No Higher Honor (34 page)

But
Joshan
's arrival created a quandary for Admiral Less. Reagan's battle orders authorized him to sink just one major Iranian ship. Hitting the 247-ton
Joshan
could mean passing up a chance at a
Sa'am
frigate nearly six times its displacement. Banking on U.S. intelligence guesses that the
Sa'ams
would eventually put to sea, Less decided to wait. He ordered
Wainwright
to warn the
Joshan
off. The cruiser promptly issued four VHF radio calls, but the patrol boat pressed on. The
Joshan
closed to less than fifteen nautical miles, well within Harpoon range and not far beyond the reach of 76-mm shells. Suddenly, the patrol boat was not a target but a threat, and there were different rules for that.
Wainwright
asked Less for permission to open fire, and the admiral swiftly gave it.

Wainwright
's next radio call to
Joshan
echoed the warnings given to the oil platforms three hours earlier: “Stop your engines and abandon ship; I intend to sink you.” It hearkened to the earliest days of the U.S. Navy, when sailing captains delivered such ultimatums by megaphone.
Joshan
's skipper replied in the most violent way he could. In a plume
of white smoke, his Harpoon blasted from its launcher and headed toward
Wainwright
, by then about thirteen miles away. The U.S. ships turned their bows toward
Joshan
, fired off clouds of radar-deceiving metallic chaff, and attempted to jam the incoming missile. The Iranian weapon flew close aboard the
Wainwright
's starboard side and zoomed away, taking
Joshan
's hopes with it.

Simpson
and
Wainwright
returned fire immediately, launching a total of five Standard missiles in less than five minutes. All five found their marks, setting
Joshan
afire. After a Harpoon from
Bagley
missed the blazing wreck, the
Simpson
and
Wainwright
finished off the Iranian ship with gunfire. It had been history's first missile duel between surface warships.

As smoke and fire belched from the
Joshan
, an Iranian F-4 streaked in from Bandar Abbas—perhaps the tardy air component of a would-be coordinated attack.
Wainwright
chased the fighter off with a pair of SM-2s, sending it back to base with minor tail damage.

To the east, Iran's smaller boats continued to wreak havoc in the Mubarek oilfield. Around 1:15
PM
, Iranian gunboats set fire to the
York Marine
, a British-flagged oil tanker that was serving as a floating storage tank. Fifteen minutes later, a handful of Boghammars began firing guns and grenades at the
Scan Bay
, a Panamanian-registered jack-up barge with fifteen American workers aboard.

Scan Bay
radioed for help, but again, engagement rules tied Less's hands. Throughout Earnest Will, U.S. forces in the Gulf had refrained from aiding foreign ships under fire, and today's rules allowed no exception. But Less felt he had to do something to help the victims of the Iranian rampage sparked by the destruction of the oil platforms. He appealed to Crist, who sent his request to the Pentagon, which forwarded it to the White House. Monday's dawn had not yet broken in Washington, but Reagan responded within minutes: go after the Boghammars.

Moments later, two A-6 Intruders departed their holding patterns over the Strait of Hormuz and streaked southwest, guided by the air controller aboard
Jack Williams
. Nimble as the Boghammars were, they could not elude a deadly rain of one-pound Rockeye submunitions from the Intruders. One boat soon went to the bottom, and the rest fled for the safety of nearby Abu Musa, beaching themselves in their haste.
³²

Reagan's quick decision was momentous. Tactically, it helped put an end to the day's small-boat operations. More broadly, it marked the beginning of a Gulf policy shift that permitted U.S. forces to protect third-party shipping. And it demonstrated how modern communications could allow commanders at every level to weigh in on battles from half a world away, a development that delighted some and worried others.
³³

Iran finally committed a frigate to the battle around 3:00
PM
, when one of the
Sa'ams
weighed anchor near Bandar Abbas and headed for the Gulf. Less radioed SAG Delta, “The
Sahand
is in your vicinity. Take him.”
³⁴

The
Enterprise
launched another A-6, which spotted the frigate heading southwest past Larak Island at twenty-five knots. The frigate showed up clearly through the A-6's infrared camera, but the rules of engagement, designed to prevent mistakes in the crowded Gulf waters, required the aviators to put eyeballs on their targets before an attack.

So the Intruder headed in low and fast—then jinked to avoid the antiaircraft shells and infrared missiles that poured up from the Iranian frigate. The high-speed run positively identified the watercraft as the
Roberts
's old playmate. The A-6 popped flares to confuse the heat seekers and wheeled around to counterattack. In quick succession, the attack plane fired off a Harpoon, launched two Skipper rocket bombs, and dropped a laser-guided bomb. The attack left
Sahand dead
in the water, her blazing deck a beacon for the next wave of U.S. planes.
³⁵

The rest of the strike group—six A-7 Corsairs and another A-6—was soon pounding the motionless frigate with Harpoons, Skippers, Walleyes, and bombs. Twenty miles away,
Joseph Strauss
unleashed a Harpoon, which leveled off, trailed white smoke over the horizon, and plowed into the
Sahand
. The Iranian ship's magazines blew up with a violence that buffeted the U.S. destroyer. Afire from stem to stern, the frigate sank some hours later.
³⁶

Around 5:00
PM
,
Strauss
picked up a new set of signals. It was the
Sabalan
. When the morning's attacks began, the frigate had run for cover, hunkering down between two merchant ships off Bandar Abbas. Shielded from air and sea attack, the warship could have sat out the day's action. But at some point the Iranian skipper, or his superiors, had decided to join the battle. At long last, Captain Nasty had come out to fight.

The Americans were ready.
Strauss
's air traffic controllers sent one of the Intruders hurtling toward Larak Island. The A-6 crew drew a bead on the frigate with a forward-looking infrared camera and dropped down for the mandatory low-level pass.
Sabalan
responded with antiaircraft fire, and the attack plane withdrew to a higher altitude before coming in for their attack. Dodging three heat-seeking missiles, an A-6 dropped a laser-guided bomb down the ship's smokestack. It exploded in the engine room and broke the
Sabalan
's keel.
³⁷

Another group of planes was inbound from
Enterprise
when Crowe, monitoring the battle in the Pentagon's command center, called off the attack. “We've shed enough blood today,” he told Carlucci. Iranian tugs eventually retrieved the damaged
Sabalan
as U.S. ships looked on.
³⁸

The day's final tally: the U.S. Navy had sunk one Iranian frigate, one patrol boat, and three Boghammars; eliminated two oil platforms-cumradar picket stations; and put another frigate out of action. No fleet had lost such a large fraction of its fighting force in a single battle since Leyte Gulf in 1944.

The only U.S. casualties came long after the warships had secured from general quarters. Two marine aviators died when their AH-1T Sea Cobra gunship, flying reconnaissance from the
Wainwright
, crashed some fifteen miles southwest of Abu Musa.
³⁹

Throughout the day, the men aboard the
Roberts
—and ship captains and shipping executives around the Gulf—listened intently to the bursts of radio chatter. The frigate's crowded spaces were largely silent—until cheers erupted with each report of damage done to Iranian ships.
Payback
, thought Chuck Dumas.
⁴⁰
It was the best medicine his crew could get, Gunner Reinert decided.
⁴¹

The next day, the
Roberts
crew learned about their air detachment's role through a message from Matthews on the
Trenton
. The aviator wrote that the
Roberts
's helicopter had flown several sorties during the day to provide extra eyes in the sky and search-and-rescue capability. “The crew is exhausted,” Matthews wrote, “but morale is high. . . . We have very strong desires to return to our own ship.” He signed off: “No higher honor.”
⁴²

Soon after the battle,
Trenton
pulled into Dubai and tied up next to the
Roberts
. The two crews used a pierside crane to transfer the frigate's
missiles and torpedoes to the amphibious ship, as required by both the shipyard and the UAE government before the ship could head into dry dock. Some
Roberts
crew members also took advantage of the
Trenton
's undamaged living spaces to grab their first hot showers in a week. Reinert paid a visit to the chiefs' mess and was rewarded with a videotape of the battle. Back on the
Roberts
, they popped the tape into the VCR—and promptly dubbed it the voyage's best movie call. The sailors loved the part where one of the U.S. captains warned the Iranians aboard the Sassan oil platform to abandon ship because he intended to destroy it. For Reinert, it didn't get any better than that.
⁴³

AMERICANS WHO PICKED
up their morning papers on 22 April may have read about Tennessee senator Al Gore's withdrawal from his pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination, leaving Michael Dukakis as the front-runner to battle George H. W. Bush in the upcoming November election. The
New York Times
reported the removal of a hard-line Politburo rival to Mikhail Gorbachev, whose perestroika was unfettering the Soviet government's first cautious public debates. But the front pages of the
Times
, the
Washington Post
, and scores of other newspapers carried stories of the mining and the damage control effort that saved the
Roberts
.

The stories had emerged from a Thursday afternoon press conference held at the Pentagon by a pair of three-star admirals. One was Vice Adm. Henry Mustin, the deputy chief of naval operations for plans, policy, and operations. Two years and two weeks previously, he had stood on a podium in Maine and welcomed the
Roberts
to commissioned service. The other was Vice Adm. William Rowden, the head of Naval Sea System Command (NAVSEA) and the navy's top shipbuilder.

Rowden began the press conference by gesturing to a large model of a
Perry
-class frigate, explaining to the Pentagon press corps just how the mine had maimed the ship. The explosion had broken the keel and sent a thousand tons of water into her machinery spaces, and yet the
Roberts
had held up well under the tremendous stress. But the real heroes of the story were not the main deck or the onboard firefighting equipment, Rowden said. “Had she been left to her own devices, she likely would have sunk,” the admiral said. “The real thing that separates losing this ship from saving this ship was the performance of the crew.”

As the flag officers described the effort, the reporters added it up. “So, simultaneously, they were backing out of a mine field, controlling flooding, putting out a fire, moving magazines, and repairing the ship?” one asked.

“And telling people in Washington what had happened,” Mustin said, drawing laughs.

Another journalist wanted to know about the prospects for fixing the
Roberts
. “Now, I don't know from ships, but I know from cars, and when you get a chassis that's sort of bent, I mean, it'll still work, but it never works as well as it did when it was new,” the reporter said. “You might as well sell it.”

“We don't intend to sell it,” said Mustin, to more laughs, and Rowden assured the group that the contemplated repairs were well within the possible.

“We can't speak highly enough of those young fellows who brought us back a ship,” Mustin finished up. “We don't think it could have been done better by anybody, and we think we're the finest navy in the world, and we think a lot of other people understand that now.”
⁴⁴

The event was a public relations coup. The press accounts followed the admirals' lead, and the
Roberts
sailors were praised as heroes on America's front pages.

Aboard the
Roberts
in Dubai, a trickle of congratulatory notes soon became a flood. Dozens of letters flowed in from military officers, politicians, and well-wishers around the globe. “I was totally amazed at your calm, coherent reports under terrible conditions,” wrote the commanding officer of the USS
Fearless
(MSO 442), a U.S. minesweeper that had destroyed two mines a few months earlier in the Gulf. “Having witnessed the awesome destructive power of two M-08s which we found in the Farsi MDA [mine danger area], I hope I could maintain my composure under similar condition.”
⁴⁵

The chief of naval operations, Adm. Carlisle Trost, applauded “a magnificent performance by all hands” and quoted Chester Nimitz, the great Pacific Fleet admiral of World War II: “Everyone admires a ship that can't be licked.”
⁴⁶
General Crist noted the low number of injuries, which he said stemmed “not from good fortune but from solid leadership, dedication, and hard work—before the fact.”
⁴⁷

More than one hundred sailors in the engineering department aboard the aircraft carrier USS
Carl Vinson
signed a note of support and mailed it off to the
Roberts
. The piece of paper, which had become quite grubby as it passed from sailor to sailor, was dated 16 April and read: “On behalf of the Engineering department on the Battlestar, I would like to express our feelings of solidarity to the men of your Engineering department and to the entire crew of the
Samuel B. Roberts
. We think of the Navy Hymn and Naval History, and we know that only a few of our countrymen fully understand what we do and why we do it.”
⁴⁸