No Higher Honor (22 page)
Authors: Bradley Peniston
But there were always surprises. One day, the
Roberts
's Seahawk spotted a twenty-one-foot boat headed for the convoy. When it repeatedly ignored radio calls, the frigate prepared for a confrontation. But from what the aviators could see, the two mariners on board weren't armed. Maybe they were Revolutionary Guard sailors testing the U.S. defenses, but maybe they were just fishermen in a hurry. So the pilot descended, and as the rotor blades whipped the seas into a furious chop, the little boat turned away and headed for Iranian waters.
Three days and 550 miles after setting out, convoy EW88018 reached its destination off Kuwait. As usual, each tanker captain sent over a token of thanks, a bottle of scotch or some such gift.
43
Roberts
dropped anchor in thirteen fathoms over a bottom of shell and mud, and waited for an oiler to refill its tanks.
44
Over the next two weeks, the frigate escorted five more convoys. Some missions went without incident. Others, such as EW88023, did not. On 7 April the
Roberts
and the
John A. Moore
picked up four tankers off Bahrain and were ushering them toward the mouth of the Gulf when two Iranian warships converged on the group from the north. One was a
Sa'am
frigate; the other an aging U.S.âbuilt, steam-powered
Sumner
-class destroyer. Both were painting the convoy with fire-control radar.
Rinn described it later as an “immediate problem.” The
Roberts
had to get between the convoy and the Iranians, while staying positioned to fire on both of them with missiles or guns. Moving matchbooks on a tabletop to retrace the curving paths of the combatants, he described the engagement:
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I cannot wait on this. I have to take the initiative or they will definitely outfox me.
       Â
I had on two occasions watched the British escort convoys, and had seen Iranians get inside of them and just run roughshod over them, run all through the formation, and they were powerless to stop them. So I maneuvered up very quickly and crossed the formation, and came after the Iranian [frigate] who was to the north. He needed to break off, or I was going to engage him. I brought a missile up immediately. He questioned my right to do that, and I told them they were both illuminating their fire control radars on me, and I said, “I'm going to give you a five-minute warning to disengage and move away.”
About three minutes later, the Iranian frigate turned away, heading north.
       Â
As soon as he did, I turned toward this [destroyer] guy and told him immediately that I was going to engage him if he didn't disengageâkeeping an eye on the
Sa'am
frigate the whole time. It was a very bad situation, and I think this whole evolution was done at about twenty-eight to thirty knots. We were moving very fast.
       Â
The second ship seemed much less interested in getting into it. As soon as I turnedâhe was an older shipâhe turned and started moving [westward].
       Â
The beauty of that was, his missile launchers were all forward. On this first ship, his launchers were aft, maybe. When the second ship turned, his illuminators were blocked. I could tell as they went off, they were incapable of engaging. As number two headed south, the guy I was more concerned about was the gas
turbine ship, because he was faster than meâforty-knot-capableâand could turn right back around. So I turned and came back at him.
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For two hours the
Roberts
kept its sights on both Iranians. Rinn had planned his attack, should either one swivel guns or missiles to fire: take out the destroyer, which was a few miles distant, with a trio of Standard missiles with fragmentation warheads; then go after the nearer
Sa'am
gunfire. It didn't come to that; two hours after the engagement began, the Iranians backed off and disappeared over the horizon.
ON 14 APRIL
1988 the
Roberts
dropped off the two tankers of EW88025 and headed back south, following the convoy track in reverse. The frigate was slated to rendezvous and refuel with the oiler USS
San Jose
(AFS 7) in mid-Gulf and then would head back north for barge escort duty. Rinn dashed off a note to a Charleston-based friend asking him to order birthday flowers for Pam.
The ship was halfway through its deployment: three months gone, three to go. In the past ninety-four days, it had spent eighty-nine days at sea and had completed eight convoy assignments.
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The crew was weary but still on top of their game, and they were proud of the accolades their ship had received.
Weeks earlier, the crew had submitted its entry for the squadron Battle E awards. The list of plaudits and accomplishments was rather breathtaking:
    
   Â
November 1986: navy shipbuilding inspectors call
Roberts
best new FFG to date.
       Â
May 1987: highest damage-control scores ever recorded by Norfolk testers.
       Â
JuneâJuly 1987: best ship in two years at Guantanamo Bay, with best passive antisubmarine warfare scores ever seen.
       Â
August 1987: best missile firing in FleetEx 4-87.
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November 1987: aviation inspectors find no problems, a first for a frigate.
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January 1988: deployed five months ahead of schedule.
The package noted various
Roberts
dispatches that had been forwarded to all Atlantic Fleet ships, and the memo that had been added to the Newport course for prospective commanding officers.
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It went on for pages, and may have been a bit of overkill.
But when the results arrived in early April, they were everything Rinn and his crew were shooting for. For the October 1986 âMarch 1988 battle efficiency awards cycle,
Samuel B. Roberts
earned Mission E's in eight categories: antiair warfare, antisubmarine warfare, antisurface warfare, electronic warfare, engineering, and three others. Only one other of Surface Group Four's sixteen ships equaled that accomplishment.
Best of all,
Roberts
had won the squadron's Battle E, beating out seven other frigates.
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The awards were public acknowledgement of the
Roberts
's excellent performance, and set the frigate among the fleet's elite. Van Hook's engineers lost no time affixing a poster-sized red “E” to each side of the ship's stack.
Aquilino sent his warm regards and wished them well in the second half of their deployment. “Congratulations on reaching âHumpday,'” the commodore wrote from Newport. He noted that the
Roberts
families were preparing for the traditional celebratory dinner that marked the halfway point. Organized by several crew members' wives, it was set for the evening of 14 April in the officers' club at the naval station. Among the featured attractions would be Ford's first videotape, which had just arrived in Rhode Island. “It's downhill from here,” Aquilino wrote.
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He could not have been more wrong.
A FEW DAYS
earlier, the
Roberts
had passed through the central Gulf, the lone warship assigned to the two tankers of EW88025.
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North of Bahrain, they passed a group of American mine hunters at work. This was somewhat alarming.
The mine threat seemed to have receded since the minesweepers were rushed to the region in the wake of the
Bridgeton
attack. Mines had damaged or sunk seven ships in 1987, but there had been no incidents at all in 1988. The sweepers could take partial credit; they had found a mine on their first day of Gulf operations and had since cleared several dozen devices from three fields. An equal share of credit belonged to the forces that kept the black spheres from going in the
water at all: the barge crews, Eager Glacier spy planes, army aviators, navy warships.
And yet the threat remained. Every week or so, a merchant sailor or naval lookout found a lone mine drifting with the current or anchored in place. Three such mines had been spotted in a recent ten-day stretch. The
Roberts
's own helo had spotted a drifter as the ship made its way toward the mysterious refueling off Oman.
Iran Ajr
was at the bottom of the Gulf, but everyone knew how easy it was to turn almost any ship into a minelayer.
