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thedrifter
11-01-02, 03:15 PM
By James W. Crawley
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
October 31, 2002


SAN DIEGO – An undercurrent of war will flow with the armada leaving San Diego on Saturday as more than 8,000 sailors and Marines ship out for the Persian Gulf.

While the deployment of the aircraft carrier Constellation and five escort ships has been planned for more than a year, the war drums over Iraq and Saddam Hussein make their departure anything but routine.

The Constellation battle group includes the carrier, an air wing of 72 aircraft, the cruisers Bunker Hill and Valley Forge, destroyers Higgins and Milius, and frigate Thach, all from San Diego.

Joining the warships will be aircraft and crew members from North Island Naval Air Station and Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. The submarine Columbia from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the support ship Rainier from Washington state will join up in coming days.

The flotilla, which is armed with fighter-bombers and long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, could be stationed off Iraq by early December.

"Any time you deploy you have to go with the mind-set that you'll be involved in some action," said Capt. John Miller, the Constellation's commanding officer. This time "there is a very real possibility we'll be involved in combat."

The carrier is "ready in every regard," he said.

The Constellation will relieve the carrier Lincoln and its planes and escort vessels, which are flying patrols over southern Iraq's no-fly zone and intercepting ships trying to smuggle oil despite United Nations sanctions.

This will be the Constellation's final deployment; it's scheduled to be decommissioned and mothballed next year. But the ship's skipper has banned most talk of the carrier's last cruise.

"We're not doing a 'last deployment,' " Miller said this week. "We're doing our 21st deployment."

Although the ship's keel was laid three weeks before the Soviet Union's Sputnik, the first man-made satellite in space, orbited Earth in 1957, the captain said the Constellation has the latest electronics, radars and computers. Crew members can access the Internet and watch CNN and U.S. television while halfway around the world.

The possibility of war helped focus a recent two-week training period, officers and sailors said.

During the battle group's joint task force exercise, crew members on all ships carried gas masks in canvas bags strapped to their hips at all times – something they may have to do if war comes to the Persian Gulf.

Tomcat and Hornet fighters practiced long-range bombing missions, like those conducted last year over Afghanistan, and surface warships simulated the launch of Tomahawk missiles, which can hit targets 1,000 miles away.

Husbands, wives, sons, daughters and neighbors will get their last chance Saturday to see loved ones and friends for at least six months.

The warships will depart from North Island and San Diego Naval Station at 32nd Street in the morning.

Sempers,

Roger