Captain Sheffield described a Cold War deployment to the Mediterranean in 1988.  His ship was the USS Capodanno (click the link) a 500 foot long, 48 foot wide, 5000 ton armed to the teeth supporting vessel of the 14 ship 6th Fleet which included the Eisenhower aircraft carrier.

The primary mission of the USS Capodanno in the cold war was to track Russian submarines with nuclear capability.  Captain Sheffield described the tools below the  water including  anti-submarine sonar powerful enough “that could it kill half the fish in the Mediterranean” and an array of hydrophone listening devices that was towed behind the ship.  By tracking all the nuclear capable submarines in the world, it was thought that if WWIII occurred,  the U.S. would have an advantage.  He shared that they might follow a sub for a  month at a time.

He explained that the Mediterranean is important to world politics and economics.  90% of the world’s oil passed through the Mediterranean at the time.  The Northern shores at the time were Nato countries. Africa and the Middle East were more complicated (and still are).

He described a plan to enter the Mediterranean, essentially to “sneak” the 6th fleet in so the Russians would not see them despite their satellites. The plan was for the 14 ships to pass through one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world at night, without radar, without communications, and at a top speed near 30mph. that particular night it was raining with 40mph headwinds.  The audience laughed loudly at this plan, however the joke was on us,  it was successful without mishap.

The fleet patrolled then went to port during the first half of 1988 in Palermo, Haifa, Trieste and Mallorca before he was relieved of his command to go to Harvard for graduate studies.

One incident the clearly moved Captain Sheffield was the car bombing of a USO in Naples that killed 5.  Apparently Gadaffi of Libya told the U.S. not to patrol below a certain parallel in the Mediterranean. But we did and bombed some facilities and the USO incident was a presumed retaliation.  Way back in 1988 those that represent our county were at risk.

On a personal note, the Captain was impressive.  He was tall, well appointed and commanded attention with his deep powerful voice, his humor, depth of knowledge and humility.  I easily understood how the 350 compliment of the USS Capodanno would follow his leadership.