Navy Story #26
Cutting Holes in the Mediterranean Sea
During the spring and summer of 1973, the USS Pensacola did a tour of duty in the Mediterranean Sea (called "Med" for short). You can see some of the pictures I took, at
We visited Athens, Greece at the end of our deployment (the picture of "The Poet" was taken that day), and then headed south from Athens to make our trip back through the
Med and the Strait of Gibraltar on our way home. What an exciting time! We were homeward bound!
We had just made our turn west after the southward voyage from Athens and had been steaming westward for about two hours when we got an urgent radio message from Atlantic Fleet headquarters.
The Captain told the crew that we had been ordered to turn back around and join another group of ships (called a task force) to patrol the eastern Med area. Egypt and Syria had attacked Israel to start the Yom Kippur war
of October 1973. We were to stand by for possible evacuation of Americans from the involved countries if needed. We were also there to simply make a display of force.
You can read some details about this war at
We went to the highest alert level that a ship can be on, which meant that we had our helmets and other gear such as life jackets with us at all times. All battle stations were manned,
and someone was at or in all of the gun mounts at all times. We stayed on high alert for three weeks. All we did during that time was sail around "cutting holes in the water" as they say in the Navy. We did see
some Russian task forces a long way off, who were also there to make a display of force. It was really a scary time, because we didn't really have that much information about what was going on. We didn't know if
maybe the next moment we would see a missile or torpedo coming our way from the Russians, or maybe something else might threaten the ship. It was very tense.
During those three weeks, we ran into one of the fiercest storms that had ever been seen in the Mediterranean, actually in the Adriatic Sea. (We had to make a side trip through the
Adriatic to pick up some supplies.) The seas (waves) were 30 feet high, which is really big even for a big ship (Pensacola is about 600 feet long). Most of us, including the Captain, got sick or queasy. I lost one of my
Pensacola baseball caps overboard during that storm. But hey, I didn't get swept overboard!
Well, we survived the storm, the war was very short, and after three weeks we got to stand down from the alert status and finally head for home.
Our presence in the area did, by the way, have some bearing on the outcome of the war. The presence of U.S. military units always carries some weight in what happens in the world, almost
always for the good. I feel good about our having been there.