Strong Fleet Without Friends

The mighty U.S. Sixth Fleet was locked out of one of its most important eastern Mediterranean bases last week. In an anti-American decision with potentially grave strategic effect, Greece's democratic government, still angry that the U.S. had once backed the fallen junta and then did not do more last year to prevent the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, withdrew permission for the fleet to use the harbor of Elefsis, 17 miles west of Athens. Set up only three years ago on a lease basis, Elefsis was a home port abroad for the six ships and 1,700 crewmen of Destroyer Squadron 12, as well as for 1,100 dependents who lived ashore. According to the terms of a joint U.S.-Greek statement, Elefsis will be closed and the families out by September; the American airbase at Hellinikon Airport in Athens will also shut down, although U.S. planes may continue to land there to aid Greek defense needs. The future of five other U.S. installations in Greece will be determined at another joint conference in June.

Home-Porting. In response to the announcement, the Sixth Fleet's commander, Vice Admiral Frederick C. Turner, issued a terse statement: "The Sixth Fleet will be able to meet its commitments in support of national policy without home-porting in Athens." In fact, the closing of Elefsis greatly complicates Turner's task. Because Turkey has also been angered by U.S. policy on Cyprus, no ships of the Sixth Fleet have been able to drop anchor in Istanbul or Izmir since February. As for Greece, the last destroyer landing party to go ashore on Corfu was nearly lynched by hysterical Greek islanders. Even in Athens, American sailors' wives and children from Elefsis have been stoned.

The Sixth Fleet still has bases in the western Mediterranean, notably at Naples in Italy and Rota in Spain. But these are at least three-hours steaming time from eastern waters, a fact that will become even more important next month when access to the eastern Mediterranean is increased after the reopening of the Suez Canal--a herculean chore carried out in part by Sixth Fleet salvage units. All of the 50 or so ships of the Sixth Fleet can be rotated back to Norfolk, headquarters of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. But that kind of maneuvering would add to fuel costs, already so heavy that ships of the fleet spend much of their time at anchor.

The loss of port facilities in Greece and Turkey also means that the Sixth Fleet has fewer "bingo fields," airstrips ashore to which carrier planes can divert in emergencies or bad weather. In addition, the new political situation creates morale problems for seamen, who will be forced to spend more and more time aboard ship without the chance of seeing their families and without liberty in the foreign ports.

Even with these handicaps, however, the Sixth Fleet continues to be the strongest military force in the Mediterranean. Though the Soviet fleet has made remarkable strides in a decade, and now actually outnumbers the Sixth Fleet (60 ships to 50), its submarines and cruisers still cannot match overall U.S. firepower. TIME'S Rome bureau chief Jordan Bonfante recently spent two days at sea with Task Force 60 of the Sixth Fleet and sent this report:

Before dawn, the fuel tanker Marias had appeared out of nowhere, like a floating filling station, and the 80,000-ton carrier Forrestal danced into place alongside. The two ships cruised ahead, a scant 140 ft. apart, while the carrier took on engine and jet fuel from two suspended umbilical lines. Meanwhile, three destroyers with the law-firm-sounding names of Sampson, Barry and Miller took turns on the tanker's far side.

With her tanks topped off, the carrier soon swung into the wind and went back to work. The flight deck erupted with the frenetic precision of "launch and recovery," sending up 40 planes, like a parking lot emptying at rush hour. Phantoms, Intruders, Corsair II light attack bombers, as well as ugly-goose Hummers with their absurd-looking radar dishes, vaulted off the catapults with a roar and a swoop, 15 seconds apart. Within minutes, other planes were simultaneously coming in for "recovery," the "controlled crashes," as one flyer put it, that pass for carrier landings.

Martial Arts. On the bridge, Captain James Scott, 48, the Forrestal's skipper and a former fighter pilot, watched the thunderous flight deck activities below with a cheerful scowl: "We can do this with a 200-ft. ceiling and three-quarter-mile visibility," he said in his Alabama drawl. "That's badass. We don't like it, but in a crunch we have that capability, even at night."

It was a typical flight operation at sea and an impressive display of a Sixth Fleet carrier's naval-air talents. The U.S.S. Forrestal with four escorting destroyers, was steering a complicated course between Sicily and Crete, exercising its special martial arts. The Phantoms and Corsairs flew off to drill in interceptor tactics or to make practice runs with dummy bombs and missiles. Electronic-surveillance planes stuffed with microtechnology ranged far and wide on reconnaissance flights. The destroyers darted off or raced back to the carrier according to their own tactical plans. Periodically, tankers showed up to refuel.

The Sixth Fleet is confident that it retains military superiority. For one thing, the Soviet fleet, powerful as it is, is still regarded as basically defensive; its main weapons are the surface-to-surface missiles targeted on the U.S. carriers. The Sixth Fleet's two carriers--at present the Forrestal and the Roosevelt--are decidedly offensive weapons, with aircraft that, from positions in the eastern Mediterranean, could penetrate the Soviet heartland.

U.S. naval experts have high respect for the design and firepower of Soviet ships, but the Sixth Fleet has not been standing pat. It has taken on ever more sophisticated landing-guidance and weapons systems, like computerized dive-bombing that allows 20-to 30-ft. accuracy from 4,000 ft. It has also refined the all-important and largely secret missile defense for the carriers. The Sixth Fleet commanders are well aware that their carriers are potential floating targets in an age of surface-to-surface missiles; they also feel that their multiple early-warning defense systems are more than capable of shielding their mobile ocean-borne airfields from disaster.

Within the year the fleet's battle-experienced pilots, many of them Viet Nam veterans, will be flying two imposing new aircraft: Lockheed's S-3 Viking, which will be the first antisubmarine jet, and the swing-wing F-14 Tomcat, Grumman's new $18 million attack plane, which is to replace the effective but aging Phantom.

Stretching the Legs. The Sixth Fleet also boasts amphibious forces, which can land 2,000 combat Marines supported by helicopters and vertical-takeoff harrier planes from small mobile carriers like the Guam. Every two months or so, the landing force "stretches its legs" with an amphibious exercise in Spain or Sardinia.

Such scrambles ashore have been interpreted as possible rehearsals for a U.S. invasion of Middle East oilfields in the event of petroleum "strangulation." Sixth Fleet commanders deny that the exercises are anything more than routine. They point out that the amphibious force, after all, is only large enough to "go ashore to protect an embassy" in case of trouble.

"We don't get involved in what our State Department does," says Rear Admiral Forrest Petersen, Task Force 60's commander, when asked about the fleet's potential role in any possible U.S. action against the Middle East oilfields. "We simply stand ready to follow orders." Petersen has no doubt that with the amount of weaponry now assembled in the Mediterranean, a pitched battle between U.S. and Soviet fleets, which no one expects, would be awesome in cost. "A conflict would be pretty bloody, no question about that. An awful lot of people would get hurt," he says. "But I am convinced that we have the capability to meet that threat and still retain the residual force to do whatever else should be required beyond that."

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