DATE: Friday, October 3, 1997               TAG: 9710030689

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:  112 lines

G.W. BATTLE GROUP MANS ITS STATIONS FOR SEA TOUR

Before the sun strikes the antennas and radar towers atop the gray behemoths at Little Creek along the Elizabeth River this morning, a symphony of motion and power will already be playing.

The boilers and gas turbines on six Norfolk-based Navy ships, as well as seven at bases elsewhere, will be humming. Crews will be severing umbilical cords that for months have brought lights, heat, phones and cable TV aboard.

Husbands and wives, partners and friends will be dropping off thousands of sailors and Marines. A traffic jam of emotions will flood the Norfolk Naval Station's piers.

This is a decades-old ritual of departure that will be observed today by the George Washington Battle Group and the Guam Amphibious Ready Group.

Led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington, the Norfolk-based ships will begin pulling away at 8:30 a.m., bound for the Mediterranean to replace the ships of the John F. Kennedy Battle Group and the Norfolk-based ``gators'' of the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group.

The outbound group includes six cruisers, destroyers and frigates - among them, the cruiser South Carolina, making its last deployment - a fast combat support ship and two submarines, along with the three ships of the Guam ARG.

With them will go the family routines of more than 13,000 crew members: The year's major holidays will come while the ships are at sea or tied up in foreign ports.

Nine tactical aircraft squadrons will join the carrier later. Their pilots, today still at homes sprinkled across the country, get one last good night's sleep before streaking over the Atlantic Saturday in search of a 4 1/2-acre landing strip far out to sea.

Cmdr. Dave Hegland will spend the next six months worrying.

Saturday, when F-14 Tomcats, F/A-18 Hornets and lots of other aircraft begin landing on the George Washington, Hegland will be on the flight deck.

The 47-year-old Alaska native with a Ph.D. in statistics will virtually live on the flight deck during the deployment. And anytime something looks wrong, from a loose bolt on the deck to a sailor not looking where he's walking, he has the power to intervene.

Sometimes it's just a hand on a shoulder and a shout in an ear. Other times it's a bark into a hand-held radio to the air boss directing the show from the tower.

The G.W. has a reputation to uphold: The carrier completed its last deployment, which ran from January to July 1996, without a death or serious injury, the loss of single airplane, or the destruction of any major equipment.

With so many people on board, doing so many dangerous jobs, mishaps are almost inevitable. But Hegland, who calculates the odds of just about every move the sailors make during an operation, isn't willing to accept that.

``Yeah, things can happen, but we don't have to accept that as a cost of doing business,'' he said last week.

His motto: ``If you have to do it, come up with ways to reduce the risk.''

What worries Hegland more than flight operations is layovers in foreign ports. There's a greater chance of someone getting hurt or killed on a narrow street or back alley of a strange city than in the by-the-book culture on board ship.

Leave for many crew members ends at 6 a.m. today.

For others, the departure began days ago.

Sailors carrying fishing rods, mountain bikes and TVs clambered on board Thursday, saluting and disappearing into their ships. A tractor-trailer emptied its contents - heads of lettuce - onto a conveyor belt leading to the carrier.

Wednesday morning, deep in the engine room of the South Carolina, a 596-foot guided missile cruiser, engineers began the ``light-up'' of the ship's twin boilers.

It takes that long to warm the pipes and build steam on the 22-year-old nuclear-powered ship, which today begins its last deployment.

A day before, Chief Engineer Brad Mai ran through possible problems with his staff and set up the ``five-and-dime'' rotation (5 hours on station, 10 hours off) that will keep the ship's screws turning and lights burning for the next six months.

`Something will break,'' he says. ``It always does.'' It might be a minor leak in the boilers' pipes, a faulty bearing in a pump. It takes 40 crew members to man both engine rooms.

All the preparation will end with the ship's 10 a.m. departure, when the cruiser, now reliant only on its own power, casts off its lines and severs its ties with Norfolk.

The South Carolina, the Navy's fifth ship to bear the name, was once considered the future of the seagoing service, being as it was a nuclear-powered surface ship that could circle the world several times without refueling.

Now the ship, commissioned in 1975, is a symbol of the past. This could be the last departure of a nuclear cruiser on a full-length deployment, ever.

The South Carolina's job was to protect carriers from enemy planes. Military planners long ago decided to shift the fleet to today's gas turbine-powered Aegis cruisers and destroyers, guided missile ships that pack more punch and require smaller crews than the 600 aboard the South Carolina.

It's a big crew, but nothing like the 5,700 aboard the G.W. And that means more responsibility for everyone aboard, including young officers and enlisted sailors who make decisions without going through a long chain of command.

``It's one of the most upbeat ships I've ever been on,'' Mai says. ``Most of our enlisted guys could easily be officers if they wanted to.''

One of the ``blue shirts,'' Petty Officer 3rd Class Robert Register, was already on board last week and missing his family. Register runs the register in the ship's store, collecting $1 for a drink here, $1.95 for a tin of Copenhagen there.

This is the third trip to the Med for ``Reggie,'' who'll turn 26 at sea.

``I've been there, done that,'' he said. ``I know it's going to be fun for some guys, but not much for me.

``I'm married and have two little kids at home. That's why.'' MEMO: The ship tracking chart is on Page A6. Coordinates will be updated

on Pilot Online (http://pilotonline.com) and in The Pilot. ILLUSTRATION: Photos

BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot

Seaman David Thompson, left, makes final preparations for the

deployment of the George Washington.

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