The primary mission of HS-5 was "close in" anti submarine warfare (ASW) took on a significantly new meaning with our HS-5 Sea King detachment on USS Peterson! Not only did the Sea King provide an ASW asset but was also capable of indentifying any surface threats in the vicinity of the Peterson which is part of the ASUW (anti surface ship warfare) mission. They could also transport officers to and from the Battle Group to Peterson.

I was particularly valuable in this first helo det experiment because of my experience in the logistics and maintenance aspects of this endeavor because of my background at COMNAVAIRLANT as a Class Desk Officer, as a aircraft maintenance officer, and my as background in coordinating  aircraft detachments as Commanding Officer at VA-174 with our weapons detachments to El Centro and to aircraft carriers conducing carrier day and night pilot carrier qualifications. I did most of this while RADM Kilares was the Commander of CRUDESGROUP 12.  I kept my involvement "low key" during the actual conduct of the HS-5 detachment experiment. However, RADM Guilbault got wind of my involvement did not appreciate my role in the det experiment and said to me, "Sometimes I wonder who the Admiral is on the staff". In some aspects, was correct. He was more competent as a "Weapons Systems Aquisition Manager (WSAM) than as a Carrier Battle Group tactician!

Air Operations

There are no good pictures of air operations in the crew's book. So these will have to do!

CVW 7 Diamond of Diamonds Fly By	F-14 Tomcat High Speed Pass

I had very little direct contact with the air wing and ship. That was our Air Officer's job. My involvement was in the planning and coordination of Sixth Fleet exercises when we were CTF 60. My experience at Third Fleet in providing air services for fleet exercises also involved constructing portions of the Schedule of Events (SOE) for these exercises. This experience enabled me to be a valuable part of exercise planning and coordination. There is no information in the crew's book about what exercises we were involved in but I will insert any comments about potential air operations and any exercises we most likely conducted.

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Liberty Ports/Dates

  There is no mention in the crew's book about when we conducted the turnover in Rota with the outgoing Battle Group. Without this information, it is difficult to determine what scale of flight operations we conducted prior to entering our first liberty port, Palma de Majorca. My best guess is that we conducted some flight operations but did not participate in any exercises with Spain when enroute to Palma.

Palma de Majorca Spain (18-24 March, 1988)

 

I will not attempt to describe all the liberty possibilities in each port as I have done in past chapters. I will only mention the aspects of each liberty port that related to my significant experiences in each port on this deployment!


Tennis in Palma Nova

LCDR Dave O'Brien an S3 pilot in VS-31 somehow found out that I was an experienced tennis player and contacted me in Palma. I took him to the Palma Nova Tennis Club for a set or two. He played tennis on the University of Florida Tennis team and was considerably better than me! But we made a very competitive doubles team and played in almost every port.

Palma Nova Tennis Club


Note: Although Dave was a better tennis player than me, his strength was as a hard court serve and volley style he payed with the Gators. I had more experience on the Hartru green clay courts in Florida and I had a lot of experience on the red clay courts in the European countries. Those factors made our singles competition more even than it would have been if we were playing on hard courts.

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There was only time for getting every pilot at least one landing with only four days between leaving Palma and arriving at Toulon.

Toulon, France (29 March-4 April)

  Toulon is the home of the French Navy.

I was flown off Ike a couple of days before the ship's arrival to coordinate the planning for meetings that would be held after the ship arrived. I knew this was very important as RADM Guilbault was of French decent and wanted everything to go off perfectly with the French Navy.

My coordination with the French Navy went very well and I didn't expect any problems with RADM Guilbault. Sometimes the planning was held under very pleasant circumstances. One of my French Navy contacts was the Chief Engineer of one of the French Navy aircraft carriers. I did some of the reception planning with the Chief Engineer and his wife on Lemorean Beach outside of Toulon. Lemorean Beach is considered as the beginning of the French Riviera.

The reception went very well and proved to be the format we used in later receptions in Cannes, Palma, Antalya, Turkey, and Haifa, Israel.

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Now that the reception was completed, it was time for me to get in some tennis with my new tennis partner Dave O'Brien.
 

I took Dave to a tennis club that I had discovered during two trips to Toiuon when I was the Executive Officer of USS Saratoga CV-60. We played a few sets of singles there and then took on one of the club men's doubles teams. We defeated the local team while we developed our own doubles tactics. We found that were hard to beat when Dave was serving as his first serve was strong and he came to the net on his serve. With both of us at the net, we were on the offensive.

Our experience on the red clay at Toulon would be valuable when we were matched with a strong doubles match in Marseille. The folks at the Toulon Tennis Club arranged the doubles match for us in our next liberty port at the Tennis Club de Marseille.

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There was time for getting every pilot a few landings with five days between leaving Toulon and arriving at Marseille.

Merceille, France
(11-17 April)


Tennis Club de Marseille


The Tennis Club de Marseille doubles team was ready for us on the date scheduled.
It was a very competitive match which we lost two sets to one.

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There was time for having mutual operations with the French Navy in the eight days between leaving Marseille and arriving at Cannes.

Cannes, France (26 April-1 May)

   As you can see in the image above, there are hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops along the road behind the beach. I was very surprised how expensive everything was. For example,a draft beer was close to $10.

USS Saratoga ZIPPO lighter

However, I accidentally discovered a solution to the problem. While I was enjoying my $10 beer, the bar tender admired my USS Saratoga  zippo lighter. The outcome was that the bartender offered me two drinks on the house if I would give him the lighter. I made the trade. I had made a "friend for life". For the rest of our stay in Cannes, my drinks were on the house if I ordered them from my bartender friend. I wonder how many meals at the restaurant I could have traded for a COMCRUDESGRU 12 coffee cup.

COMCRUDESGRU 12 coffee cup

I had a female friend at the Tennis Club at Toulon. She decided to drive to Nice to stay with her aunt and visit me in Cannes during our port visit.

We actually stayed with her aunt in Nice and made the drive back and forth to Cannes.

Duck L'Orange

Nice has a typical beautiful French Riviera beach with great restaurants. But has a more relaxed European traditional atmosphere compared to the trendy and posh Cannes and St Tropez.

Grasse Provence

A great thing to do in Nice or Cannes is to visit Grasse Provence, the perfume capital of France.

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There was plenty of time for having an exercise with the Italian Navy in the Tyrrhenian Sea on the sixteen days between leaving Cannes and arriving at our next port in Augusta Bay, Sicily. In addition, while operating near Sardinia, our attack pilots would be able to do some air to ground weapons training at targets in Sardinia.

Augusta Bay, Sicily (16-19 May)

  
I don't remember much about our visit to Augusta Bay.
But it was within driving distance to visit Mt Etna and the ancient Greek settlement at Syracusa.

Mt Etna	Ancient Greek Settlement at Syracusa

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There was very little time for conducting air operations in the two days between leaving Ausgusta Bay and and arriving at our next port in Antalya, Turkey.

Antalya, Turkey (23-26 May)

  
The city of Antalya did not offer much except the chance to sample Turkish food at the restaurants there and to buy interesting brass Turkish novelty items like those below. On the first day in Antalya, I went in to town and looked at the novelty items but didn't buy anything. I did enjoy a dinner in town featuring lamb (Muslems don't eat pork and there aren't any cows around).

The second day in Antalya, I went down to the marina to check out some of the sailing yachts tied up there. Antalya is a port that is on the "high class" yacht circuit.

Sailing Yacht

While I was walking on one of the docks, one of the yachtsmen hailed me and offered to show me his yacht. On the way to his yacht, we came across one similar to the one in the image to the left. Two attractive middle aged women aboard their yacht invited us on board for a drink or two. The drink or two lasted until late in the evening! It turned out that the two women on the yacht were a lesbian couple and both were executives high up in the pyramids of their business which were located in Paris. They spent their time sailing their yacht from port to port in the "circuit". Occasionally, they would leave their yacht in a port and fly to Paris for a week or so of work and then fly back to their boat and sail on to their next . Interestingly, their next port of call was Palma de Majorca which was also our next liberty port.

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There was plenty of time to conduct air operations in the thirteen days between leaving Antalya Turkey and Palma De Majorca.


Our Second Visit to Palma de Majorca (9-19 June)
Ten Days in Palma (Outstanding)

Most of the officers and crew spent most of their time in Palma Nova enjoying the beach, bars, clubs, restaurants and along with the female Scandinavian tourists.

I agreed with their assessment but I concentrated my interest to getting in some tennis with Dave O'Brien at the Palma Nova Tennis Club and taking him to a restaurant that I knew about that served joints of lamb with Majorcan vegetables (my favorite) as well as local sea food dishes.

Majorcan Food Specialties

Majorcan Joint of Lamb	Majorcan Vegetables	Majorcan Paella

Palma Nova Tennis Club
 

Once again, the members of the Palma Nova Tennis Club were enthusiastically hospitable to Dave and me. We enjoyed some double competition and even spent some time at the pool and in the restaurant. Unfortunately, this was my last visit to the Palma Nova Tennis Club and the opportunity to enjoy the hospitality of the company of the members of the club.  

I had been on a small yacht trip with friends at the Palma Nova Tennis Club but had never had a reason to visit the main marina at Palma.

However, this time was different in that I might be able to meet up with my new yachting friends from Antalya. But, unfortunately, I was unable to locate them at the marina. But I did met some more interesting people in the process.

Goodby Palma. This was my final visit. You were one of my favorite liberty ports in the Mediterranean. I even had a"Pipe Dream" that I would retire in Palma buy a small boat and sail around your pristine waters, maybe do some fishing, but certainly return to the Palma Nova Tennis Club.

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There was time to conduct air operations in the six days between leaving Palma and arriving in Naples.

Naples, Italy (27 June-5 July)

The Port of Naples

I have several memories of this, my final visit to Naples. Most of them are associated with this image of Mercellina.


First, I'm sure I took Dave O'Brien to play tennis at the Cirollo Canettieri Tennis Club.

The Cirollo Canettieri Tennis Club is located between the Egg Castle in the Mercellina image above with a view of the Port of Naples in the image to the left. It is a private club that I was invited to play several times in the past by the members of the club. We probably played some singles. But, I expect that the club found a good doubles team to test our capability. They probably lost out in that contest. Dave and I were almost unbeatable at that point in the deployment.

Second, I'm sure that I spent at least some time in the bar of the Hotel Vesuvio.

The Hotel Vesuvio had a great bar and had an interesting clientele. I had spent a few nights there in the past.

Next was that I was treated to a dinner by Alphonso Maglia the head of the vendors for dinner at a famous restaurant over looking Mergellia.

This painting is a view from near to the restaurant painted by Bruno one of the vendors.

This is painting is a view from near to the restaurant. What was exceptional about this dinner was that all of my favorite vendors were present with their wives including Ernesto Polidoro and his cousin from Silvio tailors, and Bruno,the artist along with their wives. This was very unusual for Italian businessmen to include their wives to dinners with clients. But, it was a a demonstration for their respect in the way I had conducted business with them over the years.

Next was that I certainly made a stop by Umberto with Ernesto and one of the vendors who had a wonderful tenor voice.

Umberto was a restaurant located in near Mergellina. It was famous for a guitarist and violinist who played there for many years.  It was normally frequented by members of the Naples Opera Company who would sing to entertain the crowd. However,  However the catch was that they expected the customers to follow suit and sing for everyone. The vendor who accompanied us surprised the opera singers with the quality of his voice. He not only could sing opera but also popular music by people like Frank Sinatra.

Finally, I was assigned by RADM Guilbault to host June Gibbs Brown the Inspector General of the  Department of Defense for lunch.

June Gibbs Brown

I hosted Gaston Glock, the owner of Glock and one of the sons of the Beretta company on two of these VIP visits.

Haifa, Israel (10-11 July and 15-17 July)

   There were three events that I remember well in Haifa.

Tour of the Sea of Galilee led by Gila Gerson.
(July 11th during the first part of our visit to Haifa)

Gila Gerson led a tour for CRUDESGRU 12 staff members. Oden Ham drove his Chevy "conversion van" The route was from Haifa to Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee and then back to Haifa.

We had dinner at the same hotel that hosted our Austin crew members' reenlistments. We had St Peter's fish, of course, and a fine white wine from one of the wineries on the Golan Heights.

Nazareth	Geila leading a previous tour of Galilee	View from the hotel at dinner

Tour of Jerusalem lead by Oden Ham
(July 16th during the second part of our visit to Haifa)


We began the tour at the Temple Mount and the Western Wall and then went in to the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem to check out the shops and have dinner.

	We had a brief tour of the Temple Mount followed by spending more time at the Western Wall. A couple of the staff members actually wrote a prayer on a small piece of paper and then rolled it up and left it in a crevice in the wall which is the custom. We decided not spend any time in the Christian quarter of Jerusalem choosing instead to visit the Muslim quarter.
The Muslim Quarter	We felt a little uncomfortable in the Muslim quarter but Oded assured us that we would be fine. We had dinner in a Muslim restaurant. The food was good but very spicy. One of our staff members reacted to the spicy food by perspiring heavily. I had never seen any one perspire in a stream of sweat before!

Gila told me during the first part of our Haifa visit that I had been invited to Acre to visit Tony and his family.  So, I made that a priority and we went to Acre on July 1th to what I thought was a simple visit with his family. Our party consisted on me, and Gila and another USO woman.

My Second Visit to Acre with Gila Gerson
(July 17th our last day in Haifa)

In my first visit to Acre when I was the Commanding Officer of USS Austin, Gila took me to Acre to tour the Templar caves during the period of the Crusades. While walking back to the car at about midnight, I saw Tony's little girl (to Tony's right) sweeping the alley in front of he family store. I took her picture which resulted in  screams from the family inside the store. Gilla told me that I was probably the first person to take a picture of the little girl. Gila had the pictures developed and we gave it to the family he next day. Tony was  a Christian born in Nazareth.

The square was in the very old part of the city.

When we arrived in Acre, instead of visiting the family in their store, we were taken to a square in the old part of the city where a crowd had gathered. A large banner was at the entrance to the square reading "Welcome Back Captain Smith". After some celebrating in the square, we went to the family's apartment. They sat me in a chair with a stool next to me with a fan behind it (Acre air conditioning). We had some food followed by coffee. Tony' sister read our fortunes in the coffee grounds. When she read the coffee grounds of the USO woman who was with us, she began to wail and had to try a second time. She told the USO lady that she was sorry her husband and killed himself and their two children. The USO woman had had told me that her family had died in a car crash.

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With favorable winds, there was time to conduct air operations in the seven days  from the time we got underway from Haifa on July 18th and arriving in Livorno, Italy on July 26th.

If we conducted flight operations, in the Ionian Sea, we would have passed through the Straits of Messina to Livorno. If we conducted flight operations in the Tyrrhenian Sea, we would have sailed directly to Livorno.

Livorno, Italy (26 July- 2 August)

I don't recall much about Livrno except it was ideally located to take USO tours to Pisa and Florence.

The Tower at Pisa	A famous bridge at Florence

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  With favorable winds, there was time to conduct air operations in the four days from the time we got underway from Livorno and our arrival at Cannes, France

Our second visit to Cannes, France (8-15 August)

Eight days in Cannes-Wow!


The International TV Festival was going on while we were in port. I only remember two events during this period both related to the International TV Festival. There were tours of IKE by numerous participants of the festival. I was assigned to host some of the VIP tours.

The two tours I remember were tours by the casts of "Star Trek" and "Dallas".

I remember Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard) very well. He was very enthusiastic and continuously asked questions so that I hardly had chance to check out the other members of the cast.	I remember several of the members of the "Dallas" cast; Larry Hagman ("JR" Ewing), Patrick Duffy (Bobby Ewing), Linda Gray (strikingly attractive), and Charlene Tilton (red dress) wore a short skirt and cowboy boots.

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Cannes was our last port of call. So when we left Cannes on the 16th of August, we were on our way home.

Homeward Bound
Cannes to Gibraltar to Rota and then westward to Home


We waved "Good By" to Palma de Majorcaas we passed the Baleric Islands.  We enjoyed a beautiful passage by Gibraltar on our way to meeting our relief at Naval Station Rota.

I didn't realize it at the time that I would not be returning to the Palma Nova Tennis Club on my Med deployment as COMPHIBRON 8.	Also, I didn't know that I would not be passing by Gibraltar as COMPHIBRON 8.

 

Naval Station Rota

After the turnover with the incoming Battle Group, we were on our way home. During the transit across the Atlantic, I was thinking about what I wanted to accomplish on my COMPHIBRON 8 deployment.


Homecoming back in Mayport

I don't recall how or where we of loaded the staff in Mayport. I doubt that the IKE came along side at Charlie Pier or if we offloaded the staff by helo from IKE anchored off Mayport. But, we did offload and a crowd was there to meet us.

Cathy and Mrs Hull-Ryde's Meeting with RADM Guilbault

Cathy complained to RADM Guilbault that I had a French girlfriend in Toulon. He was surprised but told them that he would take care of it!

RADM Guilbault's Decision

RADM Guilbault's decision was that he had me de-screened as COMPHIBRON 8 and did not present my second Legion of Merit that had been approved by the Secretary of the Navy!

Note: He did not formally present my second Legion of Merit as required by the Bureau of Naval Personnel but he apparently did not have the award cancelled in my record. Consequently, my second Legion of Merit is recorded on my DD-214.

My Second Legion of Merit

My Going Away Party

RADM Guilbualt and the staff arranged a going away party at a local restaurant.

After lunch, RADM Guilbault stood up and initiated what can only be described as a "Roast". One at at a time, various staff members stood up and made derogatory remarks about me. The only aviator present, the Air Officer CDR John Dolquist refused to participate and watched the proceedings grim faced. The Flag Secretary, LCDR Larry Brown, my neighbor in the "Woods" development stated that I was the most selfish person he had ever met. This is the same Larry Brown who attended my Duck L'Orange dinner in Nice with his female escort. It was the most embarrassing moment of my Navy career. I thought their conduct including RADM Guilbault's was undeserved and unprofessional. After lunch, I collected my stuff at the headquarter's building and left!