‘Forgotten’ Navy Plays Up Its Exploits : Military: The service worries that others are getting all the glory for Gulf War successes.

Ask many Americans to describe the Gulf War, and they will likely tell you how Air Force bombs flattened Iraqi defenses as U.S. Marines and Army troops fought a fierce 100-hour ground war.

The Navy is fearful that its role in the conflict may become lost in the shuffle.

“That is my nightmare,” groaned Capt. Jim Mitchell, a Navy public affairs officer in Washington--that the lasting civilian image of America’s fighting forces in the Middle East will omit the Navy.

Dramatic videotapes early in the war showed Air Force pilots zeroing in on targeted buildings and blasting them to smithereens. The startling footage had an enduring impact on Americans.

“Unfortunately, our (Navy video) recorders are very vintage--there would be a line down our videotape, and CNN would say, ‘Great shot but too much distortion,’ ” said Vice Adm. Edwin R. Kohn, commander of Pacific Fleet naval air forces. “Our (videotapes) just did not come out as good.”

It was not an easy war for the Navy to promote its image. Early on, the Navy was pounded by Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” cartoons showing soldiers sweating in desert trenches while one sailor turns to another and asks him to turn down the ship’s air conditioning.

There were plenty of other hurdles: Some senior Navy officers didn’t want to bother dealing with reporters; dispatching the media to ships proved problematic, and the Navy had fewer officers to escort reporters than did other branches of the armed services.

Not all the problems were logistic.

The Navy took another hit when a senior Pentagon official told The Times that Air Force pilots were summoned after Navy pilots kept missing their targets. The official said last month that it took allied forces 790 sorties to hit 36 strategic bridges in the war zone--a task initially assigned to Navy attack pilots flying off carriers.

After dozens of misses by the Navy’s unguided “dumb” gravity bombs, the mission was given to Air Force jets that dropped laser-guided “smart” bombs.

To be sure, there were plenty of Navy accomplishments. The battleships Wisconsin and Missouri fired thousands of rounds, destroying Iraqi targets in support of ground troops. The Navy’s SEAL commandos rescued a downed pilot and snared floating mines.

In the glow of a widely touted military victory, all four services have begun to hustle for their share of the spotlight. Navy officials are mounting a concerted effort to extol the service’s endeavors in the desert war.

Its low profile could haunt the Navy in the increasingly competitive bid for funds and recruits, some officials say.

Most of the 19 San Diego-based ships deployed in the Gulf will take at least six weeks to steam home. And Navy officials are concerned that the current wave of enthusiasm for the military will be tepid by the time the sailors return.

The Marine Corps and Air Force won the lion’s share of press attention--both at war and on the home front, said Chief Petty Officer Martin Wicklund, a Navy spokesman. From January through early March, San Diego Navy public relations personnel fielded 326 queries from reporters and held 11 press conferences, Wicklund said. At the same time, Marines at Camp Pendleton handled 1,594 queries and held 20 news conferences.

Navy officials say they are accustomed to maintaining a low profile and say many civilians don’t appreciate what happened in the early days of the conflict, when Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq and the United States was scrambling to respond.

“Who knows why Saddam Hussein was deterred from going to Saudi Arabia or going further than Kuwait?” Mitchell said. “Was it the rapid deployment of (the Navy’s) two battle groups?”

In an effort to prop up public interest, Navy officials have devised various pitches. One list released to public affairs officers details all the unprecedented Navy events that occurred during Operation Desert Storm.

There was, for instance, the first use of the cruise missile in combat, when the guided missile cruiser Bunker Hill fired a Tomahawk on Jan. 16. And on Jan. 19, there was the first use of the Standoff Land Attack Missile (SLAM) from carrier-based A-6 Intruder and A-7 Corsair aircraft. On the same day, the submarine Louisville fired a Tomahawk, another first.