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Long wait is over as Navy announces homecoming dates
By JACK DORSEY AND MATTHEW DOLAN, The Virginian-Pilot
© May 9, 2003
Last updated: 4:18 PM

Carrier Theodore Roosevelt. File photo.

Carrier Harry S. Truman.

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With the official announcement of a return date for the carrier Theodore Roosevelt, one of the largest Navy homecomings in Hampton Roads history is set for later this month.

Ending weeks of speculation about the Roosevelt's date to return, Navy officials said Thursday that the Norfolk-based carrier will be home May 29 -- a week earlier than even the most optimistic rumors circulating among families of crew members.

The addition of the Roosevelt to the homecoming party means that 15 ships and more than 16,000 personnel are expected to return to Hampton Roads from May 22 to May 29. All participated in the war with Iraq.

Several ships and groups of personnel have returned from the Middle East in recent weeks, but this will be the first large-scale homecoming for the Hampton Roads military.

The Norfolk-based Harry S. Truman battle group will kick off the homecoming wave when its air wing returns to Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach on May 22. The carrier group's 10 ships will come into Norfolk Naval Station the next day.

But only part of the Roosevelt battle group is returning this month. The air wing will fly into Oceana on May 28, with the carrier and the cruiser Cape St. George arriving in Norfolk the next day.

The battle group's other seven ships, with about 2,300 aboard, are being kept in the Mediterranean Sea for any unexpected contingencies that might arise from Operation Iraqi Freedom, officials said. The ships are expected home in July, completing about a six-month deployment.

Also expected home on May 29 is the three-ship Nassau amphibious ready group. Navy officials have not confirmed the date, but several family members said they were told the ships would be home that day.

The Truman battle group has about 8,100 sailors, Marines and pilots. The Roosevelt, its air wing and the Cape St. George crew total almost 6,300 personnel. The Nassau group has about 1,800 Navy personnel, and will be dropping off 2,000 Camp Lejeune-based Marines in North Carolina before heading home.

Not since the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 have so many Hampton Roads-based ships been scheduled to come home in such a short time frame. The last homecoming approaching this magnitude was April 15-20 of that year, when 13 amphibious ships, the carrier America and some of its escorts returned.

The announcement of the Roosevelt's return date was welcome news for family members, who have been wrestling with the rumor mill for weeks.

``Awesome!'' said Sylvia Carbonell, 39, whose husband serves as a gas turbine engine electrician on the Cape St. George. ``It's been flip-flopping so often I didn't know what to think.''

If this latest news holds, Maximo Carbonell should be able to attend the June 8 high school graduation of 18-year-old Javier, his first-born.

``If the plans don't change again,'' his wife added.

Family members of the battle group's crew earlier had been told that the carrier would be home in early June, although one report was circulating that the return might be delayed until October.

Most battle group families missed a chance for an official goodbye before the deployment back in January. The carrier and its attendant ships left for the war straight from training in the Caribbean.

``Excited doesn't even cover it,'' said Eileen O'Hanlon, wife of the Roosevelt's commanding officer, Capt. Richard J. O'Hanlon.

O'Hanlon, an emergency-room nurse and mother of five, said she is used to the chaos of being married to a sailor sent overseas.

``I'm never surprised at anything anymore in the Navy,'' she said. ``I think it was hardest on the `newbies,' as I call the new spouses. Some thought that it was my husband, Rich, who controlled the date. But of course he didn't.''

Now that the return date has been confirmed, spouses such as Andrea Conti, 38, can swing into action.

Conti, a co-chair of the homecoming celebration and wife of Ensign David Conti aboard the Roosevelt, said the families ``couldn't start planning for the homecoming until it was official. Now we'll have to rush.''

A party for Roosevelt families scheduled for next weekend was to celebrate the halfway point in the deployment. They still plan to hoist a sign marking that event.

``Then we'll rip it down and put up `For the Final Fling,' '' O'Hanlon said.

Reach Jack Dorsey at 446-2284 or jdorsey@pilotonline.com Reach Matthew Dolan at 446-2322 or mdolan@pilotonline.com

Destroyer Briscoe's final deployment a vivid one
By JACK DORSEY, The Virginian-Pilot
© May 10, 2003
Last updated: 1:41 AM

The destroyer Briscoe

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For a ship headed into retirement, the destroyer Briscoe's deployment swan song was anything but quiet.

``We've had one heck of a deployment, just fantastic from start to finish,'' Cmdr. Scott Sundt, the Briscoe's captain, said from Rota, Spain, as he pointed the 25-year-old ship's bow west toward the Atlantic for its final trip home. ``We have done just about everything a ship could be asked to do. . . . It's easier to list what we didn't do.''

During the past five months at sea, the Briscoe and its crew of 370 fired Tomahawk missiles, performed missions off the Horn of Africa and bounced back and forth between the Mediterranean and Red seas.

The Briscoe, part of the carrier Truman battle group, left Norfolk Dec. 5 in advance of the war in Iraq. Along with most of the 10 other ships in the group, it is due home May 23.

``As soon as we got over here, we started doing escorts through the Strait of Gibraltar,'' Sundt said.

Gibraltar is one of several narrow choke points for warships to pass, where they are more vulnerable to attacks than on the open seas.

``Then we got orders right after Christmas to beat feet and get ourselves through the Suez Canal,'' he said. ``We did that on Jan. 5 and headed straight to the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa.''

They joined a multinational task force commanded by an Italian admiral and patrolled the strait of Bab al Mandab, another choke point for shipping at the southern end of the Red Sea. There they monitored the flow of coalition forces headed to the Persian Gulf, including the seven-ship Amphibious Task Force East from Norfolk that carried more than 5,000 Hampton Roads-based sailors and 7,000 North Carolina-based Marines to the war front.

Working with the command ship Mount Whitney off the Horn of Africa, the Briscoe provided naval gunfire support off the African republic of Djibouti to help train 20 gunnery spotters from five countries.

``In eight hours we shot over 300 rounds into the range and did 32 firing missions,'' Sundt said. ``That was really impressive. I've never seen anything like that in the 28 years I've been in the Navy, and I'm a gunnery type of guy.''

Next the ship was ordered to head back into the northern Red Sea, where it joined eight other ships for the beginning of the war in mid-March.

``We launched 25 Tomahawks over the space of several days,'' he said.

Then the Briscoe was ordered back into the Suez Canal to escort other ships.

Back into the Med, the Briscoe picked up guard duty near Egypt's Port Said, helping out minesweeping ships in the area. Then it was off toward Syria, after the Briscoe received ``some information about some bad guys we thought might be trying to get out.''

The Briscoe was resupplied by ships from Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the United States.

Through all its activity, the ship's crew never suffered a significant casualty.

The Briscoe's crew includes 55 women and and some sailors who are not yet U.S. citizens, Sundt said. They come from Morocco, India, the Philippines and the Caribbean.

``What keeps getting to me is how young everyone is,'' Sundt said. ``My warfighters are 19 and 20 years old. They are not hardened, salty old sailors. These are people who have been in the Navy just one or two years, and here they are sitting in front of consoles, launching Tomahawks.''

Lt. Charles Rogers, 31, the ship's operations officer, said he also was impressed with the crew.

``I was very, very amazed how knowledgeable these kids are at such young ages,'' he said. ``In some cases they are cocky. But they get the job done.''

There is more to firing a Tomahawk than just ``ready, aim, fire,'' Rogers said. Hours of preparation are required to prevent the missiles from hitting one another, or flying over a friendly ship.

On March 21, when 400 of the 800 Tomahawks used in the war were launched, the sky was filled with bright orange flames reflecting off the various ships' decks. Rogers, a transplant from Texas who now calls Norfolk home, is married and the father of two, with a third child expected by August.

``Leading up to the point where the first missile left the rail, the crew was excited,'' Rogers said. ``But when it left the rail, it was a very silencing thing. The gravity of what that missile was on its way to do was kind of humbling.''

Petty Officer 2nd Class Christina Taylor, a boatswain's mate from Chesapeake, watched that night, too. She described the missile firings as somber, with everyone in a ``team mode'' to ``take care of business.''

``I feel good about what we did, because we did our job and did it extremely well,'' said Taylor, who is the mother of a 4-year-old son named Jerit. ``But it is time to go home.''

Reach Jack Dorsey at jdorsey@pilotonline.com or 446-2284.

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Amphibious Task Force East -- the last large group of ships deployed from Hampton Roads for Operation Iraqi Freedom -- is expected to return to their home ports of Norfolk and Virginia Beach before the end of June, Navy officials said Friday.

The task force includes about 4,500 sailors who left on six amphibious ships in mid-January for the coast of North Carolina and then the Middle East. The ships are the amphibious assault ships Bataan, Kearsarge and Saipan; the dock landing ships Ashland and Gunston Hall; and the amphibious transport dock Ponce.

No arrival date was announced. Additional information on when the ships will be back will be provided when their schedules are determined and approved, the Navy said.

On Friday the Navy confirmed the May 29 arrival of three other Hampton Roads-based amphibious ships -- the amphibious assault ship Nassau, transport dock Austin and dock landing ship Tortuga.

About 1,800 sailors in the Nassau group are scheduled to drop off 2,000 Marines in Morehead City, N.C., on May 26 and then return to Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Those ships left Aug. 26 and will be completing a nine-month deployment.

Earlier in the week, the Navy confirmed the return to Norfolk of the carrier Harry S. Truman and most of its accompanying 11 ships on May 23.

However, one ship in that group, the oiler Kanawha, won't return until later in June, according to Military Sealift Command officials. It carries a crew of about 25 naval personnel and 100 civilian Merchant Marines.

Also confirmed this week is the return of the carrier Theodore Roosevelt on May 29, the same day the Nassau group returns. Except for the cruiser Cape St. George, which will escort the Roosevelt home, the remaining half-dozen ships in that group will not return until July.