For ‘No-Fly’ Zone Pilots, Routine Is the Enemy : Iraq: Officials worry a flier might be downed and used as a hostage--just weeks before a U.S. presidential election.

ABOARD THE INDEPENDENCE IN THE PERSIAN GULF —  Before he went off to work the other night, Lt. Clarke (Otter) McNeace packed two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, three bottles of water, a picture of his wife, a compass, a mirror, a fishhook and thread, and, of course, his 9-millimeter pistol.

Then, as he and dozens of his colleagues have done day and night for the past week, he climbed aboard his F-18 fighter jet, was catapulted from 0 to 190 m.p.h. in 1.5 seconds off a moving ship and spent the next five hours patrolling the skies over southern Iraq.

Just another night on the beat.

The only “weird thing,” McNeace, a fighter pilot who flew 28 missions in last year’s Persian Gulf War, later reflected was: “I didn’t have to sit there and dodge bullets all night.”

Such is the routine that has settled in on the carrier Independence, centerpiece of Operation Southern Watch, the name for the latest effort by the United States and its Gulf War allies to put pressure on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Rear Adm. Brent M. Bennit, commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet battle force in the Gulf, calls it an “unprecedented” operation. In volume, about 1,000 sorties have been flown to keep Iraqi warplanes out of a “no-fly” zone south of the 32nd Parallel. And it demonstrates what President Bush calls a long-term commitment by the allied coalition to bolster U.N. cease-fire resolutions accepted by Iraq after it was driven from Kuwait.

“My sense is we can carry this out really indefinitely,” Bennit said Friday.

But as the carrier battle group’s team of dozens of pilots, 70 warplanes and a cast of nearly 5,000 crewmen began their second week without incident or confrontation in the northern Persian Gulf, even the admiral conceded that the biggest risk now facing the operation may be the danger of falling into routine.

“There is a risk that we somehow will lose our edge, because it’s now been carried on for a considerable period of time,” he said. “It certainly could become routine. It has not become routine. And we talk among ourselves, with the pilots, with the flight leaders, almost on a daily basis to ensure that it doesn’t become routine. Because there is risk.”

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Capt. A. N. (Bud) Langston, chief of the carrier’s air group and a man who has himself flown a mission over the no-fly zone every day, put it this way: “The threat is not maintaining our vigilance. . . . (It is) making sure we don’t get lazy, we don’t get cavalier and that we continue to put the pressure on in the same way we did on the very first day. It’s like football: When you put down your guard, and you relax a little bit, you get hurt.”

Because of this concern, Langston, 48, a veteran pilot and a surfer from San Diego, did not fly Friday. None of his carrier pilots did, turning the entire operation over to American, British and French pilots based in Saudi Arabia. Until this weekend, the others had split daily sorties with the Independence. But Saturday, it was the Air Force’s turn to rest, with the carrier planning to double its daily missions to compensate.

Laboring day and night in temperatures soaring above 100 degrees, flight-deck crews that launch the carrier’s aircraft do not work in shifts. “They start a couple hours before flight operations start, and they don’t finish until the last aircraft is in. Their day is about 16 to 18 hours long,” Langston said. “And those are the guys we have to worry about.”

Although Iraq so far has respected the no-fly zone despite belligerent rhetoric from Baghdad, officials worry about the possibility that a pilot might be downed and then used as a hostage--just weeks before a U.S. presidential election.

Those aboard the Independence have no doubts about the morale and fitness of flight-deck crews and the carrier’s thousands of other personnel, but the pilots still must consider the hostage question as they prepare for each mission.

Last week, each time he prepared to leave the ready room of the “World Famous Golden Dragons” F-18 squadron, McNeace said he “went through the same thought processes I did last year before each mission during the war . . . asking myself: ‘Do I really know how to survive if I go down. Where would I go? Who would I talk to if I do want to talk to somebody?’ ”

Cmdr. Tim Heely, his squadron leader, said he routinely briefs his men on survival. Like many pilots interviewed, Heely said he believes that the United Nations’ reason for the current operation--to protect Iraq’s rebellious Shiite Muslims, who rose against Hussein after the war, from further Iraqi attacks--would help a downed coalition pilot.

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“What a lot of us are banking on is, (Hussein) is a crazy man, and in the area we’re flying over are supposed to be people who don’t like him,” Heely said.

Capture may be the ultimate fear of the no-fly zone’s supersonic border guards. But there are still other worries, such as what Heely calls “waiting for the second shoe to drop.”

“You’ve got (Hussein) saying this will be the graveyard of the retreating invader, and then nothing happens,” he said. “He’s made all these blustering statements . . . then nothing happens. That is more worrisome than having airplanes flying over us. Guys are wondering, ‘So, what’s happening?’ ”

By all accounts, nothing so far.

In more than a dozen interviews with carrier pilots, it is clear that the Iraqi air force withdrew most of its craft from the no-fly zone before the ban took effect. Now the Americans and Iraqis in the skies just watch each other watch each other, day after day.

The prospect of a prolonged mission is greeted with mixed emotions by the pilots on this carrier.

It is tantalizing for some, particularly the F-14 Tomcat pilots in the Black Knights squadron. They flew hundreds of practice missions in 1990, preparing for the Gulf War, but were sent home with their carrier a few weeks before the fighting began. “It’s hard being the bench-warmers like we were during the last war,” said pilot Jeff Dodson, whose views were echoed by his wingman, Lt. Ben Griffith of Los Angeles.

“We’re not warmongers. . . . It’s just hard to train and plan for it for so long and then not be a part of what may come next.”

But for other fliers, particularly for Gulf War veterans such as McNeace, who flew most of his 28 missions under heavy antiaircraft fire, turning over the operation at its present levels to another carrier would be welcome.

“We’re wondering where it’s going to end,” he said. “To say it’s pleasurable to go up on a four-, five-, six- or seven-hour patrol hop--well, there isn’t much exciting about doing that.”