Opening night

The signs of impending war were all over the USS Bunker Hill last Wednesday.

When the cruiser's crew members woke up, they were told to carry their gas masks with them at all times. Technicians tested the hatches on more than 120 missile tubes well ahead of their bimonthly schedule to do so. In the officer's wardroom and on the mess deck, the dinner menu featured "Tomahawk Strike Steak." In his evening prayer, the ship's chaplain's talked about avenging evildoers. War loomed as close as the glow of lights from Kuwait City that danced on the horizon, about 25 miles off the 567-foot ship's starboard side.

Still, when the battle came, it was not what the sailors-or, indeed, anybody, expected. It turned out the Bunker Hill would be at the center of a highly unusual opening gambit in the war against Iraq.

The war began not with clarion call, but with a voice as flat as telephone operator's over the ship's intercom system, a few hours past midnight. "We are in receipt of a tasking order. Set condition to strike."

Tomahawks can be launched within an hour of such an order. But as these orders came in, only the ship's most senior officers realized that the Bunker Hill's strike plans, which had been in the works for months, had been shoved aside. Coordinates for new targets were coming across in real time, based on breaking intelligence from Washington.

A minute before 5 a.m., the ship's skipper, Capt. Faris Farwell, took to the intercom and announced that he had received final orders. Echoing President Bush's post-Sept. 11 remarks, Farwell told the 388-member crew of mostly enlisted sailors under 25 years old that they had not tired, faulted or failed during five months in the Persian Gulf. "God bless the Bunker Hill," he said.

A more junior officer told the crew the launches would begin in 15 minutes. Sailors would be allowed to watch the light show from the ship's main deck-with earplugs on. "Professionalism, professionalism, professionalism. I don't want any hip-hurrahs," the officer reminded about a dozen officers and enlisted sailors standing watch on the bridge.

At 5:15, amidst an explosion of flames and smoke, two missiles emerged from the rear of the ship, shaking the 9,500 ton vessel to its hull and lighting up the ocean with the bright blue color of a welder's torch. The missiles paused overhead for three seconds, almost appearing to have petered out, before their navigation systems kicked in with a loud pop and the upright warheads flattened out. They burst across the sea, trailing flaming debris. Within 10 seconds, they were out of sight. In short order, two more Tomahawks streaked away into the night sky.

Then, suddenly, the ship accelerated to 25 knots and veered back on its own wake. Reporters watching the strikes on a catwalk just behind the main bridge had to grab a railing to avoid losing their footing. The ship had drifted from it's designated "box" in the Persian Gulf, and needed to move to ensure proper coordination with the four other vessels and two submarines sending Tomahawks into Iraq.

Back in position by 5:30, the Bunker Hill unleashed a nine-shot battery. With dawn breaking, dirty trails of black smoke trailed each missile's path through the sky. Scores of crew members, many holding camcorders or snapping photographs, cheered from the deck as the ship's belly was unloaded. "Happy trails, aft!" shouted Lt. Cmdr. Curtis Goodnight, the ship's executive officer, who couldn't resist taking a few pictures himself.

As if on cue, the firings stopped about 15 minutes before the ship's 6 a.m. breakfast hour. On the TV in the Bunker Hill's wardroom, CNN showed the missiles launched from the ship. The report was met with puzzled looks and concern about why the "shock and awe" air strikes from fighter planes that were supposed to follow close behind were nowhere to be seen.

Within minutes, however, about 30 officers' eyeballs widened as it became clear that their opening shot-now being called a "decapitation strike"-might have been the only one needed in the war to remove Saddam Hussein from power.