The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (62 page)

Back on the carrier, seven more jets launched all headed toward the
Sahand.
Unfortunately, none of the aircraft bothered to check in with any of the surface ships. Dyer had no idea that
Enterprise
had launched any aircraft. One of the inbound jets was not displaying the proper identification friend or foe, or IFF, which sends a coded message denoting it as a friendly aircraft. As the plane rounded the strait and headed into the Gulf, it looked to Dyer’s ships menacingly like an Iranian aircraft out of Bandar Abbas.

The captain of the USS
Joseph Strauss
requested permission to engage. Her skipper was an aggressive officer named Samuel Anderson, a forty-four-year-old mustached Hawaiian who bore a resemblance to the actor Edward James Olmos. Since taking command in June 1986, he’d earned both admiration and head shakes of amazed disbelief from his superiors. Reputedly, on one occasion when the ship pulled into Sydney Harbor on a port visit, it ran over a Greenpeace sailboat. Anderson proudly painted a sailboat with a slash through it on the bridge wing. These and similar actions earned him the nickname “Slamming Sammy” by an admiring crew.
⁴⁹

Something about the plane just did not look right to Dyer, and he held Anderson off for the moment. On board the
Wainwright
, Chandler too had his doubts about this inbound aircraft that appeared as a blip on his radar screen; he suspected it might be from the
Enterprise.
After consulting with Dyer, he decided to hold off Slamming Sammy as well. A short time later, the aircraft’s IFF was finally detected, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief knowing they had narrowly avoided shooting down one of their own aircraft.
⁵⁰

Dyer too decided to finish off the
Sahand
. With his three ships in a line abreast some twenty miles south of the burning Iranian ship, he ordered the
Joseph Strauss
to put a Harpoon of her own into the
Sahand
. The U.S. destroyer slowed to five knots and fell out of formation, as Anderson turned the ship broadside to unmask his weapons and obtain a firing solution. Crewmen on the other two ships and the press pool on the
Jack Williams
poured out onto the upper decks to catch a glimpse of the impending launch. As a CNN camera crew recorded for posterity and the evening news, the
Strauss
sent her missile streaking skyward, momentarily covering the ship in a white cloud of exhaust. It impacted thirty seconds later, blowing a large hole in the
Sahand
’s starboard side.

Two minutes later, the
Enterprise
aircraft began dropping bombs on the hapless Iranian ship. Another missile hit the ship, followed by Langston’s
adding two thousand-pound bombs, one of which hit the ship squarely.
⁵¹
But the punishment inflicted upon the
Sahand
had only just begun. Her captain, wounded with shrapnel and a fractured leg, ordered the crew to abandon ship. They scrambled down into bright orange life rafts floating nearby as over the next fifteen minutes bombs rained down on the
Sahand.
The unguided “dumb” bombs had as many near misses as hits, leading the
Sahand
’s captain later to accuse the U.S. pilots of deliberately targeting the survivors in the life rafts. While these charges were without merit, one can only imagine the terror experienced by captain and crew as they floated helplessly with the water erupting in massive explosions all around.
⁵²

The
Sahand
was wrecked; it listed heavily to starboard and fires raged from end to end. Pilots detected hot spots along her hull, indicating uncontrolled fires within. Smoke poured out from large gaping holes and fissures in the hull and deck, which had been perforated by the U.S. bombs.
⁵³

As the aircraft landed back on the carrier, the ground crew and the ship’s complement ecstatically cheered their arrival. “It was like the final scene from the movie
Top Gun
,” Langston thought.
⁵⁴

In the northern Gulf, protecting the two mobile sea bases fell to the USS
Gary.
⁵⁵
The
Gary
and the two barges spent most of the day at general quarters, but while fighting raged to the south, the northern Gulf had been quiet thus far. Suddenly she detected a Silkworm missile launch on al-Faw some 120 miles away. Shortly thereafter, her radar detected the inbound missile. The
Gary
went to full speed, turning hard to unmask her weapons, firing off chaff and decoy flares; she began firing her 76-mm gun in the direction of the missile, still showing on the radar screen.
⁵⁶
Witnesses saw an object pass by the
Gary
, perhaps through the chaff bloom, then impact about one mile astern of the frigate.
⁵⁷

In the
Jack Williams
’s darkened CIC, Dyer listened intently to radio reports from the USS
Gary
of the Silkworm missile headed toward the U.S. frigate, mindful of the fact that his own ships remained within the Iranian Silkworm envelope at Qeshm Island. Suddenly his ships detected an incoming Silkworm missile. Simultaneously, a report came in from one of the U.S. aircraft of an incoming missile. Dyer ordered the three ships to fire chaff and head at flank speed south in an attempt to get out of the range of the Iranian missiles. The ships accelerated repeatedly, sending rockets aloft that exploded with the sound of firecrackers in white puffs, seeding the skies with magnetic strips.

A minute later, the lookouts on the deck of the
Jack Williams
suddenly got everyone’s attention: “Missile inbound, port quarter!” With the late afternoon sun low on the horizon, casting a golden glow over the calm blue water, the embarked CNN camera panned around to the port side and captured a bright glow low in the near distance. One of the embarked Stinger missile teams briefly locked on to the inbound missile, but could not hold the target. Lookouts topside ducked down, shouting a few expletives as the missile streaked by aft of the ship’s stern. Witnesses reported it striking a platform in the distance, clearly visible in the golden light of the setting sun.

At this moment, Dyer’s ships detected radar emissions from an Iranian four-engine C-130 twenty-five miles away. Fearing the aircraft might provide targeting data on U.S. ships for the Silkworm sites, Dyer ordered Captain Anderson to engage the Iranian aircraft. Just as the
Jack Williams
dodged its missile, Anderson wheeled his ship about to close the distance with the Iranian C aircraft. The
Joseph Strauss
sent five surface-to-air missiles in quick succession streaking into the sky toward the Iranian airplane. One missile malfunctioned and deviated from its flight path. Anderson ordered it destroyed in flight, filling the blue sky with long white streaks as its pieces rained down on the Gulf waters below. But each thrust by Anderson was parried by a lumbering four-engine aircraft whose skilled pilot managed to keep his aircraft just beyond death’s grasp.

“Enough of this bullshit,” Dyer said, as he ordered one of the F-14s to close and take care of the problem. The C-130’s pilot evidently decided not to push his luck and exited the Gulf, likely flying back over the Iranian mainland.

H
aving sunk the
Sahand
and dispatched the Boghammers, Engler’s and Webb’s planes topped off with fuel from an air force tanker over Oman and went looking for some reported Boghammers, which turned out to be only fishing boats. Dyer requested that they head up near Larak Island to look for the
Sabalan
. Looking through the black-and-white images displayed on his aircraft’s radar, he and his wingman investigated an endless string of contacts, from junked vessels to fishing dhows that pervaded the Gulf waters southeast of Qeshm Island.

At four thirty p.m., Captain Nasty finally came out to fight. Engler and
Webb immediately closed in to attack.
⁵⁸
The
Sabalan
saw the approaching American aircraft and fired a surface-to-air missile (likely a shoulder-launched SA-7) at Engler’s A-6. It never came close, but Webb radioed back that they had been fired upon. Each A-6 still carried a Harpoon surface-to-surface missile. However, Larak Island silhouetted the
Sabalan
, and Engler feared that the Harpoon might not track with this background clutter, leading to the missile’s inadvertently hitting the Iranian mainland. He reluctantly decided against using his Harpoons—a decision he would later lament. This left Engler with a single five-hundred-pound laser-guided bomb with which to dispatch the Iranian frigate.
⁵⁹

Engler pushed his yoke forward and put his plane into a steep dive. His bombardier, Lieutenant Mark Herath, released their one laser-guided bomb, which went straight down the
Sabalan
’s smokestack. The bomb exploded deep inside the ship’s engineering spaces, giving the appearance of the ship “belching,” followed by plumes of heavy black smoke and a large oil slick on the surrounding water. The
Sabalan
’s captain, Abdollah Manavi, radioed over the international radio channel in heavily accented English, his voice near hysterical, “I’m sinking! I’m sinking! Send help!” For a man who had deliberately inflicted so much misery upon defenseless merchant seamen, it seemed fitting.

With the
Sabalan
dead in the water and no other effective ordnance, Engler and Webb reluctantly headed back to the carrier. Back on the
Enterprise
, the crew began spinning up another strike package to finish off the
Sabalan
and to address a new intelligence report of a third Iranian frigate getting under way at Bandar Abbas. The flight deck hurriedly began bringing up more munitions, and two more aircraft were readied. With the main target of Operation Praying Mantis now immobilized, the U.S. commanders itched to finish her off. Less called Zeller and asked how long before they could get aircraft back up to finish off the
Sabalan.
Zeller responded that it would take time, perhaps an hour. As the
Sabalan
had been attacked out of “self-defense,” this long delay stretched the intent of the rules of engagement. General Crist picked up the open phone and talked to Crowe. “It would be nice to sink her,” he told Crowe, “but it’s hard to say it’s self-defense at this point.”

Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci had left the Pentagon for a morning swim in the small pool of the dingy labyrinth of the Pentagon gym. A brigadier
general came down to grab him, and Carlucci quickly arrived back in command center.

Crowe updated him on the situation. “We’ve got the
Sabalan
dead in the water and planes circling overhead. What do you recommend?”

Carlucci replied, “Well, what do you think?” Crowe, who had pushed to specifically target the
Sabalan
, responded, “Mr. Secretary, I think we’ve shed enough blood today.” Carlucci, who had always wanted to keep casualties to a minimum, nodded his head. “I agree with you. Tell the planes not to attack.”
⁶⁰
A tug and then the Iranian lighter
Chiroo
took the
Sabalan
under tow back to Bandar Abbas, and removed her many casualties.

J
ust before sunset, Less picked up the radio and called Rakow over on the
Trenton
, ordering him to dispatch two of his Cobras over to the
Wainwright
to provide Chandler with some helicopter gunships in case the Iranians staged a small-boat attack during the night. Rakow and his air officer Lieutenant Colonel Larry Outlaw strenuously objected. His pilots, he argued, had been flying for nearly twelve hours; most had not slept the night before. They were exhausted. But the order stood, and Outlaw dispatched his executive officer and one of his best pilots, Lieutenant Colonel David Dunkelberger, along with Captains Stephen C. Leslie and Kenneth W. Hill.

The two sleek gray Cobra helicopters arrived over the flight deck of the
Wainwright
well after sunset. Dunkelberger was lowest on fuel so he went in first, landing on the small aft flight deck. As his rotor came to a gradual stop, the crew moved it into the aircraft hangar to make room for his partner, dogging down the Cobra with hooks and metal wire.

The
Wainwright
’s radar suddenly detected a ship directly off the bow some fifteen miles distant. It appeared to be the Iranian logistics ship
Larak
, certainly capable of laying mines or other mischief. Chandler asked if Leslie and Hill would investigate. The Cobra moved swiftly away, the distinctive
whop-whop
sound of its rotors fading away into darkness. Suddenly, a brief voice from one of the pilots broke in over the radio net: “Radar lock on!” Whether it was Iranian or American remains unclear, but Leslie banked his Cobra hard, taking it down low to the water in a sudden maneuver intended to evade an inbound missile. But on night-vision goggles, depth perception flattens; over water, the horizon blurs with the water in a green
hue. Even the most experienced Army Special Forces pilot found it challenging, and neither Leslie nor Hill was up to that level of night flying experience. The fast-moving twin-blade Cobra slammed into the ocean, killing both pilots instantly.

As night settled in over the Gulf, Less ordered the three surface action groups south, away from the Iranians into a more defensive stance. Crist called Crowe to provide him an update. Numerous small boats manned by the Revolutionary Guard seemed to be poised to attack the next day. He added, “I think tomorrow may be a tough day.”
⁶¹

But the Iranians did not attack. April 18 proved costly to Iran, with nearly sixty Iranians killed and more than one hundred wounded. In the two days following Praying Mantis, tension remained high, but Iran kept its remaining boats safely in harbor and the Revolutionary Guard showed little interest in tangling again with the United States. On April 20, four Iranian boats from Bushehr closed on the two northern mobile sea bases, but they turned away and headed back toward Farsi.