On The Scene: Launch Of 'Shock & Awe'

CBS News Correspondent Cynthia Bowers is stationed aboard the USS Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.

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It is now 8:23 Baghdad time, and the city is about to be blasted. It was virtually impossible for the USS Lincoln to launch nearly every fighter jet in its extensive fleet fully loaded with bombs and the media not catch on to the fact that something was up. So we were told with the caveat that we not talk until the planes come home again safely.

That's proving difficult in that New York wants to hear from me because CBS is in "Special Events" mode and needs new reports to keep it interesting, and I have to simply say, "No, I can't broadcast now," without explaining why.

It's proving easy because so many of the men and women we've become friends with are up in the air and their safety means a hell of a lot more than a scoop.

I stood on the flight deck tonight with a dozen or so other journalists and watched the fighter jets line up. It looked a lot like O'Hare at rush hour. There were the long sleek Hornets and Tomcats and the rounder, chubbier Tanker planes. One of the pilots calls them the 'playschool' planes-because they have no sharp edges.

I saw Shannon Callahan sitting in the back seat of a Prowler. Then I watched fixated as one horizontal rocket after another launched from the carrier deck; so loaded with bombs that they sometimes dipped frightening toward the water before their engines caught fire and up
they flew into the star filled night.

I'm writing this now knowing it won't be published until well after this portion of the mission is over. We had a briefing with a pilot named Scott Swift, about whom I wrote about yesterday, whose position as the deputy commander air wing gives him rank over the others. He refuses to call this mission 'Operation Shock and Awe.' We we asked him what we should call it, he said, "a mission." "But," we argued, "Donald Rumsfeld calls it 'Shock and Awe.' That didn't carry any weight with Swift, so I guess it should be the 'the mission we dare not name.'

The amount of firepower on this carrier though is, to my eyes, 'shocking' and 'awesome.' Already spillover was being stored in part of the enlisted sailors' mess deck - big bombs on rollers just sitting in what used to be an eating area. Then the Rainier came alongside this morning and off-loaded more food, supplies, and you got it, bombs. These state-of-the-art weapons of war came over to the Lincoln via a primitive method, an old-fashioned rope and pulley. They slid down the rope from the deck of the Rainier to the lower leveled hangar bay of the Lincoln. I heard from one of the guys in charge of bombs today, Lt. Paul Dosen, about how the name of Brian Urlacher, the middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears, was written on one of the bombs
dropped a while ago as part of Operation Southern Watch. There was supposed to be some sort of quid pro quo, in the form of a jersey sent to Dosen. If it were sent, he never got it.

There were some jokes about bombs with my name on them when I left for this assignment. I don't think I could live with knowing that a bomb with my name on it actually did damage to someone. And to be honest, unlike what I've seen in previous wars, there's none of that going on here. No names on any of the hundreds of bombs I've seen.

We're watching Fox on board the ship and they are reporting this operation 'which has no name' is already underway. We are still under restrictions not to report or send back video until the Lincoln's pilots are back.

I sat with one of the squadrons in their 'ready room' before they went out. They made me fresh coffee, from a stash of the good stuff. And I learned more out how important their planes are to the mission. They will fly part of the way to the targets and one plane after another will fly by and fuel up. The fuel moves from one plane to another extremely fast - 2,000 gallons in just a minute (not like our gas stations)! Then they will turn around and come home and other tankers will take off to meet the planes on their way home from their mission. Eight or more planes will fuel off one tanker. One of the gung-ho young pilots said in a way he feels he's on the second string and in a situation like this he wants to be the starting quarterback. I feel sure one day he'll get that chance. But many of the others are
content, knowing they are critical to the success of the mission.

It is the people who are cleaning the stairs during the morning "happy hour" or the folks slinging food on plates in the messes, or bussing our tables, or cleaning our toilets that I feel for. They won't be the celebrated heroes in America's eyes. But I hope they know that if not for them, too, this ship, or this mission, wouldn't be the success story that it is.

There were those on board who had a hard time watching the assault on
Baghdad, saying it seemed like a bit like overkill. Even so, everyone was exultant that all of the Lincoln's planes made it back safely. One diverted to Saudi Arabia because of fuel issues, but all are accounted for and safe.