No Higher Honor (43 page)

  
8
.
  
It was not two weeks after Iraqi missiles killed more than thirty U.S. sailors aboard
Stark
that assistant defense secretary Richard Armitage said, “We can't stand to see Iraq defeated.” (Hiro,
Longest War
, 186.)

  
9
.
  
Michael Vlahos, “The Stark Report,”
U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings,
May 1988.

10
.
  
Roberts
had emerged from the Portland yards in April; hard work by sailors and BIW employees had kept things on schedule through a winter of blizzards. (Letter, W. A. Rehder to Commander, Naval Surface Group 4, 30 April 1987.)

11
.
  
Interview, Rinn, 30 November 2004.

12
.
  
Letter, Vice Adm. W. F. McCauley to Rinn, 22 June 1987.

13
.
  
“Missile Inbound, Starboard Side,”
Surface Warfare,
November–December 1987, 7.

14
.
  
Message, Commander, Fleet Training Group Guantanamo Bay Cuba to Commander, Naval Surface Forces, Atlantic, “End of Training Report,” 1212Z 24 July 1987. “The
Samuel B. Roberts
Has Come a Long Way,”
Newport Navalog,
21 August 1987.

15
.
  
Message, FFG 58 to Commander, Naval Surface Group 4, “Personnel Transfer,” 1930Z 11 July 1987; “Mass Conflagration Training: Battling the Big Blaze,”
Surface Warfare,
November-December 1987.

16
.
  
“USS Roberts Achieves Highest Level of Readiness and Excellence in Two Years,”
Newport Navalog
, 31 July 1987.

17
.
  
Message, Commander, Fleet Training Group Guantanamo Bay Cuba, 1212Z 24 July 1987; Message, Commander, Fleet Training Group Guantanamo Bay Cuba to Rinn, “Unclas Personal for Capt Rinn from Commo Johnson,” 1842Z 3 May 1988.

18
.
  
Richard Pyle, “U.S. Flags Go Up on Reflagged Kuwaiti Tanker,” Associated Press (hereafter, AP), 21 July 1987.

19
.
  
Robin Wright,
In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade
(New York: Touchstone, 1989), 251.

20
.
  
Interview, Capt. Frank C. Seitz Jr. by Paul Stillwell, published in “SS
Bridgeton:
The First Convoy,”
Proceedings,
May 1988.

21
.
  
Anthony Cordesman,
The Iran-Iraq War
(London: Mansell, 1988), 62; Gregory K. Hartmann, with Scott C. Truver,
Weapons That Wait
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991), 256.

22
.
  
Hartmann and Truver,
Weapons That Wait
, 237.

23
.
  
The list of ships damaged by enemy attack since World War II is not long, considering the dozens of operations and thousands of deployments ranging over more than half a century. USS
Liberty
(AGTR 5), USS
Higbee
(DD 806), and the
Stark
were hit in aerial attacks, and USS
Cole
(DDG 67) by suicide bombers in a small boat. But the other fourteen were hit by mines. (Albert J.
Tucker, Office of Naval Research, “Opportunities and Challenges in Ship Systems & Control and ONR,” briefing presented at the IEEE Conference on Decision & Control, 4 December 2001.)

24
.
  
Frank Elliot, “The Navy in 1987,”
Proceedings,
May 1988.

25
.
  
Interview, Seitz; “Iran Mines Still in Gulf Near Kuwaiti Oil Station,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, 16 July 1987.

26
.
  
Richard Pyle, “Navy Learns Many Lessons in Gulf's ‘Do-It-Yourself War,'” AP, 26 October 1988.

27
.
  
The missile was later identified as one of the Stinger heat seekers supplied by the CIA to the Afghan mujahideen. (David B. Crist, “Joint Special Operations in Support of Earnest Will,”
Joint Forces Quarterly
, Autumn-Winter 2001-2002.)

28
.
  
Frank Colucci, “Special Ops,”
Popular Mechanics
, January 1999.

29
.
  
Ronald O'Rourke, “Gulf Ops,”
Proceedings,
May 1989; “Kuwaiti Call for Help Led to U.S. Role in Gulf,”
Los Angeles Times
, 4 July 1988. With ninety-one attacks on merchants by Iran and eighty-eight by Iraq, 1987 would end as the most violent year of the war. (Hiro,
Longest War
, 191; Cordesman,
Iran-Iraq War
, 17.)

30
.
  
“Remember All Who Served,”
Providence Journal
, 12 November 1987; Linda Borg, “Newport-Based Frigates Heading for Mediterranean, Maybe Gulf,”
Providence Journal
, 13 November 1987.

31
.
  
E-mail, Reinert.

32
.
  
Interview, Joe Baker with author, 30 March 2004.

33
.
  
Interview, Preston.

34
.
  
Letter, Commander, Naval Surface Forces, Atlantic, Vice Admiral McCauley to Rinn, 18 November 1987.

35
.
  
“USS
Samuel B. Roberts
FFG 58 Ammunition Expended 1987.”

36
.
  
Interview, Robert Sobnosky with author, 28 March 2004.

37
.
  
Lt. Cdr. David D. Bruhn, with Capt. (Ret.) Steven C. Saulnier and Lt. Cdr. James L. Whittington,
Ready to Answer All Bells: A Blueprint for Successful Naval Engineering
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 103-5.

38
.
  
Interview, Kevin Ford with author, 29 March 2004.

39
.
  
NAVSEA, final report, 6-12, 46.

40
.
  
Message, Commander, Naval Surface Forces, Atlantic, to all subordinate ships and commands, “FFG 7 Major DC Lessons Learned,” 01102 19 July 1987.

41
.
  
Levinson and Edwards,
Missile Inbound
, 30.

42
.
  
Message, FFG 58 to U.S. Defense Attaché Office, Cairo, “Suez Canal Transit Report,” 1517Z 24 January 1988 (Declassified 2 February 1989.)

43
.
  
Frieda Squires, photo caption, “On the Line,”
Providence Journal
-Bulletin, 15 April 1988.

44
.
  
D. Morgan McVicar, “A Familiar, But Still Painful, Goodby,”
Providence Journal
, 12 January 1988.

45
.
  
E-mail, Christopher Pond to author, 18 January 2004.

46
.
  
Message, Commander, Naval Surface Group 4, to Rinn, “Departure on Deployment,” 2212Z 11 January 1988.

CHAPTER 7

  
1
.
  
Message, Commander, Destroyer Squadron 22, to FFG 58, “Tone,” 1500Z 2 September 1987.

  
2
.
  
Interview, Rinn.

  
3
.
  
Interview, Raymond.

  
4
.
  
Iran had completed a midget sub at its Bandar Abbas shipyard in 1987, but it had failed operating tests (Prézelin and Baker,
Guide to Combat Fleets,
256).

  
5
.
  
E-mail, Pond.

  
6
.
  
Command History, USS
Samuel B. Roberts
(FFG 58), 1988.

  
7
.
  
Familygram, FFG 58 to crew families, March 1988.

  
8
.
  
The skipper of the first
Samuel B. Roberts
had described his own ship's encounter with a typhoon on the way to Leyte. “The seas were so rough and the ship pounded so badly that for the first two or three hours many of the crew were afraid the ship would sink,” Lt. Cdr. Robert Copeland wrote in his memoirs. “For the next sixteen to eighteen hours many of them were so sick that they were afraid she wouldn't sink.”

  
9
.
  
Interview, Baker.

10
.
  
Interview, Preston.

11
.
  
Videotape, Kevin Ford, January–February 1988.

12
.
  
Interview, Ford.

13
.
  
Visual message,
Simpson
to
Roberts
(FFG 58), 4 February 1988.

14
.
  
Interview, Mike Tilley with author, 5 August 2002.

15
.
  
The shipments of antiaircraft missiles, spare parts, and other materiel were engineered by White House operative Lt. Col. Oliver North to raise money for Nicaraguan rebels. When news of the 1986 shipments broke, White House officials publicly played down their military significance. But at least one Middle East expert in the administration believed differently: “The Iranians bought critical radar and landing gear components that at times . . . enabled Iran to double the number of sorties flown by its McDonnell Douglas F-4 aircraft against Iraq,” the official told the
New York Times
. (Paul Mann and James K. Gordon, “Iran Secures Operational Gains from U.S.-Backed Military Aid,”
Aviation Week & Space Technology
, 17 November 1986.) Dilip Hiro reckoned that the covert flow of parts had doubled the number of operational Iranian F-14s to twenty-four. (Hiro,
Longest War,
168.)

16
.
  
The downed planes were French-built Mirage F1s. (“Iran Claims Three Iraqi Planes Downed, U.S. Navy Turnover,” AP, 9 February 1988.)

17
.
  
Baghdad radio later claimed a successful attack on “two large maritime targets” in the southeast Gulf. (Richard Pyle, “U.S. Warship Warns Off Iraqi Jet Threatening Convoy,” AP, 13 February 1988.) In part to fool the U.S.-built
Mavericks' optical seekers, which were programmed to pick out contrasting patterns, U.S. warships headed to the Gulf painted out the high-contrast black lines of their hull numbers.

18
.
  
Message, FFG 58 to CTU 801.9.1, “Tovr Completion,” 1720Z 11 February 1988 (Declassified 15 March 1988). The U.S. Navy had purchased more than eight thousand Stingers to provide close-range antiair protection, but they were standard equipment aboard few warships. Instead, itinerant missile teams came aboard when a ship arrived in the Gulf region, staying behind when it departed. Many of the missile shooters were “nonrates,” junior sailors who had been through Stinger training but little else. Their reward for a year of itinerant missile duty was a slot in a training program that would qualify them as an engineman, electrician, or one of the navy's other job specialties. One member of the
Roberts
's Stinger team was reportedly a “single-digit midget”—that is, had fewer than ten days left in his Gulf tour—when the
Roberts
hit the mine. (E-mail, Tom Mowry to author, 20 January 2004; Polmar,
Naval Guide to Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet
, 16th ed., 457; Norman Friedman,
Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapons Systems
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989), 243.)

19
.
  
The gun magazine was protected by 3/4-inch aluminum alloy, the combat information center by 5/8-inch steel plates. Several vital electronics and command spaces were wrapped in a 3/4-inch Kevlar blanket. (Friedman,
U.S. Destroyers
, 384.)

20
.
  
Message, Capt. Donald A. Dyer to Task Unit 801.9.1, “Transit Competition,” 1012Z 10 February 1988; interview, Glenn Palmer with author, 4 January 2004; interview, Rinn.

21
.
  
Richard Pyle, “Two Speedboats Approach U.S. Convoy in Strait of Hormuz,” AP, 10 June 1988.

22
.
  
Letter, Rinn to Greg Rinn, 23 February 1988; interview, Preston.

23
.
  
“Iraq Claims Ship Attack; Convoy Sails,” AP via
Journal of Commerce
, 17 February 1988.

24
.
  
Interview, Rinn.

25
.
  
Letter, Rinn to Greg Rinn, 23 February 1988.

26
.
  
Interview, Preston.

27
.
  
Letter, Rinn to Greg Rinn, 23 February 1988.

28
.
  
Transcript, U.S. House Armed Service Committee's Defense Policy Panel hearing into the USS
Vincennes'
attack on the Iranian airliner, 21 July 1992.

29
.
  
Interview, Raymond.

30
.
  
Plan of the Day, 17 February 1988.

CHAPTER 8

  
1
.
  
Letter, Rinn to Greg Rinn, 23 February 1988.

  
2
.
  
Interview, Anthony A. Less with author, 29 October 2002.

  
3
.
  
Prézelin and Baker,
Guide to Combat Fleets
, 257. Vosper called the
Sa'am
the Mark V.

  
4
.
  
Michael A. Palmer,
On Course to Desert Storm: The United States Navy and the Persian Gulf
(Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1992), 392.

  
5
.
  
Letter, Rinn to Greg Rinn, 23 February 1988.