In 1985, I flew a TARPS mission to surprise a Kynda class cruiser as she transited the English Channel. At the time USS America was operating in the North Sea northwest of Ireland. We had been running deception games ever since leaving Norfolk and shaking our Tattletail, the state of the art Balzam class dedicated AGI. We had Ike sortie with us and then do a high speed run at night swap places and lights with us and then outrun the Balzam. We sent a deception group anchored by a battleship straight to the west side of the GIUK gap radiating all our comms and we ran the cordon of subs and surface ships in high seas at night and we operating freely northwest of Ireland undetected. NATO was looking for us as well as part of the upcoming exercise and the British press was claiming big decks were a thing of the past after the Falklands so they chartered a helo flown by former RN types who said they'd find us. Nobody did as we had been in total EMCON the entire time and stayed that way. We had embarked our SECNAV John Lehman and our fleet commander, VADM Mustin who wanted to prove big decks were the way to go so they were more than willing to take on both the Soviets and NATO to prove it. So Tomcats launched in EMCON and stayed low so as to not give away the carrier's position, but showed up everywhere.
When the info came in on the Kynda, the admiral decided to make a long range strike to show how we could reach out and touch her, but how powerless they were to respond (if they could find us). We launched in our TARPS jet with a division of A-7 Corsairs with HARM (first deployment of this capability so they were eager to see how it did with the real world threat) and A-6 tankers along with an EA-6B and an EA-3B to home in on any electronic emissions. Most of the other squadrons had fairly senior guys onboard eager to show their stuff so we were along for the ride. We decided to transit from the North Sea to Channel between Ireland and Great Britain to avoid having to talk to anyone and thereby alert NATO or the Soviets to our presence. The Channel was over 600 miles away so we were out of radio contact with the E-2 and the ship (listening to us that is) for most of the mission. As we got close to the channel, we started losing our "escorts" that were there to provide ELINT. The Kynda and her escort were also in EMCON so they waited until they were bingo and kissed us off one by one. It had been several hours since we launched so our position data was cold. We only knew she was transiting from east to west at last report. We didn't have enough gas to search the whole English Channel and as we got close, we found it to be cloaked in a pea soup. With SECNAV and the admiral waiting back "at the ranch" we figured it would be worth hanging it out a little. I had built a fuel ladder to be back at the ship at expected recovery time, another to simply get back and another to get us to an RAF base in Scotland reasoning that if we got the pictures, we'd be forgiven for being late. If we didn't, we'd be bums. I plotted the most western position possible for the Kynda and turned on the pulse radar mode. I had never seen so many contacts in my life on the surface. I figured they must be fishing boats of some kind and they were going to make this difficult if not impossible. They were everywhere. We discussed what to do and decided to descend to be able to see what the contacts were. This didn't help the gas situation and quickly eliminated the possibility to be back on time. We were out of radio contact with everyone now so we were truly on our own and all we saw were white fishing trawlers everywhere. Fine tuning my search, I tried to discern larger contacts that might appear to be in a naval formation. it appeared that several were up ahead in the center of the channel, which mad sense so we elected to head that way. The first few were not naval vessels, just larger merchantmen. We were now getting to point of second option and I considered helping our fuel situation by flying straight to the ship over Great Britain and used the INS to figure out that option. They said not to do it on the way down, but nothing was said on the way back and I had talked to an RAF F-4 RIO who we had aboard about fueling locations and how to do exactly that just in case. So we pressed towards the last of the blobs on the radar and suddenly out of the mist loomed the huge superstructure of the Kynda looking like battlestar Galactica and bristling with weapons. All our warning gear was silent as we closed and then pass her on her port side close abeam from bow to stern running our cameras. The crew was formed up in a U shaped formation at quarters on the stern with what looked like a very senior officer giving some sort of talk...that is until we blew by. I knew now that we wouldn't have to worry about gas so as we turned to "rig" the ship from stern to bow, we swept the wings and lit the burners and pulled up right over the mast doing doing aileron rolls as we pirouetted to ten thousand feet. On this pass, they had broken ranks and were running to General Quarters so we knew we had really surprised them. Our warning gear was still ominously silent during the climb and we wondering if it really worked...until we got a lock-on from one of their tracking radars as we leveled off. That made us really laugh as it was evidence of how unprepared they were for our visit. I used the INS to head us directly towards the ship for the long trip home. It was several hours before we even tried to raise someone from the ship and ask for gas. As we transited the northwest coast of Scotland, we finally got an answer to our calls, We decided not to leave sight of land and a nearby F-4 base unless we knew a tanker was heading our way. USS America was still in hiding and expecting a major effort by NATO to find her so we didn't want to take any chances that a tanker might not be available. Right at the point of pulling out the approach plate for Lossiemouth, I heard a weak transmission from a Blue Blaster tanker trying to raise us. Huzzah! What a ship, what an airwing! They knew what we needed and were already en route with plenty of gas and a big surprise! The E-2 came up and asked our posit AND weapons status. I gave a constructive loadout based on carriage of the TARPS pod to be fair and after tanking, we got a vector. Although we expected the photos to be top priority, it turned out we were coming back alongside a stream of NATO aircraft looking for the ship and were in b3st position to intercept them. My first radar contact was an RAF Victor tanker in process of passing gas to 3 RAF Phantoms. 4 easy kills later, we got another vector and slid in behind an USAF RF-4 Phantom doing the speed of heat who never saw us slip in behind. Rather than use burner and have to ask for gas again, I locked him up on the radar and their warning gear must have been in fine shape as they immediately broke into us allowing us to neatly close to a guns solution. We then joined on them and showed them our TARPS pod as I signaled them to come up on quad 3s. They didn't want to chat much as they seemed really steamed to have been tapped so early in the game and not get anywhere near the ship as we were still over a hundred miles away. We were now "winchester" and got the RTB to the ship only to pick up another radar contact heading home, which was a Navy P-3 that the E-2 declared as a hostile entity. We used the rest of our constructive ammo on the lumbering P-3 that was some sort of RDT&E aircraft supporting the NATO folks. The trap was uneventful and after the photos were developed, SECNAV asked to meet us so we got to present him with a large blowup of the Kynda in the flag spaces that night. He was casually dressed and wearing HIS leather flight jacket that he earned in flight school, which was totally cool. All in a day's work during the cold war.
And then for dessert a "look we can launch a couple dozen missiles from underwater at 24 separate targets from hundreds of miles away."
