WASHINGTON (AP) _ U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, despite their incredible size, are becoming adept at a form of magic.

Utilizing weather, speed, advanced logistical planning and high-tech tomfoolery, several carriers in recent months have managed to vanish from antagonist’s eyes into the vastness of the oceans, reappearing only at the moment of attack.

Last April, dogged by airplanes rented by American television networks and by Soviet intelligence vessels, the carriers Coral Sea and America dropped from sight off the coast of Sicily. Less than 24 hours later, their planes bombed targets in Libya.

ADVERTISEMENT

And just over a month ago, a much lengthier case of a ″missing″ carrier occurred during an exercise named RIMPAC 86. The USS Ranger, although the target of an intense search that included satellite reconnaissance, escaped detection for two weeks while sailing across the Pacific.

The performance was considered all the more remarkable by an Australian admiral who monitored the exercise because the carrier’s planes were flying sorties throughout the period, staging mock attacks against surface ships, submarines and land targets.

Rear Adm. I.W. Knox of the Royal Australian Navy disclosed recently the ″Orange″ forces in RIMPAC could not locate the Ranger ″from the time it departed Southern Californian exercise areas until it steamed into Pearl Harbor some 14 days later.″

Reports of such exploits delight Navy brass, who must answer critics who think carriers are sitting ducks in an age of nuclear-powered submarines and cruise missiles.

Modern-day carriers have yet to be tested in combat against Soviet weaponry. But they are practicing hard at what the Navy calls ″maneuver strategy″ - if the enemy can’t find you, you have surprise. And with surprise, you can win.

Navy spokesmen decline to discuss the war-fighting tactics, citing military secrecy. But several officers interviewed recently, who asked not to be identified, say the idea of a ″stealthy carrier″ is not so farfetched.

Consider:

-The Coral Sea and America accomplished their feats through a variety of tricks, but the most important were ″masking″ and ″EMCON.″ The details of masking are classified, but essentially it involves making another ship - a destroyer, for example - look and sound like a carrier and a carrier look like something else.

ADVERTISEMENT

The process normally begins when a carrier is under radar surveillance, but beyond visual sight. The decoy ship maintains the carrier’s previous course, while the carrier speeds away.

″We can make the Soviets believe another ship is the carrier,″ says one official. ″The radar image, broadcasting pilot talk and the radio sounds of flight operations, the lighting at night: It looks like a duck and sounds like a duck so it must be a duck. So they follow the duck and make a mistake.″

The carrier, meantime, can employ lighting at night that makes it look like a tanker.

-Also employed by the Coral Sea and America, and the key to the Ranger’s disappearing act, was EMCON. This is the equivalent of a submarine ″rigging for silence″ or a convoy traveling under blackout conditions.

EMCON is a Navy acronym for emission control. Emission, in this case, refers to the electronic signals that are radiated by such equipment as radars, sonar and radio. When a carrier goes to EMCON, it literally shuts down much of its electronic gear to avoid detection.

Navy officials say a carrier can operate for long periods in EMCON because ″we go mute, but not deaf or blind.″

The procedure works by utilizing E2-C Hawkeye radar planes, flying at some distance from the carrier. Everything the Hawkeye sees is relayed electronically to the carrier and its escorts, providing a picture of aerial activity as well as surace forces.

While transmitting, the Hawkeye is far from the carrier, which gets the plane’s signals passively without any transmission of its own. The Hawkeye also takes on the role of air-traffic controller for the carrier’s planes.

Replenishment oilers, meantime, are told well in advance to make their own way to a specific position in the ocean. Again, radio silence is maintained.

-Aviation tactics. Even if radar can’t pick up a carrier sailing beyond the horizon, the ship’s location can be betrayed by jet aircraft scrambling into the air. The Navy’s answer is called ″offset vector.″

″To be simplistic, the planes don’t climb,″ says one officer. ″They catapult off and literally hit the deck. If planes are suddenly popping up 100 miles from the ship, you have no idea where they came from.″

-Speed. Publicly, the Navy says its carriers are capable of speeds ″in excess of 30 knots.″ Privately, officers acknowledge the floating cities can approach 40 knots.

″We can literally outrun the Soviet tattletales (intelligence ships),″ says one. ″And in (heavy) weather of any kind, there’s no contest. The carrier can outrun its own escorts.″

-Weather and Satellites. Anyone who’s been caught in the rain after the weatherman forecast sunny skies has his own thoughts on meteorology. But there have been solid gains made within that science in recent years.

″Although really heavy weather can hurt flight operations, these guys know how to follow weather patterns and use rain storms and above all, cloud cover,″ says one official. ″The carriers can receive weather data via satellite, passively, without portraying their position.″

″And we know the orbital parameters of Soviet reconnaissance satellites as well as our own,″ adds another. ″If there’s a recon bird coming by and you can duck into some weather, you duck into the weather. Or if you know there’s a blind spot in coverage, you sail there.″

″Once you succeed in slipping away,″ summarizes one officer, ″the odds shift in your favor. Most people don’t have any conception of how big the oceans are. You can be lonely if you want.″