our domestic travails may pale against what may happen in places far away.