DATE: Thursday, May 1, 1997                 TAG: 9705010485

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  126 lines

MINE WARFARE TEAMS ATTACK OLD PROBLEM GOAL IS TO HAVE SELF-SUFFICIENT SWEEPING TEAMS TO FILL ANY NEED.

The air hung thick and still and 100 degrees hot when the cry came from a lookout on the bow: Mines ahead, three of them, bobbing in the calm waters of the Persian Gulf.

The frigate's skipper ordered the engines reversed. For 45 minutes the Samuel B. Roberts gingerly tiptoed from danger. Then its stern brushed another mine, this one submerged.

A blast lifted the ship 15 feet from the water, punched a gaping hole in its hull, ripped its gas-turbine engines from their mounts and shot 100-foot towers of flame from its stacks.

It also pounded home a vexation facing the Navy: Despite ever-more-sophisticated weapons systems and fast-thinking computers, American warships could be crippled with low-tech sea mines. And even Third World nations could effectively use them.

Nine Aprils later, the Navy's mine-hunting forces are able to better combat an age-old warfighting tool that for generations has bottled up harbors and armadas.

Once mere visitors aboard other Navy ships, mine warfare experts now have their own command ship to support their helicopters, divers, mine hunters and explosive ordnance specialists.

With a flock of four small, Texas-based mine hunters in its wake, the newly renovated mine countermeasures support ship Inchon - formerly based in Norfolk - this week sails the Kattegat Strait of the North Sea, just southwest of Sweden and east of Denmark.

There it is demonstrating a new concept in mine warfare: taking lots of hardware to an allied harbor where, in time of war, it would clear waterways of underwater hazards.

``This is the first time we have done this with a large ship since post-Korea,'' Capt. Bruce T. Vanbelle said in a satellite telephone interview from the Inchon.

Vanbelle is commander of Mine Countermeasures Squadron II, which set sail March 11 from the Mine Warfare Command's headquarters in Ingleside, Texas, near Corpus Christi.

With him for the next three months are four minehunter and mine countermeasures ships, eight mine hunter helicopters, two logistics helicopters, 50 divers, explosive ordnance experts and other technicians - in all, some 1,823 sailors.

The coastal minehunter Blackhawk, an Osprey-class, 187-footer with a crew of 48, is the smallest ship in the flotilla. Also using the Inchon as a mother ship are three Avenger-class mine countermeasures ships - Avenger, Devastator and Scout - slightly larger 224-footers with about 80 crew members on each.

Rounding out the task group are eight MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopters from Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 14, based at Norfolk Naval Air Station, and two CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters, assigned to Norfolk-based Helicopter Combat Support Squadron 6.

Together, the squadron's ships and aircraft are uniquely suited to fighting a danger that, between 1987 and 1991, damaged not only the Samuel B. Roberts but the assault ship Tripoli, the cruiser Princeton and a reflagged Kuwaiti supertanker in the Persian Gulf.

``It's the first modern mine countermeasures task group that is really equipped to support expeditionary operations,'' Vanbelle said.

Its goal is to have a mine-hunting force that can come from the sea, support amphibious operations, or carrier battle group operations and go anyplace in the world that it wants and stay as long as it needs, he said.

``We don't need permission from any other country. We don't need support from shore. We can replenish from the sea, re-arm from the sea, work with the rest of the fleet the way battle groups and amphibious groups do.''

They're doing it in style. The Inchon's $28 million conversion from a troop and helicopter carrier, completed last year, enables it to refuel mine countermeasures ships underway, carry up to four landing craft on newly installed boat davits, and accommodate up to 11 large helicopters.

``The conversion was done smart and gave us most of the tools we need,'' said Capt. Matthew W. Tuohy, the Inchon's commanding officer. ``Morale has taken off and reclaimed the ship. It's in the best shape it's been in in 28 years.''

The ship boasts the latest in command and control systems, communications hardware and intelligence-gathering equipment, he said.

``There are first-class accommodations for everybody,'' Vanbelle said. ``The crew has a great attitude. We are not guests on this ship. We have become one integrated task group.

``Plus, it feeds good,'' he added.

No longer do divers have to stagger off airliners in some foreign country and worry about how to get acclimated to a new environment. Using the decompression chamber aboard ship, they can be conditioned en route.

``Our divers have it better than anywhere else,'' Vanbelle said. ``We have a complete dive locker, a full decompression capability.''

For the 50 divers working with Cmdr. Darrell Fink, commanding officer of Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 6, that's important.

``They will have that edge,'' he said, as his divers - assembled from Navy units in Charleston, S.C., San Diego, Whidbey Island, Sigonella and Halifax - prepared to dive in the chilly, 41-degree water of the North Sea.

They have been able to put in more training in the past three weeks of sailing to the North Sea than most divers get in six months, Fink said.

Likewise, the 400 people who make up the helicopter crews also are happy to have their own work spaces, support facilities and storage areas, said Cmdr. Randy Young, executive officer of HM-14 out of Norfolk.

The Sea Dragons are used to tow a hydrofoil sled across the water at relatively high speeds. The sleds are fitted with a system that can counter magnetic mines.

``The concept is totally invaluable for the squadron,'' Young said. ``We are able to increase our sortie rate from typically six sorties a day to an average of eight and as many as ten a day.

``We also maintained our readiness up to 88 percent. The whole program has really been invaluable.''

The Sea Knights are used for logistics, search and rescue, plus insertion and retrieval of divers. ``We are a platform the EOD folks like,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Brenda Holdener of Norfolk, in charge of the two CH-46 helicopters aboard. ``We put divers in the water. It's excellent training for us.

``This is new for us and a bit new for everybody.''

The Navy has made a conscious decision to operate just one mine countermeasures support ship for now. It will see what the Inchon can do before incorporating the concept of a mother ship for the mine hunters into some other hull.

But the bottom line is that episodes such as the Samuel B. Roberts explosion have hastened the Navy's desire to beef up its mine countermeasures program.

And to use a little new money to attack an old, and growing, problem. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

The Inchon and support ships comprise a modern mine countermeasures

task group to support large operations.

Graphic by MICHAEL HALL, The Virginian-Pilot

Mine countermeasures task group sets sail

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