Admiral "Sandy" Woodward's Falklands War memoir relates a story of how an RN DD or FF got within visual range of a US CV shortly before that war, in the Indian Ocean. I cannot recall if he was the skipper or a flag officer at the time. From what I remember:
The exercise rules were that there wasn't supposed to be aerial recon beforehand, but his ship was overflown just before sunset anyway. They had planned for that, however.
After sunset, they rigged every light they could all over the ship, and whenever an American plane flew nearby, they identified themselves as an Indian (or Pakistani?) cruise liner, including stereotypical South Asian accent. (I read this in 1991-92, when I had an Indian boss, so the accent written in the book had me chuckling.) Come sunrise, they were on the horizon from the CV, "launching" Exocets.
This scene was later reprised, more or less, in the almost-classic naval movie "Down periscope."
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My Twilight claim to fame: I ran "Allegheny Uprising" at Allegheny College, spring of 1988.
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06-21-2013, 10:35 AM
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