Decision at Sea

by Symonds, Craig L.

  Prior to their deployment to the Gulf, the Army pilots had been briefed personally by Admiral Crowe, himself a former commander of the Middle East Forces, who had emphasized that laying mines was “a hostile act” and told them that if they observed any vessel so engaged, they could open fire without warning. Consequently, the Sea Bats immediately swooped down and laced the stern of the vessel with their 7.62-millimeter Gatling guns. The crew members threw themselves to the deck, but when the helicopters flew past, they resumed dropping mines in the water. The Army helicopters came around for another run, and this time they fired 3.75-inch rocket pods filled with fléchette rounds—hundreds of tiny nails. The ship’s crew jumped over the side, and the vessel caught fire. The next morning a Navy SEAL team boarded the abandoned vessel, which proved to be the Iranian transport vessel Iran Ajr, and found ten mines still on board along with their fuses and timers.40

  Dead and living Iranians were plucked from the water nearby and taken aboard the U.S. command ship LaSalle, a converted transport dock that was serving as the flagship of the Commander Middle East Force. The dead were stored rather awkwardly in the ship’s freezer, those who needed hospital attention were flown to the Guadalcanal, and the rest were bound with plastic handcuffs and detained aboard the LaSalle. Their legal status was a bit murky. “We’re not at war,” a U.S. Defense Department spokesman declared, “so they really couldn’t be called prisoners. For now they’re being called detainees.” It was a new term for a new kind of conflict, and it would not be the last time the United States would find occasion to use it.41

  The Sea Bats soon made nighttime mine laying a dangerous business for the Iranians. On October 8 a night-flying MH-6 helicopter sank an Iranian Boghammer gunboat and damaged two other craft.* Iran protested these attacks and called for a mutual withdrawal of forces from the Gulf. Instead, the United States warned Iran that continued mine laying would provoke even harsher responses. In a press interview, Secretary of the Navy James Webb declared, “There comes a time when a different sort of reaction could be necessary in order to make it clear what our objectives are.”42

  With the night-flying Sea Bats interrupting their mine-laying efforts, and Sea Stallions sweeping the mines ahead of the convoys, the Iranians tried a new tactic. Their reconquest of the Faw Peninsula, just east of the Shatt-al-Arab, put them within missile range of Kuwait, and on October 15, 1987, they fired a Silkworm missile at a Liberian-registered tanker near the Al Ahmadi oil terminal. The next day they fired another into the bridge of the reflagged supertanker Sea Isle City. Technically, because the oil terminal was in Kuwaiti waters, the Sea Isle City was no longer under American protection, but because it had been previously reflagged as an American vessel, the Reagan administration decided that some kind of retaliation was needed. Despite the administration’s public disdain for the kind of incremental escalation that had drawn the United States into Vietnam, Reagan sought a measured response. The key word in the administration was “proportionality.” What would constitute a proportional response for a missile attack on the Sea Isle City?43

  Rather than sink an Iranian warship, which some in the administration feared would provoke a dangerous escalation, administration planners decided instead to target an Iranian oil platform. The justification for this was that the Iranians used these platforms to monitor maritime trade in the Gulf and to conduct surveillance of U.S. warships. The particular platform selected was the Rashadat platform in the southern Gulf, from which the Iranians had fired (though unsuccessfully) at a U.S. helicopter the year before.

  To ensure overwhelming firepower superiority, the United States assigned no fewer than six warships to the mission: one cruiser, four destroyers, and the small frigate Thach, named in honor of Jimmy Thach, who had commanded VF-3 in the Battle of Midway. Their orders were to steam up to the Rashadat platform, warn the Iranians to evacuate, and then destroy it with gunfire. To ensure that the rest of the world (including the American public) witnessed this expression of American displeasure, a film crew also came on board with orders to photograph the entire operation.44

  The attack took place on October 19, 1987. One of the two platforms caught fire almost immediately, but the other proved remarkably resilient; it was like trying to destroy a spiderweb with rifle fire. After an hour and a half, although the U.S. ships had fired more than a thousand rounds of high-explosive ordnance into its skeleton, the second platform stubbornly refused to collapse. Finally, the Thach sent an ordnance disposal team over to it; the team planted munitions and returned. When the ordnance was detonated, “the platform disappeared.”45

  The purpose of the raid was to make a clear statement not only to the Iranian government but also to the international community. The commanding officer of the Thach recalled, “The real payoff . . . was the film of the U.S. ships firing as a demonstration of U.S. power and resolve, not the actual destruction of an oil platform.” Without a doubt, it got the Iranians’ attention. The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations wailed that the United States “has opened an all-out war against my country.” But there was concern within the U.S. Navy, too. A relatively large U.S. naval squadron had expended more than a thousand rounds of high explosive and fragmentation shells to cripple an oil platform. A cartoon that was reprinted in the Navy Times depicted a Navy gunner reporting to his superiors: “That’s ONE THOUSAND high-explosive five inch rounds fired at close range, target sort of destroyed, sir!” To which the officer replied: “Dam’ fine shooting, gunner. Good thing that oil platform wasn’t moving!” And another officer added: “Or firing back!” One critic calculated the cost of a thousand shells and concluded that the operation had cost the United States more than it had the Iranians.46

  In February 1988 U.S. Naval forces in the Gulf got a new commander. He was Rear Admiral Anthony “Tony” Less, a fifty-year-old, blond, blue-eyed naval aviator with more than six thousand flight hours under his belt, including several combat tours in Vietnam and a stint as flight leader of the Blue Angels Flight Demonstration Squadron. He had also commanded a carrier battle group. Now in his new job he would wear two hats: he was commander of the Middle East Force, but he was also commander of the Joint Task Force Middle East. Reflecting a new concern for effective inter-service cooperation, the United States for the first time would have one person who was responsible for all military operations in the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Oman, and the Persian Gulf. Before he left Washington, Less met personally with Admiral Crowe, who emphasized to him the importance of effective joint operations. It was clear that, in Crowe’s view at least, success in the complex environment of the Persian Gulf meant that the U.S. Navy had to act in close coordination with the other services.47

  And indeed, the Gulf was a complex environment that winter. With Iran in control of the Faw Peninsula, Saddam Hussein began to fear that he might actually lose the war he had started. He therefore ordered a renewal of the airstrikes against tankers in the Gulf. To prevent another Stark disaster, U.S. and Iraqi officials worked out a series of procedures, but Iraqi pilots did not always observe the protocols. “Those Iraqi cowboys in F-4s just turned, closed their eyes, and fired,” one officer recalled. “Then they turned north to go home.” In any given watch period it was more than likely that at least one Iraqi jet would fly through Gulf airspace en route to targets off Iran. “Because of the AWACS, we would know as soon as they lifted off,” recalled Lieutenant James Smith, the weapons officer on the Thach, whom everyone called “Red” because of his hair. “We were really prepared because nobody wanted a repeat of the Stark event. Our air controllers used certain code words to talk to these aircraft as they were inbound. If we asked them to adjust their course, they did.” In spite of these protocols, however, several times in early 1988 Iraqi planes flew dangerously close to U.S. Navy ships. The closest call took place on February 12 when an Iraqi jet actually fired two missiles at the American destroyer Chandler but missed.48

  Despite the renewed threat from the air, it was the mine threat that p
rovoked the next crisis. On April 14 the Samuel B. Roberts, a sister ship of the unlucky Stark, was heading southward. As always, AWACS planes as well as the Roberts’s own air search radar kept a wary electronic eye on the air traffic, while topside lookouts scanned the sea with binoculars for Iranian speedboats or mines. No new mines had been discovered for a week, however, and when a few floating objects off the bow caught the lookouts’ attention, at least one of them thought they might be sheep carcasses. In addition to tankers, other vessels routinely plied the shipping lanes, including giant Australian cargo ships that carried thousands of live sheep. Whenever one or two of the sheep died, as inevitably happened, they were tossed unceremoniously over the side. American sailors had gotten used to seeing their bloated carcasses float past with the legs sticking up out of the water. But a second look showed that these were no sheep carcasses—they were the real thing. Quickly the lookouts reported the sighting to the bridge. The skipper of the Samuel B. Roberts, Paul Rinn, ordered all stop. Finding himself in the middle of a new minefield, Rinn decided to reverse engines and back out slowly the way he had come. Relatively rough seas made this difficult, and the Roberts was suddenly rocked by a huge underwater explosion directly beneath the engine room that lifted the ship’s stern completely out of the water.49

  The blast opened a twenty-five-foot hole in the bottom of the Roberts, jarred the ship’s two gas turbine engines off their mounting blocks, bent the main shaft, and ignited a fire that fed on the spilled fuel oil and started spreading through the ship. But as on the Stark, heroic damage control saved the ship. Indeed, lessons learned from the Stark disaster meant that the Roberts’s damage control teams were better supplied with oxygen masks and canisters for firefighting. The crew showed remarkable inventiveness. The mine had nearly broken the Roberts in half, and to prevent the ship from literally breaking apart, the crew used wire cables to effectively tie it back together.50 Eventually the Roberts made it into port using its auxiliary engines.*

  Unlike the Stark disaster, the mining of the Roberts did not produce banner headlines in the United States. One reason was that on the same day the Roberts hit the mine, the Soviet Union, after a decade of futility, signed an agreement to withdraw from Afghanistan, an event that pushed the Roberts disaster off the front page. In addition, and rather remarkably, no Americans had died on the Roberts, though ten were wounded, including seven who had to be treated for second-degree burns. Still, the event was a turning point. A search of the area afterward led to the discovery of several more mines. U.S. teams secured them and flew photographers from the press out to take pictures before the mines were destroyed. These images proved beyond any doubt that the mines were Iranian in origin.

  What no one in the American camp knew at the time was that although the mines were indeed Iranian, they had been sown by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, and almost immediately afterward the regular Iranian navy had put to sea in an effort to sweep them up, thus demonstrating the wide gulf between the goals of the Guard fanatics and Iran’s more pragmatic government leaders who sought to avoid a direct confrontation with the American superpower. But U.S. policy makers either failed to make the distinction or were unsure how to respond to challenges from an enemy operating outside government sanction. If Iranians had laid the mines, then Iran must pay the consequences.51

  At a meeting held on Friday afternoon, April 15, the day after the Roberts was damaged, the President ordered his Department of Defense team to compile a list of possible targets, then he left for Camp David for the weekend. While he was gone, Defense Department personnel put together a plan. Crowe, the only uniformed member of the team, wanted to sink a ship. “My general theory was that if we were going to take any retaliatory measures at all, we should destroy targets that would reduce the Iranians’ ability to harm us.” “I pushed hard,” he wrote later, “for hitting a warship.” In particular, Crowe wanted to sink the Iranian frigate Sabalan,* whose captain had built a well-earned reputation for ruthlessness and was known throughout the Gulf as “Captain Nasty.” His modus operandi was to stop a tanker or cargo vessel, query its captain and crew, then shoot up the bridge and living spaces. Afterward he would call out “Have a nice day!” before steaming off. Frank Carlucci, the new secretary of defense, “kind of liked the idea” of hitting a warship, but almost everyone else in the room was opposed, fearing that such an act would escalate the conflict; they argued instead that the United States should target another oil platform.52

  In the end, Reagan opted for a compromise: U.S. Navy forces would strike at several Iranian oil platforms—larger and more important platforms known as gas and oil separation platforms (GOSPs). But, the president said, if the Iranian navy ventured out in an attempt to defend them, the Navy “could engage and sink them.”53 Crowe interpreted this to mean that if the Sabalan came out of port, the U.S. Navy could send it to the bottom. This time Reagan made a special effort to inform congressional leaders of the plan. Robert Dole of Kansas reported to his colleagues that “the President . . . intends to keep us fully informed and involved as this action evolves,” and Lee Hamilton declared, “I do not see a renewed debate on Persian Gulf policy.” Having lined up the political support and selected the targets, Reagan gave the “go” order on April 16 to execute what was code-named Operation Praying Mantis.54

  On the receiving end of that order, Tony Less organized his forces into three strike teams called surface action groups, or SAGs, and assigned each of them a specific target. SAG Bravo was to destroy the Sassan platform and SAG Charlie the Sirri platform, and SAG Delta was to be ready to intercept any attempt by the Iranians to interfere. In addition, the planes of the Enterprise, which had replaced the Constellation on Camel Station, stood ready to join in the fight if an opportunity presented itself. Altogether, more than a dozen warships were committed to the operation. Less himself remained aboard the command ship Coronado at Bahrain to direct the overall operation from a distance. The three SAG groups would attack simultaneously but independently.

  The Sassan gas and oil separation platform (GOSP) prior to the attack by U.S. forces. (U.S. Navy)

  SAG Bravo was led by Captain James B. Perkins, and it was his job to destroy the Sassan GOSP. His orders required him to warn the Iranian crew of the GOSP before he fired, which made him uncomfortable because the Sassan platform was not merely an oil and gas separation plant but a well-armed outpost of the Iranian military, armed with .20- and .50-caliber machine guns as well as larger guns, and intelligence sources indicated that it was manned in part by elements of the fanatical Republican Guard. Perkins later argued that “warning an armed GOSP . . . prior to opening fire may register high on the humane scale, but it clearly ranks low in terms of relative tactical advantage.” Still, orders were orders.55

  Just past dawn on April 18, at about 6:00 A.M., the ships of SAG Bravo steamed up to the Sassan platform. It was an enormous structure—over an acre in size and with several levels, appearing to some rather like a Hollywood version of a futuristic city. While the two sides studied one another, a Farsi linguist on the USS Merrill broke the silence to announce over the radio in both Farsi and English: “You have thirty minutes to get everybody off; we are going to destroy this platform.”56

  Watchers on the U.S. Navy ships then saw a lot of activity. Men ran about from place to place; some seemed to be getting ready to leave, while others just seemed to be “running around.” Listeners on the radio net heard the GOSP occupants frantically ask their bosses in Tehran for orders, then radio to the Americans to beg for more time. Perkins and his staff denied all requests for an extension, and at 8:04 A.M. the designated deadline expired. With a last look at his watch, Perkins ordered, “Weapons free,” and a five-inch high-explosive shell flew toward the Sassan platform.57

  It was a curious form of naval combat in the age of electronic warfare. Normally in a confrontation with an armed combatant, the captain of the ship would occupy the padded chair in the combat information center. From that darkened room de
ep in the ship, where the monitors and TV screens reported all the relevant information from a variety of sensors, he would direct both the ship’s movements and its weapons systems, using radar directors to aim his weaponry. But on this day the captain of the Merrill and the task group commodore both stood on the bridge wing to watch the fall of shot. Lieutenant Commander Henry “Hank” Sanford, the Merrill’s executive officer, actually manned the ship’s “big eyes,” the oversize binoculars on the bridge, so that he could assess the impact of the gunfire more accurately. “Everything,” he said later, “was done visually.”58

  Almost everything. A second-class petty officer sitting at the gun console in the Merrill’s CIC used a joy stick and a tiny TV screen, just like a video game, to aim the ship’s five-inch guns. He managed to put an air-burst round directly above the gun mount, and it virtually wiped out the Iranian gun crew. That proved to be decisive. After a few more air-burst rounds, the Iranians came on the radio and announced that they had decided to evacuate. Perkins ordered his ships to cease fire. Again the platform resembled an ant farm that had been prodded with a stick as men ran, seemingly randomly, over the platform. Soon, however, they made for the ladders and began to climb down into a few boats that were tied up at the base. Sanford counted them off as they departed, losing count after thirty. He was glad to see them go: “We didn’t want any prisoners.” A few of the men were carrying some wounded and had trouble making the climb, but eventually they all got into the boats and left.59