The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (49 page)

The northern part of the Gulf near Farsi Island presented the greatest obstacle. Here, the shallow water forced shipping into a narrow corridor of deep water that passed too close for comfort to the Iranian stronghold of Farsi Island; the Revolutionary Guard dominated the hundred-mile stretch from Kuwait to the island. The Iranian air force did not pose a serious risk,
contenting itself with fending off its Iraqi counterpart and protecting Iranian oil tankers. Iranian mines or spillover from the Iran-Iraq War raging just to the north made CENTCOM very reluctant to risk sending two hundred sailors and a billion-dollar ship into an area that many in Tampa and out in the Gulf began referring to as “Indian Country.”
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But unless the United States maintained some sort of permanent presence to prevent the Iranians from mining at their leisure, Earnest Will would be short-lived. Bernsen had to find a way to check the Comanches.

Ziegler passed Bernsen a report that profoundly affected the admiral’s thinking. A quick analysis of the damage to the
Bridgeton
by American naval engineers and the Office of Naval Intelligence indicated that the mine had been set to float about twenty feet below the surface of the water. While this reinforced the threat to a U.S. Navy warship (a frigate draws some twenty-six feet), it did not preclude using a smaller draft vessel such as a patrol boat. “Those boats,” Bernsen surmised, “could maneuver with fair confidence throughout the area, without the danger of striking a submerged, tethered mine.”

Bernsen had no idea what kind of patrol boats the U.S. military possessed, so he and his operations officer, Captain David Grieve, simply opened the ship’s copy of
Jane’s Fighting Ships
to see what types of patrol boats the navy had in its inventory. As they flipped through the pages, the options available looked slim; only three boats appeared to have any applicability. One was the small thirty-two-foot fiberglass patrol boat riverine (PBR), designed originally for the rivers of Vietnam. Its recent claim to fame had been serving as the centerpiece in the movie
Apocalypse Now
. Relegated to the reserves, with a crew of five, the PBR was air transportable, but wholly incapable of operating in anything but the calmest of seas. Also in the inventory was the small, sleek Naval Special Warfare boat called Seafox. Made of radar-absorbent material, it might be useful for clandestine operations against the Iranians. Slightly more promising was the sixty-five-foot fiberglass Mark III patrol boat. Built in the early 1970s based on Vietnam requirements and experiences, it had a range of 450 miles and could achieve speeds of up to thirty knots. It included an enclosed cockpit and cabin to shelter its ten-man crew from the weather. The Mark III had never been designed to operate in the open seas, and lacked such creature comforts as showers, but it did pack a punch with a 40-mm cannon forward and a 20-mm machine gun aft, not
counting heavy machine guns and automatic grenade launchers. These just might work, Bernsen thought.

All this led to the next logical question: “Where do you base them?” Small boats are not self-sufficient; they require a base for refueling, crew rest, and shelter in the event of foul weather. The Persian Gulf infamously kicks up some surprisingly large waves. Kuwait or Saudi Arabia might be willing to allow a small U.S. base, but both lay too far from the shipping channel to adequately support a round-the-clock operation. “What we needed,” Bernsen thought, “was some kind of sea-based platform from which the small boats, helicopters, or whatever else we wanted could operate.”
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As Bernsen mulled over the barge idea, he called the head of the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company, Fattah al-Bader. Talking around the issue over the open phone line, he asked al-Bader if he had some ships that could accommodate a helicopter. The Kuwaiti mentioned that Bernsen could use two self-propelled barges owned by the Kuwaiti coast guard, which resembled ferry boats without any passenger areas and were topped with a large flight deck for helicopters. As neither was being used and, more important for the bottom line–minded Kuwaitis, both had already been paid for, Kuwait was more than happy to let the Americans use them. Bernsen flew up to Kuwait and toured the two vessels. Unfortunately, they could accommodate only about forty people and perhaps one or two helicopters—not nearly large enough. “What I need is something that we can move, holds two hundred people, can support helicopters, and we could tie boats alongside.”

“Well,” al-Bader answered, “you go find it and we’ll pay for it.”
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Over the past several years Bernsen had become friendly with an American businessman from Houston who owned a company based out of Sarjah, UAE, that leased oil service boats. With a quick mind and a slow Southern drawl, he knew the Gulf as few other Americans did.
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Bernsen decided to call him. “This is a nonconversation, but I’m looking for some boats that I can put some helicopters on that can hold about two hundred people.”

The man from Houston called back in a couple of hours. “I’ve spoken to a friend of mine at Brown and Root.” This was the Halliburton subsidiary that maintained extensive dealings throughout the Persian Gulf, including with the Iranians, supporting the oil industry. “They have two oil construction barges that are not being used sitting right there in Bahrain. One of
them is named the
Hercules
. There is a Brown and Root office about a mile from where your ship is tied up. Why don’t you go over and talk to him; I’ve already made the arrangements with Brown and Root’s Middle East representative.”

Bernsen hopped in his car and drove to the Brown and Root office and met with the company’s senior representative, a British national named John Rahtz. He confirmed that there were two barges owned by Brown and Root tied up right in Bahrain that might fit the American need:
Hercules
and
Wimbrown VII
. After showing Bernsen the blueprints, they went down to the small shipyard where the two barges sat moored.

At first glance both appeared in terrible shape. Their exteriors were covered by rust and peeling paint, and the decks were piled high with rusting equipment and cables. “They look like crap,” Bernsen said to Rahtz. But when the two went on board and took a tour, it became apparent that both barges were in sound shape,
Hercules
a bit more so.
Hercules
was the larger of the two. One of the largest oil barges in the world at 400 by 140 feet, flat and wide, it had been designed for the construction of offshore oil platforms and laying underwater pipelines. On one end sat a large, white, elevated helicopter landing pad complete with a small control tower. At the other end, sitting atop a large cylindrical pedestal, sat a rectangular mount, painted red and orange, that connected to a massive crane 50 feet plus tall. Emblazoned at the back end of the crane in large black letters on a fading yellow background was the word “Clyde.” Its 250-foot-long boom towered above the entire barge, giving
Hercules
an unmistakably lopsided appearance. In between was a large, flat open space perfect for helicopters and storing small patrol boats. Below the main deck,
Hercules
had berthing for 160 men, in addition to a large galley, cafeteria, even a theater or recreation room adorned with blue curtains. For potential operations in the mine-strewn area near Farsi, it had the added advantage of being double hulled, surrounded by a floodable tank that would provide excellent protection against a mine strike.

The
Wimbrown
was smaller, only 250 feet long with a beam of 70 feet. Designed as a jack-up barge, it was equipped with removable extendable legs, whereby the entire barge could be lifted up by air jacks to provide a stable work platform. It had a small helicopter platform on one end, adjacent to a large, elevated modular office building aloft of the main deck.
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It did not have a built-in crane like Clyde, substituting a much smaller tracked commercial
variant. It had extensive berthing facilities, capable of housing nearly one hundred more than
Hercules
. Each had a relatively shallow draft that would make them less susceptible to a mine strike. Each barge was anchored by a four-point mooring system and could be moved only by tugs, a procedure that required two hours to get under way and moved the barges at a ponderous four knots per hour.
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With some cleaning, scrapping, and a new coat of paint, these two just might work, Bernsen said.

Bernsen shot out a flash message to General Crist laying out his thoughts:

Rather than using regular naval vessels, the area could be better patrolled by a mixture of attack helicopters and small boats augmented by Navy SEALs and U.S. Marines.
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General Crist liked the idea. “What the Iranians were doing reminded me of Vietnam. They planted mines and roadside bombs all along our key roads and line of supply. It seemed to me they were doing the same thing, only on the water,” Crist said in a 1988 interview. The CENTCOM commander coined an expression for the unusual fight in which the Americans now found themselves involved: “a guerrilla war at sea.” He forwarded Bernsen’s plan to both Chairman Crowe and Admiral Ronald Hays in a message for their eyes only.

Crowe also immediately grasped Bernsen’s sea base scheme. His tour in the Mekong Delta during Vietnam had acquainted him with a similar idea called Sea Float, in which the navy had constructed a floating base by connecting numerous pontoon barges together south of the Mekong Delta. It served as a forward support base for riverine patrol boats in an attempt to undermine the Vietcong guerrillas moving along the Cua Lon River. The chairman immediately threw his support behind it. After a meeting between Crowe and Caspar Weinberger on July 31, the secretary of defense approved the deployment of all the patrol boats requested by Bernsen, including eight
Mark III patrol boats, with four coming from Special Boat Squadron 2 in Norfolk, Virginia, and the other four from Special Boat Squadron 1 at Coronado, California.
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Bernsen assigned two new officers to turn it into reality. On August 11 Commander Richard Flanagan arrived from California. A SEAL, he commanded Special Boat Squadron 1, which comprised all the U.S. patrol boats on the West Coast.
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Flanagan had cut his teeth as a junior officer in the waterways of the Mekong Delta and knew Sea Float.
¹⁶
The day after Flanagan’s arrival, Captain Frank Lugo arrived in Bahrain. Commissioned in 1953, Lugo had an impressive résumé of both operational and command billets. A competent, experienced staff officer, he’d recently served as the operations officer for Second Fleet and was slated to start training in preparation for assuming command of a new cruiser on the West Coast. Lugo’s name came up for consideration as he was in between assignments and was well respected by the navy hierarchy, including Chief of Naval Operations Trost and his operations deputy, Vice Admiral Hank Mustin.
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Secrecy about the barges remained paramount. Crist intended to limit those within the military who even knew of the idea to a handful, and had sent the message outlining his concept via a special communications channel under the code name Privy Seal. To prevent Iranian mine laying and small-boat attacks upon U.S. shipping along a hundred-mile route from the Mina al-Ahmadi channel off Kuwait to an area south of Farsi Island, CENTCOM proposed deploying two barges, or mobile sea bases as they were officially designated, in the water astride the convoy route, with each covering a fifty-mile stretch.
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Each mobile sea base would serve as a home base for four sixty-five-foot patrol boats and army special operations helicopters. If the Iranians tried to attack the barges directly, each would be protected by a force of SEALs and marines armed with automatic grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, antitank missiles, and Stinger antiaircraft missiles. In all, each mobile sea base would have a complement of about 140 men.
¹⁹

Meanwhile, Iran increased the pressure on Kuwait. It launched three Silkworm missiles at Kuwait’s key oil terminal at Mina al-Ahmadi. While all landed harmlessly to the south near some beachside villas at Mina Abdullah, it was a stark reminder to Kuwait about antagonizing its northern neighbor. In response, Kuwait expelled five Iranian diplomats suspected of being covert agents.
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