Losses of Sailors and of Fliers Darkens Mood on Saratoga

A somber mood has settled over the Saratoga, an aircraft carrier that has been plagued by misfortune. The crew copes with its losses in private ways, but thoughts about missing friends are never far from anyone’s thoughts.

In December, after finishing a tour in Operation Desert Shield, 21 sailors drowned during a port visit to Haifa, Israel, when their boat ferrying them back to the carrier overturned. Then on the first day of the war, two of the carrier’s planes did not return from their missions. A third plane has since been lost.

The other two aircraft carriers in the gulf region, the John F. Kennedy and the America, have not lost a plane since the war began a week ago. With the success of the air effort, reporters visiting those ships spoke of a sense of elation among their crews. But on the Saratoga, Rear Admiral George Gee, the battle group commander, characterized the mood as “very serious.”

“At sea in itself,” he said, “there are laughs and there are tears every day of the week. And we’re going to find that same thing during wartime.”

On the first day of the war, an F/A-18 Hornet joined more than 25 warplanes on a strike over west Baghdad. Its pilot was Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher, 33, of Jacksonville, Fla. When the planes rendezvoused at a predetermined point over Saudi Arabia for a head count after the strike, Speicher was missing.

“I include him in my prayers every day,” said an F/A-18 pilot last weekend. “I hope he’s out there in the desert right now, really pissed off because his radio got lost in the ejection, and he’s picking sand fleas out of his shorts.”

Pilots aboard the America said they will continue to bomb targets around Baghdad, even if their colleagues are used as human shields. The threat to use them as shields only seemed to confirm to the pilots that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is, as one pilot put it, “barbaric.”

“We all knew what we signed up for. Nobody was forced into this,” another pilot said.

There are few signs of tension on the Saratoga, none of grieving. But the thought of the missing men cannot be blotted out by even the long, dangerous hours of work.

“That’s the rules of war. We lose friends, good friends and we still go forward and meet the objective, and we intend to win,” said Chief Petty Officer Bill Young, the Saratoga’s flight deck chief.