Waiting for action, a U.S. sailor jogs Friday on the deck of the USS Enterprise. (AP)

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 19, 1998; Page A19

ABOARD THE USS ENTERPRISE, Dec. 19 (Saturday) – The briefing, identifying the targets in Iraq, took place three hours before takeoff. For Navy Lt. Jon Taylor, flying his first combat mission early Thursday morning, that was when the stomach-gnawing anticipation began.

"The waiting is the worst," said Taylor, 27, as he killed time in the "Gunslingers" room aboard the USS Enterprise, which spends its days tracing continuous great circles in the calm, green waters of the Persian Gulf under hazy blue skies. "Once you get strapped in, that's when you start to feel at ease."

Well over 100 sorties have been flown in the last three nights from the 4½-acre flight deck of the carrier, with its complement of 73 aircraft and a vast arsenal of precision-guided munitions. Besides the carrier, the Enterprise battle group includes two destroyers, two cruisers, two submarines and a frigate, which among them have launched 200 cruise missiles.

"The morale is very high," said Rear Adm. James Cutler Dawson Jr., commander of the Enterprise battle group. The crew "is very focused on what we're doing out here. . .Our comfort level is very high."

The Enterprise will be joined today by the USS Carl Vinson battle group.

"We'll have double our pleasure," joked Dawson. He said the Enterprise had suffered no losses or aircraft damage in three nights of strikes. "The intensity is about what we expected – not overwhelming," he said of Iraqi air defenses. "Day Three has been the best day yet. We are standing by to carry on."

Around 5:30 p.m. local time Friday, the first of waves of F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornets took off, shortly after a brilliant sunset over the Gulf had turned to black. One by one, the fighters generated a blast wave of heat, smoke and noise as they shot off the runway, their rear engines glowing red.

The last of the planes were returning at dawn this morning.

"We're going for 100 percent strikes, and we were very successful," said Lt. Frank Marston, 28, of Portland, Maine, after returning from his mission. "We did a lot of planning to the point of driving ourselves crazy."

Reflecting on his job, Marston said, "I've got no desire to kill anybody, but if there's a job to do. ... I don't know if everyone understands that, because we get so fired up when we get back."

By the time later waves of warplanes left for Iraq, the night sky was alive with stars and the fading red lights of the departing jets. On one side of the fast-moving carrier, a distant oil fire illuminated the sky; on the other, the constellation Orion lit the heavens.

Adm. Dawson, like a number of his sailors, dismissed suggestions that the impeachment proceedings in Washington were a distraction. "It's not an issue out here," Dawson said.

Indeed, the ship is a vast, relentless piece of war machinery. And it is no less energized in the day, when the pilots sleep, than it is at night, when F-14s and F/A-18s are literally catapulted off the deck in 2½ seconds.

There are seven magazine decks, dropping down from below the hangar bay, which is itself a few hundred yards long. By elevator, the laser-guided, 2,000-pound bombs, air-to-ground missiles and heat-seeking Sidewinders are brought up to the hangar bay, where they are assembled.

Sitting in rows in the hangar bay and on the flight deck just above it, the bombs look strangely like fireworks at a roadside stand. A man could just about wrap his arms around one of the 2,000-pound bombs, which with fins and laser-guided tips are about 15 feet long.

On trolleys, the bombs move along the hangar floor from assembly to inspection to open elevators to the flight deck, where they are hooked up to the planes that will take them to their targets.

"We build everything like you would build a car," said Lt. Anthony McDowell, 49, a bomb assembly specialist and a District native. "It's an assembly line."

And it's a factory whose parts are moving with an adrenalized concentration in these recent days.

"Everything on the boat is on a faster turnaround," said Kelly Byrne, 23, of Langhorne, Pa., who was inspecting tires on an F-18 sitting on the blacktop. "You can feel the excitement up here."

Among the many people working on deck – servicing and loading planes for tonight's strikes – were many young, eager faces. At night, rap music echoes in the hangar bay and a boxing team does punishing push-ups and practices its moves.

"It happened. It went all out," said Chris Burgess, 20, of Frederick, Md., who was polishing up an ES-3A Shadow, a plane that provides real-time signal intelligence to tactical commanders.

Burgess, who joined the Navy last year, is on his first cruise. He can hardly believe it.

Said Petty Officer Jon Annis, 30, of Orofino, Idaho: "You've got young kids who two or three years ago Dad wouldn't let out with the car and now they're taking care of these birds."

But the Enterprise is more than its public face of mechanics swarming over fighters and jets rocketing into the night sky. Below deck, the ship is a small town with a post office, barbershop and laundry.

"It takes every person on this ship," said Taylor, the pilot awaiting his first combat mission. "Yeah, pilots get the interviews, but if that guy wasn't doing laundry or prepping food, this ship wouldn't function."

In the 100 degree heat of the laundry room, the sweating workers feel a little removed, but no less interested than other sailors.

"Being down here, you're away from it all," said Sean Freeburn, 22, of Fort Washington, Md., as he pressed a pair of pants. "But you can be a part of it. I watch it on CNN."

After the briefing Wednesday night, Taylor found some time alone and thought of his wife in St. Petersburg, Fla.

She was heading to her folks' house for Christmas just as he was heading into war.

"I also believe in God and took a few minutes to ask Him to give me strength and get me through the night," said Taylor.

He then gently patted the crucifix in the left shoulder pocket of his khaki jumpsuit and went up to the flight deck.

"You know this is the mission you've got to do for your country," he said. "And you feel an intense pride. You're ready."