Supercarrier.

• Author: Shuger, Scott

Supercarrier.

George C. Wilson Macmillan, $19.95. One element has been common to the events marking the re-emergence of America's militarism in the 1980s: the aircraft carrier. That is one reason why George C. Wilson-- a Washington Post defense correspondent--is to be applauded for going aboard the John F. Kennedy for the whole of its eventful 1983-1984 Mediterranean deployment. Another is that, in this year of Top Gun, our understanding of the military needs massive doses of human reality.

Many civilians persist in thinking that if there isn't a war on, then military life can't be too taking. But Wilson's narrative puts across the sheer personal toll of carrier deployments. He not only describes the rigors of many shipboard chores, but by including chaplain's messages, ship's disciplinary hearings, and wives' letters, he also builds an accurate picture of the extreme pressure that crewmembers and their families feel as they deal with uncertainty, separation, and death.

On the military level, Wilson also clears some important ground. The most significant chapter of the book is his account of the December 1983 airstrike launched by bombers from the Kennedy and Independence against Syrian positions in Lebanon. When the Marines at the Beirut airport were sabotaged in October 1983, the two-carrier force offshore was told to prepare a retaliatory strike. At first, Kennedy aircrews thoroughly prepared a nighttime mission against a readily identifiable terrorist complex in the Bekaa valley, only to have it canceled by a "higher authority' after French carrier aircraft struck a nearby target. Then, after one of the Kennedy's overland reconnaissance flights drew Syrian missile fire, another raid was ordered immediately. Time pressure made planning this go-round far from fastidious. Furthermore, now the targets were virtually invisible, dugin, anti-aircraft positions. Worse still, this attack would be flown in daylight.

And there was confusion about exactly when. All the Kennedy people thought the launch would be at 11 a.m., but around 5 a.m. they got the word that it would go at 7:20. The timing change was a two-fold disaster: it meant that the pilots would be looking directly into the rising sun as they tried to locate their miniscule targets, and that there wasn't enough time to put the appropriate ordnance on the planes. As a result, most of the ten Kennedy bombers took off with inadequate loads. One that didn't had a load too heavy for the...