The fighter pilots came home in Virginia on Friday after nine months of maritime clashes with the Yemeni military and their missile and drone strikes, in what CBS News referred to as “the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II.”
The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group, which includes three other warships supported by squadrons of F/A-18 Super Hornets, was tasked with protecting Israeli vessels and US-allied warships in a Red Sea corridor that leads to the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean.
The carrier strike group left Virginia in mid-October last year but its deployment at the strategic waterway was extended twice following the escalation of Yemen’s pro-Palestine retaliatory attacks.
“Honestly, it was completely unbelievable,” Lt. Cmdr. Charity Somma told CBS News. “I don’t think anybody on board that carrier strike group was expecting that to happen.”
Commander Benjamin Orloff, a Navy pilot, told reporters in Virginia Beach that most of the sailors, including him, were not used to being fired on, given their previous military engagements in recent decades.
“It was incredibly different,” Orloff said. “And I’ll be honest, it was a little traumatizing for the group. It’s something that we don’t think about a lot until you’re presented with it.”
When asked by CBS News if what they faced could be described as the most intense naval combat since Word World War II, Orloff called the description “pretty apt.”
Underlining the severity of the Yemeni military’s confrontation with the US Navy forces, Orloff said, “This was not long-range projection. This was…right in our face.”
The CBS News also cited Caitlyn Jeronimus, whose husband is a Navy lieutenant commander and pilot, as saying that she initially thought it could be a “fun deployment,” and would be relatively easy but Eisenhower’s plans changed due to Yemen’s escalating strikes and “it was stressful.”
According to an AP report quoting American military commanders and experts last month, the US-led campaign to protect Israeli interests in the Red Sea has escalated into the “most intense” running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II.
RHM/
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