In 1970 I had been approved by the outgoing Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Thomas Moorer, and the Bureau of Naval Personnel (BuPers) to be Commander Amphibious Group One. I wanted an amphibious group; that’s what submariners rated, unless you wanted to stick with submarines. My orders kept being held up. I’d contact the flag detailer and ask what was going on, but got no results. Finally the word came that the incoming CNO, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, had his own ideas about the flag slate. He wanted me to command Carrier Division 16, a hunter-killer group (HUK) out of Quonset Point, Rhode Island.
I wrote to Admiral Zumwalt immediately, telling him that ten years before I’d written an article in the Naval Institute Proceedings saying that this concept was no good. I didn’t think it was the way to go after submarines, but it sounded like fun. I told him if he was prepared for the rumpus that was going to be created when I got out there and rode aircraft, carriers, destroyers, and submarines to relearn the business—and then proved that the thing was no damn good—“then I’m your guy.” Next thing I knew Admiral Zumwalt was on the phone saying he wanted me to do it.
There was a law that said that an officer who is not designated as a naval aviator or naval air observer cannot command an aeronautical organization in the Navy. I called that to BuPers’s attention. So they changed the name from Carrier Division 16 to Antisubmarine Warfare Group Four, and that’s what I commanded.
My flagship was the Intrepid (CVS- 11), now a museum ship in New York City. I had two bosses—Commander Hunter-Killer Force Atlantic (ComHUKForLant) and Commander Antisubmarine Warfare Forces Atlantic. Commander Naval Air Force Atlantic Fleet (ComNavAirLant) was my principal reporting senior after ComHUKForLant, but he really didn’t have much time for these ASW carriers—the big carriers were his interest.
On my first ASW exercise, I directed that we fly around the clock. I rode in the various planes—the Trackers, the S-2s, the E-1 Bs—and went over to the destroyers to have a look. On the fifth day, the air people came in and said, “Admiral- we’ve got to stop flying.”
And I said, “Why?”—knowing the answer full well.
“Well, we’re out of parts, and can’t keep the planes in repair.”
I said, “What you’re telling me is that this force should never get more than two and a half days out of port, because in a" hour, or whenever we recover our last plane, we’re defenseless.”
“Well, yes, but this is the way it always is.”
So when I went back, I convened a board of investigation. For about two weeks they figured out why the air group had had to stop flying.
Meanwhile, ComNavAirLant got wind of this. I had his full attention now. He sent a captain to have a look at what I was doing, and this guy must have gone back and said, “Well, we can’t stop it now.” The investigation report went bouncing up the chain of command. It had a miraculous effect on the supply and personnel People, who filled our shortages so this wouldn’t happen again.
During one of our early exercises, I took my first ride in an ASW helicopter. We were approaching a submerged target submarine 100 miles from the Intrepid. I was sitting there with my helmet on, listening to the pilots. All of a sudden the helicopter banked sharply, then all hell broke loose. The pilots were obviously terrified. The carrier was turned toward us, and airplanes were coming in from all sides. The crew chief ran back to me and said, “Admiral, we’re about to go in. When we hit the water, we’ll invert. You’ve got to remember to head up when you get out.”
I thought, “Oh, Christ. There’s no way I’m going to get out of this thing. I’m unfamiliar with all this gear, the conation I’m wearing. But what the hell; it’s been a good life. I’ll give it a go.”
Well, very gradually, things started to calm down. What they had had was a chip light indication in the main gear. If that rotor started to disintegrate, it would seize up all of a sudden, and then the big blade would stop. Anyway, we made it back to the carrier.
When we landed on the deck I said, “Okay, fellows, you got one that works?”
They said, “Yes, sir,” so I got in another one. The engine whined, the rotors whirled up to speed, and after a few moments, instead of taking off, the pilot shut down again.
“What’s the matter?”
“Well, this helicopter works, but it’s not ASW ready. We can’t use the sonar.” “Why didn’t you know that before you got me into it?”
“Because we don’t know until we get the engine’s power on the equipment. We can’t check it out fully using power from a generator on deck.”
I said, “Okay, you got another one that works?” I got in the third helicopter and finally completed that mission. Aircraft reliability problems were really something.
ASW Group Four went up and down the Atlantic for a while, and I made one very serious error—probably the most serious I ever made as a flag officer. With some difficulty, I managed to get a nuclear submarine to play with. Nobody had been able to get one before for a HUK group, but because I still had my submarine pin and my submarine friends, with some squeezing I finally got one for 36 hours while we were transiting from Florida to Quonset Point.
About that time, Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet called a snap conference, and I couldn’t get out of it. I had to leave my chief of staff. Captain Larry Williams, to fool with this submarine, and hope to get back for the last part of it. Right before I left, the weather started acting up. It wasn’t sure, but it looked like it was going to be bad. Ewer-class carriers don’t do real well in bad seas. I was warned of the troubles that could occur: “If this carrier gets weather on the beam or quarter, we’re just going to have to keep on steaming; we can’t turn around. If we do turn around, the mast may fall off, and because we’re running in a storm, we’re going to take damage.” Well, I looked at it and asked, “What’s the probability that this weather is actually going to hit here?”
“Maybe one in three, of 50-50.”
I said, “I’ve gone to all this trouble to get the nuclear submarine, I think it’s worth the risk.”
The captain said, “I don’t think it’s worth it.”
My chief of staff said, “Pretty risky.” I said, “I'll take the risk.” Then I had to leave to fly ashore.
Well, not only was the weather that bad, it was worse. They got about two hours with the submarine, then they had to save themselves. So they headed off toward Iceland, taking damage the whole way. I was on shore. I couldn’t get back to the ship, and I felt sick about it. Fortunately, nothing so major was damaged that it couldn’t be repaired with a bit of industrial support from the base. Some of the deck plates buckled. The flight deck was notoriously weak—it rained on me one night. My bunk was under the flight deck, and all of a sudden I was getting wet. It goes to show you that an admiral can make pretty bad mistakes. Surprisingly, there was no investigation. I don’t think if I’d been the fleet commander in chief I could have restrained myself— particularly when the culprit was some stupid submariner who’d never been above water.
The aviators were generally leery of me, and sometimes outright hostile, until they found that I could sense where the submarines were, when to launch, and how to get them—because I had been there. Then the aviators were absolutely delighted with themselves, and were pleased to be used in such an effective way.
Incidentally, I eventually recommended a bunch of medals for these aviators—low-grade decorations and commendations. It went past my two bosses, but then CinCLantFlt said no. I couldn’t find out exactly why, so I flew down to headquarters to get medals for my people. A senior flag officer said, “I’ll be very frank with you. There are various kinds of aviators. There are those who go out in jets to fight in Vietnam, and those who don’t, who opt for ASW. I’m not about to give the medals that go to the hotshots to these guys.”
I said, “But if you’re ever going to upgrade ASW and try to make these guys proud of themselves, don’t you think you have to pat them on the back when they’re entitled to it?” Many of my pilots flew to the end of their endurance.
He said, “It doesn’t make any difference. You don’t get them.” He was a bit more polite than that.
I finally was able to give them some local commendations, but not the medals I wanted. There are about 16 grades of pilots, culminating with astronaut test pilots. I came to realize that the pecking order among aviators is really something.
In May 1971 we embarked on a cruise that was perhaps the greatest ever taken. We were going to show the flag and chase submarines all over European waters— Lisbon, Barcelona, Kiel, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Bergen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Portsmouth, Naples, Cannes—-just fabulous in every respect. We exercised with all the various NATO countries’ navies.
We didn’t get off to a very good start. Our first stop was Lisbon. I took a small suite of rooms ashore for Larry Williams and myself, to set up an administrative post so the shore patrol officer could get hold of us, if necessary. Well, we were awakened at 0200. There was an enormous fight in front of the Texas Bar, and a bunch of our sailors were in the jug. This was the last thing I needed; performance ashore was extraordinarily important. I immediately recalled all the liberty parties and suspended further liberty until we investigated this mess. As it turned out, our guys weren’t responsible; they just happened to be there, and were assaulted by other people. The American ambassador, learning the facts, made up an independent report confirming this. Normal liberty resumed, and there was no trouble whatsoever for the rest of the cruise.
To the best of my knowledge, this was the last carrier operation in the Baltic. We were among the last carriers to enter many of these ports, and the reason we were able to is size—most carriers are too big to get in. We received the attention of the Poles, the East Germans, and the Soviets. I sent a message out with the rules of engagement. I was afraid that one of my airplanes might be muscled ashore into Communist territory—I had a section of A-4s, but they were no match for even the Polish Air Force. I instructed my pilots, “Ditch the plane before you get forced ashore. We’ll come and get you; let them try and stop us. We’ll bring the whole force over—antiaircraft guns, A-4s, everything—and we’ll get you back.” I sent that message back up the line. I thought, “Well, let’s just see what they’re going to tell me to do.” Nobody said a word.
One airplane had to land on Bornholm Island—which had been given back to the Danes by the Soviets with rather special restrictions, and it was supposed to be demilitarized. They’re very touchy about it, and were quite upset when this plane came in. I got reluctant permission to send in a team to repair the plane and fly it out of there.
When we went into Bergen, it turned out that Helmut Schmidt, Defense Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany, was there visiting Norway’s Minister of Defense. Both wanted to come aboard the Intrepid, and did so. I was quite impressed with Schmidt. I was invited to his departure dinner. He went around the table, in European fashion, to make graceful remarks about each person who was there. When it came my turn, he made all the right comments about the ship visit, and then he said, “Now I’d like to comment about the position that we Germans have with respect to your country. We are not dependent upon you, but we depend on your dependability.” I thought that was not only remarkable in being accurate about what the relationship is, but equally impressive that he could express himself in English so eloquently—using that word in three different ways in the same sentence.
Of course, one of the key purposes of the cruise was to see if we could find Russian submarines. We left Bergen with the American ambassador to Norway on board, but then I somewhat abruptly had him flown off. I didn’t want him to know, but our Iceland sonar surveillance system had picked up a Soviet “Yankee’’-class submarine that was returning from patrol. I wanted to fly against it. As the plane with the ambassador took off, right behind it was my first launch. I turned the carrier group and we headed for the sub. We tracked him and interposed ourself between him and his home port, up beyond the North Cape. He realized, after a bit, that he was under surveillance; somebody told him. They were watching me watching him. The submarine stopped and milled around and then started going up under the ice. About this time the weather worsened to the point that the last few flights had a pretty hairy time of it.
Now we really had the Russians’ attention. They put a submarine on our tail, but we lost track of him. I’m a submariner—I knew he was still back there; I could sense it. So I directed two destroyers to slow down and drop back during the night, and to darken ship. I knew that around first light this submarine was going to come up to periscope depth and have a look. He’d be above the layer, and ought to be easy to pick up. I directed my ships not to echo range, and said I’d tell them when to go active.
So at first light I said, “Okay, now.” The destroyers were about 10,000 yards behind the formation—not making any noise—and they turned and there he was. Gotcha! We were able to do this over and over with Soviet submarines.
It wasn’t all so one-sided, however. I had Russian ships with me all the time. One day, as we were approaching the North Cape, all of a sudden our radars were completely jammed. There wasn’t a thing we could see, but we could tell with our electronic countermeasures gear when the Russian radars downshifted out of the jamming. They had the ability to shift their radars in frequency, which we didn’t. Presently, several “Bears” flew by; they tipped their hats, and off they went.
Soviet planes had tricked us as we were going over to the Mediterranean. They pretended they were commercial aircraft, got down below our radar, and came in flat on the deck. We didn’t meet and escort them with our A-4s. I caught hell from Deputy Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet, Vice Admiral Jim Holloway. Or rather, he excused me because I was a stupid submariner; he was after the carrier skipper. But these were peacetime games, and not representative, I believe, of what might happen in war.
The Mediterranean was a very difficult environment for sonobuoys. The Norwegian Sea is perfect; it’s a great big clear bathtub. But the Mediterranean has got layers and lots of ships going by and interference of all sorts. Commander Sixth Fleet didn’t want us trying to operate in there. I told him that it wasn’t my idea—Admiral Zumwalt wanted us to go and demonstrate in each place whether you could or couldn’t operate. He hadn’t specified this to me, but I knew from the way the trip was laid out that that was his goal. I’m firmly convinced—though I’ve never spoken about it to Zumwalt—that he wanted to kill off the hunter-killer groups and was using me as the hammer. He didn’t want to spend the Navy’s money on something he knew was ineffective.
When we got back to the States, he called me to Washington. In the present of his vice chief, Admiral Ralph Cousins- he asked me, “Well, now that you’ve done all that, have you changed your mind about the value of hunter-killer groups?”
I said, “No, sir. The operation went very well under optimum conditions, without any opposition whatsoever, but that was not realistic. The enemy would likely kill you; there’s no way to defend yourself.” I knew in my heart that it wasn’t real; we were just playing games. If one of those submarines had wanted torpedo us, they’d have murdered us. I recommended that the HUK operation discontinued, and in due course, it was.
This is an excerpt from Vice Admiral Steele’s as-yet unpublished oral history. He discussed this portion of his career with Paul Stillwell, the Naval Institute’s director of oral history, on 31 October 1986. For a catalog containing summaries of completed oral history volumes, please send $3.00 to Oral History Department, U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland 21402.