Truman group's 7,500 sailors had a busy 7 months

NORFOLK

When the Truman carrier strike group arrives home this morning, its nearly 7,500 sailors will begin a much deserved rest.

The group spent the past seven months supporting ground troops in Iraq, watching pirates off the Horn of Africa, guarding oil platforms in the Persian Gulf and training with multiple navies from the west coast of Africa to the Black Sea.

It also made progress in the slow, patient process of building trust and cooperation in the region.

The Harry S. Truman strike group approached and assisted more than 1,000 local ships in the waters of the Gulf and Mediterranean. These visits were a way to say hello, build goodwill and urge locals to contact the Navy with any reports of piracy, smuggling and the like.

“We look at it as the cop-on-the-beat role,” said Cmdr. Fred Pyle, commanding officer of the destroyer Winston S. Churchill. “We’re showing our presence and not allowing that sort of behavior.”

While the cruise’s only seizure was of a Pakistani vessel carrying 10,000 bottles of whiskey, “we’re putting the word out that we’re there,” said Capt. Herman Shelanski, the Truman ’s commanding officer.

“We got some calls that there were pirates, but we’re not embedded closely yet to know who they are to track them and take them down.”

The crew of the destroyer Oscar Austin used a new set of eyes in the sky to rein in pirates off the Horn of Africa.

Somali pirates had seized the Panamanian merchant ship Golden Nori in late October. The destroyer moved in, preventing the pirates from resupplying the ship. It kept watch via continuous launches of a ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicle – the Oscar Austin is the first combatant ship to deploy with one.

“It’s the best tool I have had since the invention of e-mail,” said Cmdr. James Midkiff, the ship’s commanding officer. The plane provided images from 50 nautical miles away, helping the crew keep watch over the bad guys: what they were doing, even what color shirts they were wearing, he said.

During the cruise, planes aboard the Truman delivered 77,536 pounds of ordnance, including 148 bombs and 986 rounds of 20 mm ammunition. While this remains a key mission, the role of the planes themselves is changing to include more safeguarding of and reconnaissance for ground troops, said Capt. Andrew Lewis, deputy commander of Carrier Air Wing 3.

“The better success now is when we don’t drop bombs,” he said. “It shows things are more under control.”

In January, two of the air wing’s F/A-18 Super Hornets collided in midair over the Persian Gulf. The three aviators were rescued, but both planes were destroyed. The incident remains under investigation.

“It was a scary night,” Lewis said, “but the bottom line was we got our people back.”

International operations were big part of the strike group’s mission, from the exercises conducted with Greece, France, Great Britain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, among others, to work with the Truman’s deployment partners, the British destroyer Manchester and the Canadian frigate Charlottetown.

The carrier trained with a trio of French Rafale jets, two of which landed on board. The exercises came as France’s lone carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, was in the yard. This was the first time French jets landed aboard the Truman.

In the Gulf, the strike group also helped the Bahrainis take command of the maritime forces of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the first time a member nation has assumed what was traditionally a Western role.

The cruiser San Jacinto spent its deployment in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Black Sea. It worked on search-and-rescue training with the Senegalese and helicopter operations with Ukrainian and Romanian forces.

“The spirit was one of mutual benefit,” said Capt. Matthew Sharpe, the ship’s commanding officer. “It feels good to be in that environment. We’re defined by a bond among mariners that transcends national boundaries.”

Rear Admiral Mark Fox, the strike group’s commander, agreed, saying these were good lessons for the United States as well.

“It’s clear to me that no one nation can do this by themselves,” he said.

Matthew Jones, (757) 446-2949, matthew.jones@pilotonline.com