I remember this. I was a scared 19-year-old kid in Navigation Dept. on the Coral Sea. I was standing watch down in stbd aftersteering one evening in March when the General Quarters alarm sounded. Didn't think anything of it until the GQ aftersteering helmsman came down to relieve me so I could run up to the bridge to take over as the helmsman for GQ. When I saw how scared he was coming down that ladder I knew something was amiss. That was a long 8 decks of ladders to get to the chart house and grab my life jacket and gas mask and run out to the bridge. When I took the helm, they were launching the "Alert 5" sending off two F/A-18s to investigate an air contact coming out of Libya. The sun was setting as the 18s neared the air contact and it turned tail and headed back to Libya. The way I understood it was because Libyan pilots couldn't fly at night. Imagine my relief when we secured from GQ.
The next morning, I was back on watch in stbd aftersteering when the GQ alarm sounded again. I thought, "It's probably just another Libyan reconnaissance plane. No big deal!"
Now up until this time, whenever we held GQ drills, the Conning officer had a soft voice when he gave helm commands and I always had to reply, "Orders to the helm?".
That morning when I got on the helm, I never had to ask him to repeat his orders once! As soon as I took the wheel, he screamed, "Helmsan! Hard right rudder!" I turned the wheel and as we began turning hard he screamed, "Helmsman! Shift your rudder!" I obeyed. We were just building momentum in the opposite direction when he screamed, "Helmsman! Shift your rudder!"
Now I was worried. I thought, "What the hell's going on? Are we doing torpedo evasion?!"
I looked over at one of the Operations Specialist on the sound-powered phones to CIC and asked in a squeaky voice, "Hey man, why are we at GQ this time?!"
He coolly replied that Combat had picked up an inbound missile fired at the battlegroup from Libya.
Thankfully, it splashed a few hundred miles south of our ship.
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