Re: Sensors - War Stories

> At 06:02  29/05/01 -0400, you wrote:
> >I had heard that it was the opposite.  The plucky brits (possibly
aussies) 
lit
> >up their vessel as a cruise liner and sailed into the middle of a
CVBG (which
> >couldn't warn off the "civvie" vessel without violating EMCON).
[Naval 
> >exercises
> >are never over before the CVN is sunk]
> 
> Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward refers to a incident like this in his book
'One 
> Hundred Days'.
> 
> Derek

I have to be a bit careful about details, I'm afraid. Yeah Yeah,
consider the 
usual BS about "I could tell you, but I'd have to shoot you" said. I've
worked 
with (and on) some state-of-the-art sub and minehunting sonars, so I
can't talk 
about them in anything but general terms.

2 incidents I can tell about though.

Story 1:
I do recall one SURFEX (Surface Exercise) in the late 80s where the
Brisbane's 
crew tried (eventually successfully) to Dress Ship ( ie have lots of
pretty 
running lights rigged, just like a cruise liner) during a Force 10 gale.
It 
worked, too. We sailed right through the patrol boat cordon with nothing
but a 
commercial nav radar (Kelvin-Hughes KH-975) on. The gale helped a lot, 
visibility was atrocious, and radar clutter really bad. We were rolling
through 
90 degrees, so I pity the poor bastards on the patrol boats. They called
off 
the SURFEX when a second patrol boat seaman broke a bone due to the
rough seas, 
but I digress.

I must admit the fact that the crew didn't tell Dad (Father - the CO -
the 
Captain) where to get off when he requested volunteers to dress ship in
a full 
gale impressed me no end. It was a dangerous and difficult evolution,
and they 
knew it.

Story 2:
A Chief Petty Officer of the RAN once told me about a time when HMAS
Perth was 
exercising in the Indian Ocean in the mid 70s with a US Fleet. This was
the 
Nadir of the US armed forces, they had huge morale and drug problems,
and by 
Australian standards were very, very slack. Dangerously so, from our
viewpoint. 
A very different navy from the USN of the last 15 years. The Aussies
thought 
that a bit of possum-stirring might be good for all concerned.

Anyway, one night, the Aussies gimicked a Whirly-1 (WLR-1 - a jammer
that was 
obsolescent even then) to give a signature just like a Russian Don K
Military 
Nav radar, and set her off right when the Perth was right in the middle
of the 
fleet, near the CV.

The USN was Not Amused. But it did liven them up :-)



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