'Missing Muster'

 Missing Muster

 By Paul Davis

As we were nearing the end of our WESTPAC (Western Pacific) 1970-1971 cruise, the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk was on station in the Gulf of Tonkin, launching aircraft that performed combat sorties against the North Vietnamese. 

On the deck just below the flight deck, I was shifting through copies of message traffic at my small desk in the Message Processing Center. I came upon a copy of a message to the carrier’s captain that solved a mystery that had haunted the officers and men aboard the carrier since the beginning of the cruise in November of 1970. What happened to Seaman Moore? 

Seaman Martin Moore was one of only a few casualties we had suffered on the cruise. Thankfully, all of pilots had returned safely to the aircraft carrier after bombing raids over North Vietnam. Unlike some of the pilots from our sister carriers, our pilots hadn’t been shot down and killed or taken prisoner. 

As I read the message, I recalled the frantic search for Seaman Moore as we sailed from Hawaii to the Philippines prior to reporting on “Yankee Station” in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam. 

Aboard the ship at sea, sailors were gathered periodically in groups and attendance was taken in what was called “musters.” Musters were held at various times to account for all of the nearly 5,000 crew members and airwing personnel. On the third muster at sea, it was reported that Moore was missing. He had been accounted for in the first two musters held while the carrier was at sea.   

On the assumption that he had fallen accidentally overboard into the sea, aircraft was launched to scan the Pacific Ocean and look for the missing sailor. The ship was also searched, compartment by compartment, looking for the sailor. It was thought that he was perhaps dead or dying somewhere or he was hiding on the carrier to avoid work. 

When two Marines showed up at the Message Processing Center, Chief John Helm would not allow them into the center to search for Moore. Despite the order from the carrier’s captain to search all spaces aboard the ship, the chief stopped the Marines from entering the center as they did not possess the proper clearances to do so. The chief was backed up by LTJG Albert Moony. 

As the Marines, Chief Helm and LTJG Moony had a standoff in the passageway outside of the top-secret center, a call was put into the Marine commanding officer, who in turn called the ship’s captain. Commander Thomas Larkin, an officer on the captain’s staff, showed up along with the Marine commanding officer. 

Chief Helm was adamant. 

“These Marines are not cleared to enter the Message Processing Center,” Helm said. “We can’t allow them in.” 

“The chief is right, Sir,” Moony added. “This is a high security area.”  

Larkin told Helm and Moony that he was cleared to enter the center. He offered to go in and search in lieu of the Marines. Helm, Moony and the Marine commanding officer agreed. Chief Helm punched in the four digits on the security panel that opened the door to the center.    

Larkin entered the Message Processing Center and walked around with Moony and Helm, holding a photo of Moore. He showed the photo to the sailors in the center and asked us if we had seen him. 

I glanced at the photo and noted that Moore looked a lot like Alfred E. Neuman, MAD magazine’s goofy cartoon character who sprouted “What me worry?” 

Moore, like Neuman, had a mop of reddish-brown hair, gap buck teeth, big ears and a silly grin. 

Satisfied that the missing sailor was not in the center, Larkin thanked Helm and Moony and left the center. 

As the captain ordered, the entire aircraft carrier was searched. Moore was not found, so he was reported as missing at sea and presumed dead from drowning.

 

But according to the Naval Investigative Service report I was reading, Moore was alive and well in Honolulu.                       

According to the NIS report, Moore had deserted the ship when the carrier sailed from Pearl Harbor in Hawaii to Subic Bay in the Philippines. 

With images of World War II naval combat in his head, with sailors being killed from Imperial Japanese fire and sailors drowning as ships were sunk, Moore was frightened that he would die aboard the carrier in devastating combat with the North Vietnamese. 

Apparently, he didn’t know that the 7^th Fleet aircraft carriers operated in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam in a battle group. The carrier was not only protected by the ship’s aircraft, the carrier was also protected by destroyers, a submarine and other defenses. The North Vietnamese shot at the carrier pilots flying over North Vietnam, but they didn’t dare try to attack the aircraft carriers at sea. 

Moore did not discuss his great fears with anyone. If he had, they might have told him this. By all accounts, Moore was a dim lad. 

The NIS report stated that as Moore was a loner and did not have much of a social life, so he was able to save a good bit of money. As the Kitty Hawk was preparing to leave Pearl Harbor, Moore failed to report back onboard. Wearing civilian clothes, he checked into a cheap Honolulu hotel and hid out. 

For many months, he ate little, bought little, and spent his days on the Waikiki beach, watching the pretty girls in bikinis. He watched the girls, but he was far too shy to approach them or dare to speak to them. 

Moore had not contacted his family back in Boulder, Colorado. He didn’t know that the Navy had reported his presumed death to his parents, as he had not given a thought to how the Navy would respond to his missing status.  

Moore’s stay in Honolulu ended after two local thugs beat and robbed him. The thugs punched and kicked him and ripped his well-worn shirt. They took the money he had in his shirt pocket. They left him on the beach unconscious. The police took him to a hospital and as he lay unconscious, the police checked his pocket and found his Navy ID. 

The Honolulu police reported the incident to the NIS and the NIS ran his ID and discovered that Moore was listed as missing at sea. When Moore awoke, he saw two NIS special agents at his hospital bedside. They questioned him, and he confessed that he had not reported aboard the Kitty Hawk prior to the ship's sailing out for the Philippines.  

When he was released from the hospital, Moore was taken into custody by the NIS and charged with desertion.  

Who reported Moore present in the first two musters, or why, remained a mystery.  

Admiral McCain

Below is another chapter from my novel Olongapo. 

Like Charles Dickins, Athur Conan Doyle and many other 19th Century and early 20th Century authors who serialized their novels in magazines and newspapers, I've been serializing my novel here, chapter by chapter. 

You can read my earlier posted chapters via the links at the bottom.

The story below originally appeared in American Crime Magazine. 

Admiral McCain

By Paul Davis

 One of the good things about working in the Communications Radio Division aboard an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War was that radiomen were the first to know about everything. 

For example, when fleet headquarters ordered the carrier to leave “Yankee Station” off the coast of North Vietnam and sail towards Subic Bay on such and such a date, the word spread quickly among the radio division. The radiomen in turn told their friends in other divisions aboard the ship the good news about heading to Subic Bay and the great wide-open liberty town of Olongapo. 

The Kitty Hawk’s captain often complained that the entire ship’s crew and air wing knew about the order to proceed to Subic Bay before he did. 

While on watch in the Message Processing Center one evening in 1971 during our final Yankee Station line period, I saw a copy of a classified CIA report that was sent to the Task Force 77 admiral and the Kitty Hawk captain. 

The report announced the capture of a North Vietnamese spy in Manila. The spy, named Thanh Ban, was the subject of a nation-wide manhunt in the Philippines. He had been posing in Olongapo as a Filipino Chinese merchant named Shi Chen as he spied on the massive Subic Bay U.S. naval base. But after an assassination plot had been uncovered, Ban fled to Manila and was hidden by the New People’s Army (NPA), the communist guerrillas at war with the Philippine government. 

An elite Filipino police unit, accompanied and assisted by an unnamed CIA officer, raided a NPA hideout in Manila. Four Filipino NPA Communist guerrillas were killed in the shootout with the elite unit. One NPA officer and Ban were captured.

The report noted that although Ban was a dedicated Communist, he did not relish being executed by the Filipinos or spending many years in an awful Filipino prison, so he confessed to the commander of the elite unit and the CIA officer. 

Ban told of the plan to execute Admiral John S. McCain aboard the USS Kitty Hawk while the aircraft carrier was off the coast of North Vietnam.  

On our very first line period on Yankee Station in December of 1970, Admiral John S. McCain, the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command, known as CINCPAC, flew aboard. As CINPAC, Admiral McCain was the commander of all American forces in the Vietnam War.  

I was working in the Message Processing Center when I heard a commotion.

Admiral McCain, escorted by the Task Force admiral, the ship’s captain and other ranking officers, entered the center for a brief tour. I stood at attention like the other sailors in the center and heard McCain yell “At ease.” 

The admiral, a short, thin and wizened officer, with a cigar as big as a pony’s leg, walked by me and other sailors on watch. He stopped, looked me in the eye, and said in a gruff voice, “Get a haircut, sailor!” 

“Yes, Sir,” I replied. 

The admiral and his entourage all laughed. 

As they were passing by, I heard the admiral ask what movie was showing on our closed-circuit television on that evening. An aide responded that MASH was scheduled to air three times for the ship’s three different watches on their down time.   

I saw the admiral grimace and say that we should be watching the movie Patton with the great actor George C. Scott, and not some anti-war crap. 

I liked both films, but the good admiral did not ask me for my opinion. 

After Patton showed in the early evening, McCain appeared on our closed-circuit TV. Noted for his profane language, the admiral opened with, "Good goddamn evening.” He went on to give a rousing and profane speech about our mission to contain the Vietnamese Communists in Vietnam. He praised our Navy commanders on the carrier as well as the young crew. 

He ended his speech by stating, “The hippies back home say ‘make love not war.” I say if you’re man enough, you can do both.” 

There were both cheers and groans from the more than 5,000 sailors and airmen about the ship. 

“Cut him some slack,” I told a friend who had groaned loudly next to me. 

“Do you know his son, a Navy carrier pilot, is a POW in North Vietnam? How would you like to be the top officer in the war while the enemy is holding your son? And you don’t know if he is being tortured because of you?” 

Admiral McCain’s son was U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander John S. McCain III. The future U.S. Senator and presidential candidate was then a prisoner of war being held in North Vietnam having been shot down in 1967. The admiral said little about his POW son, and I can only imagine how he suffered in silence.

 

Later, reading messages to and from the Subic Bay naval station and our message center, I learned about the plot to assassinate Admiral McCain aboard the Kitty Hawk. 

Lieutenant Colonel Cesar Rosa of the Olongapo City Police was a short and thin officer, but he was wiry and hard, and he had a stern face and cruel dark eyes that frightened the people that he investigated and subsequently arrested. He also had a reputation for being relentless and ruthless. 

Luz dela Cruz was an unattractive older woman with a skeletal body, a taunt face and protruding buck teeth. Still, she had her customers in The Ritz, an Olongapo bar that catered to American sailors. Most of her customers who bought her drinks were “Cherry Boy” young virgins and older American sailors that were not too fussy about looks. 

She also had customers she sold shabu crystal meth to at the bar. Luz dela Cruz was her own best customer. When a young sailor went wild on shabu and took on two American Marines in The Ritz, the Olongapo police arrested the sailor. 

Prior to handing over the young sailor to the American Shore patrol, he was questioned by Rosa. 

"Where did you get the shabu?"

The sailor, who was still jumpy from the drug, replied, "I bought the meth from Luz."

He said that he had never taken the drug before and he had never felt so strong and invincible.  

"So why did those two Marines I picked a fight with beat the living shit out of me?" 

After turning over the sailor to the Shore Patrol, Rosa and Mario Dizon, his huge sergeant, drove to The Ritz and arrested dela Cruz. Back at the police station, the scared and desperate bar girl quickly gave up her shabu supplier. As a bonus, she confessed to collecting information about U.S. 7th Fleet ships from the drunk and high sailors and passed on the information on to an NPA agent. 

Rosa and Dizon headed out to arrest the NPA spy. Fernado Diaz, a muscular and seasoned warrior, fought the two Filipino police officers when they tried to arrest him. Diaz swung punches widely and tried to pull a knife from his pants pocket, but Dizon pinned the spy's arms and Rosa punched Diaz repeatedly in the face. Dizon took Diaz to the ground and placed handcuffs on him. 

Diaz was taken to the police station. Rosa called Boone Cantrell, a Naval Investigative Service special agent who worked at the Subic Bay naval base. 

Diaz, bruised by his fight with the Filipino police officers, was quiet as he sat in a chair and faced Cantrell, who was tall and Lincolnesque, and the much shorter Rosa. 

Worried about what Rosa and the American agent might do to him, he confessed to being an NPA spy. He asked for a deal. He would not only confess to passing on intelligence tidbits to his NPA superior in Manila, he would also confess to working with a North Vietnamese spy. Rosa and Cantrell looked at each other in amazement. Rosa agreed to a deal. 

To their amazement, Diaz told them that the NPA had a spy aboard the USS Kitty Hawk. The spy, Roberto Santos, was a Filipino serving in the U.S. Navy as a disbursing clerk aboard the aircraft carrier. Santos was ordered to meet with Diaz whenever the ship visited Olongapo. Santos, the son of an NPA guerrilla, had been ordered to join the American Navy. Although as a disbursing clerk, he did not have access to classified information, he was useful to a point. 

During the Kitty Hawks first port of call to Subic Bay for the 1970-1971 combat cruise, Diaz and the North Vietnamese spy, called Shi Chen, spoke about Santos. Chen said that Santos should be assigned to assassinate Admiral McCain when he visited the aircraft carrier later that month. 

Diaz objected and told his Vietnamese Communist brother-in-arms that Santos was not trained for assassinations, but the North Vietnamese spy said that it did not matter. Even if the assassination failed, it would be a psychological victory for the Communists. 

Since Diaz’s orders were to assist Chen in any matter, he met Santos at an Olongapo hotel and handed him a .25 semi-automatic pistol. Santos cried and pleaded with Diaz. He had never killed anyone, he said. He was also concerned with his own safety. What will happen to him after he shot the famous admiral?  

Diaz was adamant. Santos will follow his orders. 

After listening to Diaz’s confession, Cantrell rushed back to his Subic Bay NIS office and sent an urgent message to the USS Kitty Hawk. 

Aboard the Kitty Hawk, the message was received and distributed quickly. The admiral appeared unconcerned when told of the assassination plot. Two Marines armed with .45’s were added to the admiral’s group, and the Marine Division’s captain and two enlisted Marines armed with M-16 rifles rushed to Santos’ berthing compartment. 

Santos raised his hands in surrender and told the Marines that the pistol was in his locker. He seemed almost relieved to be arrested and therefore he would not have to shoot the admiral.

Admiral McCain later flew off the carrier. His son, John McCain, a 31-year-old Navy lieutenant commander, was held as a POW for five and a half years. He was finally released on March 14, 1973.

And looking back, I didn’t get a haircut after being ordered to do so by Admiral McCain. 

I’m proud, somewhat perversely, of the fact that I disobeyed a direct order from a four-star admiral.

Note: You can read other chapters via the below links: 

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Salvatore Lorino'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: The Old Huk

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: Join The Navy And See Olongapo

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Boots On The Ground'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The 30-Day Detail'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Cat Street'

Paul Davis On Crime: Chapter 12: On Yankee Station 

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Cherry Boy'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Hit'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: Welcome To Japan, Davis-San

Paul Davis On Crime: A Look Back At Life Aboard An Aircraft Carrier During The Vietnam War: 'The Compartment Cleaner'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Murder By Fire'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Hit The Head' 

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'A Night At The Americano'  

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Missing Muster' 

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Barracks Thief'