Note: Most of my Cold War stories either happened to me, or someone I knew. This one is just one I heard, and can be taken with a grain of salt.
The scene is the western Pacific. Sometime in the mid seventies. Two US carrier groups were conducting war games on the high seas. The Away Team, the US Third Fleet, consisted of the nuclear carrier Enterprise and her escorts on a multi month Westpac deployment. Her ships had spent the previous year working up for this cruise, and had all the latest upgrades to their fire-control, navigation and entertainment systems.
The Home Team, ported in Yokosuka, Japan consisted of the oldest Carrier in the fleet, the USS Midway, commissioned just 8 days after WWII was over. The command ship of the of Seventh Fleet, the USS Oklahoma City, actually fired shots in anger during WWII. The only newer ships were several Knox class, aka "McNamara's Folly", frigates commissioned earlier in the decade.
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| USS Enterprise underway, as photographed by author. |
But the Mome Team had one advantage. They have been playing together for years. Whereas the the Away Team was cobbled together by what ships were available at the time.
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| USS Midway underway. Stolen from the internet. |
The Home Team would steam away and then sometime later try to make an attack on the Enterprise battle group. The USS Knox disappeared into the darkness, and contact was eventually lost on the surface search radars. About a half hour later, an contact was made and approaching at a stately 12 knots. Attempts at radio contact failed. The contact was well lit in a pattern of aft areas showing a rise, and the forward areas lower to the water. As it got closer and the US ships resorted to semaphore.
<flashy flashy> Identify yourself.
...Pregnant Pause...
<flashy flashy flash!> We are an Iranian oil tanker.
Ok, it is a big ocean out there, and Iranians were our friends then. And the ships lights looked like a tanker.
The contact chugged along nearing the Enterprise by about 5 miles.
In the Combat Information Center, CIC, of the Enterprise, the Executive Officer threw off his head set in anger, "SHIT!!!!" He had just been notified that the Enterprise had been ruled struck by a nuclear tipped torpedo.
For the rest of the games, whenever the Knox was found again, it would get buzzed non-stop by Enterprise aircraft. Iranian tanker my ass!
Round 2:
The Enterprise Electronic Warfare division, EW, detected the Midways electronic signature some distance off. 24 aircraft were organized for a strike.
On the other side was the cruiser USS Worden, CG-18, a Terrier, "double-ender", Mod 5, meaning it had Terrier missiles fore and aft. They had reconfigured their radio emissions to match that of the Midway. The Enterprise's equivalent was the USS Bainbridge, CGN-25, with her Terrier system upgraded to Mod 8. But that was not really relevant to this story.
The Fire Control problem is very complicated. Some 70+ variables need to be calculated to put the "shot"
But moving straight at the shooter? That's easy! And when the shooter is a missile cruiser firing 4 missiles at a time starting at 40 miles away? It was a bad accident waiting to happen to the Enterprise strike force. By 2's and 4's pilots were being radioed by the umpires that they were casualties and they had to return to base.
In high orbit over the Worden, were a score of Midway A-6 Intruders. Each capable of carrying 18,000 pounds of bombs. For a comparison, 2 Intruders could carry the same bomb load as the entire air wing of the Enterprise at the battle of Midway. But where was the Enterprise? The Intruders just had to follow the returning jets.
You would think someone in the Enterprise battle group would have noticed that there were twice as many planes returning as were sent out.
Round 3:
I have no first hand information here. But I can imagine the admirals getting together and deciding to have a "normal" war game without the trickery that totally skunked the Away Team. Decent separation of forces, playing hide and seek over a couple thousand square miles. Both forces going into Emission Control, or EMCON, trying to scout out the enemy.
While in EMCON, all radars and other transmitters are either shut down, or up and broadcasting into a water load, so that they can be emitting at a seconds notice if need be. Even the most modern systems used tubes for the final stage amps that can handle a million watts of power, and those tubes took a little while to warm up. Electronic Warfare equipment searching all known military bands for an errant signal.
But what about non-military frequencies? The Home Team's Knox frigates were new and fairly up to date, and one of them picked up a weak VHF signal. VHF was channels 2-13 on the TV dial. Range of TV in that day was 40 miles. Who was transmitting Happy Days in the middle of the Pacific?
Another air strike ordered, many jets shot down by alert defenders, but enough got through to be declared a win for the Home Team.
In the post op of the game it was determined that the closed circuit TV system on the Enterprise had single faulty ground along one of its cable runs, and that was enough to leak the signal that was detected. Useful information and one of the reasons you play these games.
