And the ability of every last shipmate aboard to fix every last broken piece of gear never ceases to amaze me.
These Sailors are the BEST I've ever seen!
Posted on 07/18/2021 10:40:13 PM PDT by Drew68
ABOARD THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER – The busiest aircraft carrier on the East Coast is back home after two grueling, back-to-back deployments that kept the ship on station in the Middle East for a total of seven and a half months.
Since USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) left for its first deployment on Feb. 20, 2020, the ship has been deployed for 320 of the last 514 days – not counting training exercises and restriction of movement periods that have kept sailors away from family and loved ones.
On Sunday, Ike slipped up the James River with about a thousand sailors in their whites looking outboard as the carrier made a smooth 90-degree port turn into Pier 14 at Naval Station Norfolk, Va. From the bow of the ship hundreds of families crowded the pier to meet the crew.
When Ike’s sailors left the ship on Sunday it was the only fourth time most of them touched the shore since the ship left for its deployment Feb. 18, 2021.
In fact, the bulk of the two deployments have been spent patrolling a small patch of water in the North Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman – on the first deployment to support the ongoing fight against ISIS and as a hedge against Iran and the second covering the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
“They were supposed to remain in the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic but they ended up spending most of their deployment in the Middle East,” U.S. 2nd Fleet commander Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis told reporters at Naval Station Norfolk on Saturday.
“Their previous deployment was in the Middle East, too. They’ve had a couple of port visits but it’s not much to write home about.”
The growing efficacy of the Russian fleet – particularly its submarine threat – has pushed the U.S. and its allies to exercise more in the high north with larger formations like carrier strike groups and amphibious ready groups. Ike was set to support those missions in conjunction with the deployment of the U.K. Royal Navy’s new carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08). But the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command leaders tapped Ike to shelve initial plans and move to cover the Afghanistan withdrawal.
“We had one thought of what we were going to execute for the numbered fleet commander. What we wound up actually executing was radically different but we’re trained for that,” Rear Adm. Scott Robertson, commander of Carrier Strike Group 2 told reporters on Ike’s bridge.
The embarked Carrier Air Wing 3 flew a combination of close air support missions that included the suppression of the Taliban’s ability to trigger remote bombs and improvised explosive devices, presence flights and strike missions in support of the withdrawal.
“Helping to support the end of a 20-year conflict was… really special and it gave our all of our sailors, pilots and air crew – the entire force – gave us a real sense of purpose to be over there knowing that our operations were going to be protecting American lives on the ground,” Robertson said.
While double-pumping a carrier is not ideal, the leaders and the crew had enough warning to blunt the effects of the dual deployments. For example, while Ike, CAW 3 and cruiser USS Vella Gulf (CG-72) did both deployments, CSG 2 took over leadership from CSG 10, along with a new roster of guided-missile escorts.
Ahead of the first deployment, the carrier beefed up its mental health support with a cadre of about 140 sailors that were trained in identifying problem behaviors in fellow sailors before they spiraled into larger issues for the ship, Ike’s psychologist, Cmdr. Brendan Finton, told USNI News. According to a study of carriers, Ike, despite the double pump, performed well compared to the rest of the fleet in terms of mental health.
“From the last deployment, we looked at how our mental health numbers were compared to other carriers in the fleet and our numbers look pretty good,” Cmdr. Paul Greer, Ike’s chaplain, told USNI News.
“We look at the total utilization of services. We look at suicide related interventions as part of that. We look at unplanned mental health losses as part of that. That was a critical component of the last deployment and even this one had a significantly low number of those.”
For the current deployment, Ike had three unplanned mental health losses – where a crew member left due to mental health concerns – in its crew of more than 5,000. The average for a regular carrier is closer to 80.
“The fact that people have been on two deployments together has created a lot of connectedness and created a lot of great relationships and created a good support network. So the fact that everyone is in it together is a great support system,” Ike’s commander, Capt. Paul Campagna, told USNI News.
Now that the carrier is back, it will soon enter a 12-month maintenance period at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., Campagna said.
“I don’t expect any availability extensions on this one,” he said. “What I’m most proud of is the sailors onboard this ship have done an incredible job of inspecting the ship, documenting all the deficiencies. We created this whole ship work plan of all the work we need to get done and we did back in March … They’ve had time to look at all the jobs they need to get done to integrate the schedule together and determined a really nice path that we can go through in order to get the ship out on time. I’m excited to execute, there’s no more discovery. We’re in execution mode when we get back and I’m excited to execute that on time.”
AOC(AW/SW) Drew68
And, yeah, I'm a little drunk....
Ping
And then we're ROM'ming (Restriction of Movement -- Covid crap).
Spent NYE in a hotel room. Jeez.. and the 5 months between deployments, mostly COVID crap and working our asses off to maintain currencies and be prepared for this deployment.
Now we're underway.
Wearing masks...
Crappy port calls.
Jeez. Pardon me if I'm copping a good buzz but it is damn awesome to be home.
I can regale you all with more sea stories (those that we're allowed to talk about, OPSEC, and all that...)
More to come...
And the ability of every last shipmate aboard to fix every last broken piece of gear never ceases to amaze me.
These Sailors are the BEST I've ever seen!
Plank owner if the Ike here...
Sorry about the Oval Office - seems we broke it while you were away....
Hey...welcome home Drew68.
Damn. Deployed for 320 of the last 514 days.
As an outsider, I see real problems with the military in general and the USN in particular, but I won’t say that deployment schedules like that aren’t a big part of the problem.
Gad. That has to hurt morale.
BTW, my squadron was deployed to the Ike back in December 1978 for carrier qualifications so when she was brand new, we did exercises off the East coast.
We made a port call to Guantanamo Bay and had a big ship-wide beach party there with open bar supplied beer...
We lost a plane and a pilot in a cold cat launch on that deployment. The pilot ejected, but got tangled in his parachute, and they had a helicopter set down on the water and had a launch in the water too as the ship pulled up right beside him, but...he drowned in seeming slow motion while everyone throughout the ship watched on CCTV. It was a terrible thing to watch.
Anyway, welcome home Shipmate. I hope you have a great and well deserved great time with family and friends...:)
I have to say-I find that post most uplifting and refreshing...that is good to hear.
Welcome back....thats a longer deployment than the Gold teams on SSBNs.
Bmk for later!
When she docks, the side-cleaners are going to be chipping, snading and slingin’ lots of red lead (Naval version of Rust-Oleum) and Haze Grey.
chipping, snading and slingin’
That’s SANDING...
Sorry about the port calls. It couldn’t get much better than Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore in the 60’s.
#4 a bit rusty. They need to scrap the rust off and repaint : )
Yep. That's the old Navy. Don't know if we'll over get that back.
Port calls this time time around consisted of Norfolk (after COMTUEX) --couldn't leave the pier. Then we hit Souda Bay, Duqm (Oman) and Duqm again. Couldn't leave the "sandbox" (a cordoned-off area accessible only to Sailors and a handful of approved vendors) for any of these ports.
Four more port calls than we got last deployment last year when we were underway for a whopping 206 days straight with zero port visits. At least we got a little WiFi and some beers this time around.
Thanks. Your tale of a drowning pilot was difficult to read. I re-read these posts today as I was buzzing a bit last night.
Morale, was, well... I didn't like telling my sea stories to the younger sailors who've known nothing but steel beach picnics, beer days (2 cans max) and sandbox liberty.
Nonetheless, when we got the word that we'd be the force behind the retrograde of Afghanistan, morale was along the lines of "we've been double-pumped, double extended, shafted, and our poor ship really needs some dry dock maintenance but we've got a job to do..."
We all sucked it up and went to work and, amazingly, fixed a whole bunch of stuff that normally would've required pulling in to port and calling in the government contractors.
We'd have days when the aircraft elevators didn't work. And then the next day they did. The cats didn't work. And they did the next day. Potable water, generators, you name it. They kept this ship chugging along. We finished the mission.
Favorite Ike memory of this deployment? Rescuing a float coat that some Sailor threw overboard. At 0230. We deployed the helos. His MOBI (Man Overboard Indicator transmitter) went off and a man-overboard was called. 5,000 sailors get out of your racks and muster with your work center.
The helo rescue swimmer fished an empty float court out of the drink and a full muster was completed. A frustrated sailor admitted to throwing his float coat overboard and went to Captain's Mast.
Well. You have been around for a while. I was distressed to hear about this “sandbox” liberty which I assume means nobody gets to go out wherever they want, they have to go with some organized group and such.
I can’t imagine the hit an extension of a cruise would take on morale. That would have irritated me to no end in a peacetime Navy.
I salute you for our part in getting things done. Getting people to pull together and solve issues in that fashion takes leadership. It doesn’t just happen spontaneously and can be made worse by poor leadership.
Good job.
As for that sailor who threw his vest over the side...you have to laugh, but...no getting around that. He paid for that.
We had two notable guys go overboard during my enlistment and one memorable man overboard non-drill.
One guy jumped overboard one night as we were passing through the Straits of Messina. He was never found, and everyone speculated he was trying to swim to shore. I always wondered if he made it.
Another time, as we were leaving Pier 12 in Norfolk to head overseas, a guy leaped overboard right after we had untied and were being pushed away. I didn’t see it, but apparently, the guy’s wife was smooching it up on the dock with some other guy while waving goodbye.
The Man Overboard non-drill...
...as for that non-drill Man Overboard...
When I served on the USS JFK back in the Seventies, there was a sailor on watch one night on the Port Quarter.
It was about 0300, the sailor was sitting in a chair, peacoat on, soundpowered phones on, looking out at the ocean and...he fell asleep. A couple of his buddies came down to say hello, saw he was sleeping, and had a great idea for a prank.
They crawled over and tied the shoelaces on his boondockers together. They retreated back into the hatch and then called out in semi-hushed tones “Man Overboard! Man Overboard!”
Well, it had the desired effect. The sleeping sailor jumped to his feet and fell flat on his face.
Unfortunately, someone on a catwalk above heard them, and raised the alarm. The entire battlegroup came alive, 6000 men on the carrier, and thousands on the destroyers, cruisers and support ships were rousted from their beds and ran to their battle stations to report in as the ships maneuvered in unison to come about.
Needless to say, the men were court martialed.
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