Bomb squad

Aboard the Carl Vinson, sailors are working day and night building bombs for U.S. air strikes on Afghanistan

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Providence (R.I.) Journal Staff Writer

ABOARD THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER CARL VINSON, IN THE ARABIAN SEA – The ship's bomb factory is a busy place these days. Two shifts of sailors are making bombs every hour of every day to maintain the U.S. Navy's aerial assault on troops of the Taliban.

The men and women assembling the bombs exploding in Afghanistan are formally known as aviation ordnancemen, though they prefer the sobriquet "Mag Rats."

The Mag Rats work in confined spaces. The two Bomb Assembly Magazines are small, warren-like spaces far below the ship's waterline. The rooms where the bombs are stored and assembled are deliberately kept small, so that they may be quickly sealed and flooded should the ship catch fire; fire and bombs are not a good mix.

"It's an overwhelming sensation of maybe a little fear, and maybe a little anxiety, knowing you're standing here with thousands of pounds of explosives," said Chief Chris, 32, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as he led a tour of one bomb assembly room on Saturday, Oct. 27.

When U.S. Navy planes began bombing Afghanistan three weeks ago, the Navy banned its 5,500 crew members from revealing their first and last names in interviews for fear of terrorist reprisals. Though the Vinson's brass has since relaxed that rule, the Mag Rats are sticking to it because their role in the war – assembling the bombs that are actually killing people – is so personal.

"These guys are building up some laser-guided bombs right now," Chris said, pointing to a team of 10 people dressed in desert fatigues and the red T-shirts of ordnancemen. Beneath the low fluorescent lights, they armed the big, bullet-shaped bomb casings with aerodynamic fins and electronically charged fuses that will signal the bombs when it's time to blow.

The bomb assemblers have three "basic bodies" of bombs from which to choose: 500-pounders; 1,000 pounders; and 2,000-pound bombs that, Chris said, "are as long as a Volkswagen." All of these bomb bodies, painted either gray or olive drab, are stacked on pallets around the room.

The laser-guided bombs on the assembly line were the 500-pound version; about half of a bomb's weight is its filler of H6 explosive, a chemical that is something like TNT, Chris said; the casing is thermal-coated steel. The thermal coating buys extra time before the bombs "cook off" and explode if they're on a plane that catches fire.

WORKING ON the tail assembly of the laser-guided, 500-pound bombs was Petty Officer Donna, 19, of Hyde Park, Mass. Donna said that when she talks to friends back home, "I tell them I build bombs and they think it's the coolest thing. I think it's pretty darned cool. It's exciting to know that what I'm doing is killing people."

Donna's teammate on the assembly line, Airman Brandon of Los Angeles, was more ambivalent about his role as a bomb-builder. "You feel bad in sort of a sense," he said, "but then you're doing your part for your country, too. I'm sure nobody in here wants to kill people. But you got to do what you got to do. If we don't do anything, it [terrorism] is going to get worse."

The man in charge of the bomb factory, Warrant Officer Goose of San Diego, said he feels no compunction about arming bombs to explode in Afghanistan.

"We were all watching when the terrorists did what they did to the World Trade Center and the Pentagon," said Goose, 39. "We all saw that. I know, personally, I couldn't wait to help America get its confidence back by putting warheads on terrorist foreheads."

Every few minutes the boom of fighter planes catapulting off the flight deck shook the bomb room.

"This is a finished product right here," said Chief Chris, pointing to a laser-guided missile. The bullet-shaped bomb body had been transformed into a sleek, aerodynamic dart, armed with a fuse.

"To me it does look like a dart," Goose said. "Except you aren't able to pick it up and throw it. We have an airplane pick it up and throw it."

It took the assembly team just seven minutes to turn one squat bomb body into a finned, laser-guided "smart bomb."

TWO TEAMS of bomb builders have been working round-the-clock, every day on the Vinson, to stock the aircraft carrier's four squadrons of fighter planes with bombs. In three weeks, planes from this one aircraft carrier have dropped about 800,000 pounds of bombs inside Afghanistan.

In the weapons division, "troops are putting in 14 or 15 hours a day," said Warrant Officer Goose. "The leadership is putting in 18 or 19."

"We don't get the tans down here," Chris said. "We won't know what the weather's like for days."

Still, Chris said, the job has its rewards: "I enjoy knowing the fact that justice is going to be served. I enjoy doing this because I know it has a direct impact on the operation that's taking place as we speak now."

Once in a while, Chris will see television footage of one of his bombs exploding in Afghanistan. "It kind of gives you a little rise, you know?" he said. "That leaves you with a good feeling."

In the first days of the war, the Mag Rats scrawled large letters on the bombs, messages for the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. They wrote: NYPD and NYFD in honor of New York City's police and fire department members killed in the World Trade Center attack.

Since those heady, early days of bombing, the Vinson's Mag Rats have refrained from writing on their bombs. "We try not to do that here," Goose said. "It looks unprofessional."

A plain gray or olive drab bomb does the job just fine, Goose said. "Besides being more professional, there's no better way of sending a message than the boom at the end."