by David Crist
“Affirmative…Evaluated Iraqi F-1…bearing 269, range 27 nautical miles, over,” Moncrief answered. The Stark’s executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Raymond Gajan, arrived, having spent the last half hour in Brindel’s cabin discussing the engine inspection. Detecting no sense of urgency, he contented himself to talk about routine administrative issues with Moncrief, paying little attention to an Iraqi jet coming in fast and low on their ship. At seven minutes past nine, the Iraqi pilot fired off his first missile, from only twenty-two miles away.16
As the Iraqi missile streaked undetected to the Stark, Moncrief finally noticed that the Mirage’s course would take it directly over his ship. He finally ordered Duncan to broadcast a warning to the Iraqi F-1: “Unknown aircraft, this is U.S. Navy warship on your 076 at 12 miles. Request you identify yourself and state your intentions, over.” There was no response from the Iraqi pilot, who then launched his second missile.
This time, the Stark detected his radar, which came in the form of an unmistakable, high-pitched tone easily heard throughout the combat center.17 As Gajan looked on passively, an alarmed Moncrief ordered a second warning broadcast to the aircraft and sent a sailor topside to arm the chaff dispensers, which threw up a cloud of aluminum strips designed to confuse incoming missiles. After some confusion about which radar to use, Moncrief ordered the Stark’s own fire radar to lock on to the aircraft. He did so reluctantly, apparently worrying that this might be misinterpreted by the Iraqi aircraft as a hostile act. About this time a second missile radar was heard emanating from the F-1. Inexplicably, no one thought to activate the CIWS, the ship’s best defense against an incoming missile, or even to sound general quarters.
Two minutes after the first missile was fired, a lookout on the Stark spotted a bright flash just off the port bow, with a “little blue dot coming from the center of that flash.” He yelled into his headset, “Missile inbound!” But it was too late.
The first Exocet hit the port side of the ship. Entering through one berthing area, the missile traveled on into the chief petty officers’ compartment. The warhead did not explode, but doused the interior with burning fuel. As many as twenty-eight men were instantly incinerated by the conflagration. Within the ship, sailors heard a muffled explosion. Captain Brindel, who happened to be in the bathroom at the time, rushed up to the bridge.
A tense voice came over the ship’s internal speakers: “Missile inbound!” The metallic clang-clang sounding general quarters rang throughout the ship just as the second missile struck, eight feet from the first; its 330-pound warhead exploded, blowing apart metal and flesh, sending shrapnel through bulkheads, and creating a large gaping hole in the side of the ship.18
The Stark immediately filled with a thick, acrid smoke. Those trapped within the impact area donned their emergency escape breathing devices—basically a hood with about fifteen minutes’ air supply—and stumbled in the dark trying to get through jammed hatches and past dangling live electrical wires. Six men either jumped or fell from the gaping hole down into the waters of the Gulf. A quick-thinking sailor on deck threw two of them life preservers after hearing calls for help. Men tried in vain to reach sailors trapped in their bunks, screaming for help before being overcome by smoke and fire.
Admiral Bernsen was in the wardroom of the Middle East Force’s flagship, the USS La Salle, hosting a farewell dinner for a departing officer, with the guest of honor being the U.S. ambassador to Bahrain, Sam Zackem. The watch officer came down to the wardroom and asked Bernsen to come to the command center. Soon other staff officers followed suit, leaving Ambassador Zackem wondering what could possibly be going on. About five minutes passed, and Zackem decided to go and see for himself.
There he met a visibly shaken Bernsen. “Mr. Ambassador, the Stark was hit.”19 Zackem was stunned. Just the day before, he recalled, he had watched the Stark’s crew defeat the La Salle’s in volleyball, and Captain Brindel had given him a case of Coors beer.
Bernsen immediately ordered additional ships to come to the Stark’s assistance, and the La Salle made preparations to get under way and head north to take charge of the rescue effort. The crew dispatched one of their helicopters, named the “Desert Duck,” carrying additional oxygen tanks, firefighting equipment, and a corpsman. Meanwhile, Ambassador Zackem phoned the crown prince of Bahrain and received permission to use that country’s hospitals to treat the most seriously injured sailors. Bahrain emptied its main burn unit in anticipation of a large number of casualties, and two severely burned sailors arrived before being flown on with other sailors to the U.S. military’s own burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.20
Back on the Stark the fire spread quickly. Within an hour, it had burned through two decks, consuming the combat information center and the galley and threatening the forward missile magazine. Brindel ordered it flooded. The heat was intense, melting protective fire masks and even fusing two keys in the pocket of Lieutenant William Conklin. Fire parties on the forecastle, led by Lieutenants Moncrief and Conklin, directed their hoses on the fires coming increasingly close to the magazine, as the heat from the fire peeled the paint off the base of the missile launcher.21
Their efforts, and the arrival of a civilian salvage tug with additional hoses, staved off disaster, but the large amount of water being poured on the fire caused a significant list that now threatened to capsize the ship. Brindel and Gajan conferred and agreed to punch holes in the side of the ship to allow the excess water to drain out.22 One more crisis was averted.
The next day, a Bahraini helicopter rescued four of the six men who had gone overboard, while a fifth and the severely burned body of the sixth sailor were recovered by a U.S. warship. The five survivors had spent a taxing night in the open sea dodging sharks and sea snakes.
Even the Iranians tried to help. They sent two helicopters to assist in search and rescue. Although they were professionally competent, Bernsen gave them a search area well away from the Stark.
Word of the Stark disaster spread quickly through Washington. The National Military Command Center notified Armitage, who phoned Weinberger. “The USS Stark was hit by Iraqi missiles, probably an accident.” The defense secretary relayed the message to the national security adviser, Frank Carlucci. Within an hour after the first missile hit, the president knew of the tragedy half a world away. “A beautiful day,” Reagan penned in his diary, “until I got a call from Frank [Carlucci].”23
General Crist was in Pennsylvania to receive an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Villanova University. Crist had recently stopped smoking, and other than craving cigarettes, he enjoyed his visit, which included a speech before newly commissioned marine lieutenants from the school’s navy ROTC program. He arrived back in Tampa that evening to be met on the tarmac by a senior officer, Brigadier General Wayne Schramm, along with other staff.
“That’s nice,” he thought. “My staff has come out to welcome me back after receiving my honorarium.” But when he got into the car, he learned about the Stark. It would be another five years before Crist tried again to stop smoking.24
After twelve hours the crew had finally extinguished the fire. The grisly task to find and remove the dead began. The final toll: thirty-seven sailors dead.
Crist ordered Rear Admiral Grant Sharp to conduct an investigation. Arriving in the Gulf, Sharp and his party formally began the investigation on May 26 aboard the La Salle, with the hulk of the Stark nearby and with the distinct smell of the fire hanging in the air. While crediting Captain Brindel and his officers and crew (including Gajan and Moncrief) with heroism and skill in fighting the fire and saving their ship,25 Sharp’s report was a scathing indictment on the complete lack of preparedness aboard the Stark: “The Commanding officer failed to provide combat oriented leadership, allowing Stark’s anti–air warfare readiness to disintegrate to the point that his CIC [combat information center] team was unable to defend the ship.”26
Meanwhile, another investigative team arrived in Baghdad.
Headed by a navy admiral, it included senior intelligence expert Pat Lang, who ran the Iraq operations for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Flying into Baghdad, the Americans were greeted by two separate caravans of Iraqi officials, one from the intelligence service and the other from the foreign ministry, who ushered the delegation off to the al-Rashid Hotel in downtown Baghdad. Saddam Hussein was nervous about America’s response to the attack, worrying that the United States would turn against Iraq, cutting off the intelligence sharing or even pulling its support for the money and weapons flowing to his war machine. The next day, Lang and the other Americans met with the head of Iraqi air force intelligence, Sabur Abdul Aziz al-Douri. He had commanded a Republican Guard division and was known to Lang: “Al-Douri was one of these guys that light came in and none came out; he was a tough little bastard and not a guy to fool with.”
This Iraqi general explained how they divided the Iranian exclusion zone into hunting boxes. Their pilots would be assigned a box, and their orders were to attack the first maritime target they detected. General al-Douri denied that they had targeted the American ship and accused the Stark of having strayed inside the Iranian exclusion zone.27 The navy officers with Lang strongly denied this and accused the Iraqi pilot of being trigger-happy. Iraq refused to allow the Americans to interview the actual pilot. But Lang, fluent in Arabic, noticed a young major in the room who seemed to be answering queries about the attack from his fellow Iraqis. “They brought the pilot, but just did not want us to know about him.” The Americans impressed on al-Douri that it was in their interest to be apologetic, especially with the United States providing them intelligence.28 The Iraqi government agreed to pay $27 million in compensation to those killed.
When the Americans left, Saddam Hussein’s anxious mood transformed into mocking contempt. “If someone had attacked my ship, I would have bombed the airfield the plane came from!” the Iraqi dictator told senior aides in a meeting.
The Stark attack ignited another firestorm in Washington over the Reagan administration’s Persian Gulf policies. The Reagan administration believed it was now even more imperative to continue with the reflagging. The consequences of an American pullout after the Stark would have been disastrous to U.S. interests, especially following on the heels of Beirut.29
Before the Stark, few within Congress showed any interest in attending Pentagon briefings about the Kuwaiti tanker operation. Now with the photographs of thirty-seven coffins in a hangar in Dover, Delaware, on the cover of every major newsmagazine, they suddenly held a flurry of contentious hearings divided largely along partisan lines supporting or opposing the idea of U.S. protection for shipping in the Gulf.30 It did not help the Reagan administration that the political waters were already churned with the concurrent Iran-Contra hearings. Detractors denounced the undertaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, fearing it would draw the United States into another Vietnam, and insisted on the applicability of the War Powers Act, which required the president to get congressional approval for continuing any operation over sixty days.
The United States pressed forward with the reflagging operation in the wake of the attack on the Stark and despite congressional skepticism. Reagan resolutely defended his decision. “Mark this point well: the use of the vital sea-lanes of the Persian Gulf will not be dictated by the Iranians. These lanes will not be allowed to come under the control of the Soviet Union.”31
Outside the public view, the entire national security apparatus focused on the ability of Crist and Bernsen to avoid another such debacle. Six days after the Stark tragedy, on May 22, Crist flew to Washington for a series of meetings capped off by a meeting at the White House. An emotional Ronald Reagan had flown down to Jacksonville, Florida, for a memorial service for those killed on the Stark, but before leaving he’d given Carlucci instructions to make sure that the rules of engagement were broad enough and that the U.S. military had all the forces it needed to protect the Kuwaiti ships. General Robert Herres relayed this to Crist in a message for his eyes only and reported that the commander in chief had privately told the secretary that he wanted a “much more proactive stance.”32 With presidential interest, keeping the status quo was not an acceptable course of action. In a meeting in his office before driving over to the White House, Weinberger asked Crist point-blank if he had the forces to conduct the mission; if not, the secretary said, “you should ask for it.”
In the National Security Council meeting that afternoon, Crowe cautioned that he could not guarantee that there would be no further casualties, but that Iran’s actions had been very circumspect. Iran knew we could hit its military or economic targets at will from our carrier. It is unlikely that Iran would try to challenge the U.S. convoys, Crowe told Carlucci.33 Both Weinberger and Crowe pressed to liberalize the rules of engagement to avoid another such incident. Carlucci agreed, and said the president wanted to make sure that U.S. forces had everything they needed to complete their mission. He told Weinberger and Crowe to come back “urgent basis” on whether Crist needed more forces to carry out the escort operation.34
In a message that evening back-briefing Bernsen, Crist relayed the tone of the afternoon meeting in the White House Situation Room: “The heat is very hot in the kitchen.”35
Bernsen did not think any modifications were needed to the rules governing use of force. The problem was the Stark, not the document. But the political realities in Washington demanded change. “We are on notice,” Crist responded to Bernsen. “We can’t afford a second hit. We shoot first. The captain is authorized, in fact required, to shoot if it is clear to the commanding officer that his ship has been placed at risk.”36
The following day, Bernsen responded with some new rules. Any aircraft would be warned off at fifty nautical miles from any warship. Captains would be prepared to engage at twenty-five miles, or just outside the effective range of an Exocet missile.
On June 8, Weinberger approved these changes. The new rules stressed the captain’s ultimate responsibility for defending his ship against an attack or a threat that demonstrated hostile intent, such as laying mines or using its weapons radar.37 U.S. ships or planes were still prohibited from entering into Iranian or Iraqi territorial waters or airspace, including the declared exclusion zones. The only exception was that if U.S. forces were attacked from these areas, they could pursue into them, but only if the hostile force continued to pose an imminent threat to the safety of the American plane or ship. The minute the threat ended, they had to withdraw immediately unless approved by the Joint Chiefs.38
Meanwhile, the operational name for the convoys, Private Jewels, struck some as dirty, and with the operation being reexamined in a new light, the Pentagon changed the operational name to one that had a better ring to it: Earnest Will.
On May 27, Central Command forwarded its revived escort plan. While simple, it had a number of moving parts. The Middle East Force would herd together one to three tankers off either Kuwait or Oman and then proceed along a southern Gulf route with each convoy guarded by two or three U.S. warships staying within four thousand yards of the tankers. Additional navy vessels would be stationed at both entrances to the Strait of Hormuz, just outside the range of the Iranian Silkworm missiles. Another warship would be stationed in the northern Gulf to maintain the communications link with the Saudi-based AWACS. At twenty knots, it would take two days to transit, either inbound to Kuwait or outbound loaded with oil.39
If Iran tried to interfere, the carrier in the Gulf of Oman would be poised to strike. As a precaution, Crist ordered air force fighters to be ready to fly to Saudi Arabia and Oman. CENTCOM updated the Iran strike plans to include ten different targets for cruise missiles hitting naval and air defense sites around Iranian bases at Bandar Abbas, Jask, and Bushehr.40
The U.S. Navy had recently pulled four battleships out of mothballs. The chief of naval operations wanted to send one, the USS Missouri, to the Gulf to replace the aircraft carrier. The power of these World War II dreadnoughts captivated m
ilitary planners in Tampa. Armed with nine 16-inch guns that each fired a shell weighing as much as a Volkswagen Beetle. They were now augmented with advanced Tomahawk cruise missiles but remained the quintessential symbol of American gunboat diplomacy. The battleship could single-handedly destroy every Iranian military facility in the southern Persian Gulf. While its cruise missiles destroyed naval air force headquarters at Bandar Abbas, the “Mighty Mo,” protected by a fourteen-inch-thick belt of armor, would steam up into the strait and its guns would pound the Silkworm missile batteries into oblivion. A study produced by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory concluded that the battleship could take eleven Silkworm missiles before being put out of action, and there were not enough missiles in the entire Iranian inventory to sink the forty-five-thousand-ton battlewagon. Suicide planes were even less of a problem. The Missouri had absorbed two off Okinawa in 1945 and escaped with little more than its paint scraped.41 On June 12, the Joint Chiefs met in the Tank and agreed to send the battleship, supported by two cruisers and three destroyers, to the Gulf. Although the convoy operation would already be under way, this lethal task group would arrive in the Gulf by the end of August.
Another group of officers under CENTCOM arrived in Baghdad to hash out a secret arrangement between the U.S. Navy and the Iraqi air force. The two countries came to a formal agreement that amounted to a series of electronic nods and winks that permitted Iraqi planes to continue to pound Iran’s tankers and avoid running into the U.S. Navy. When Iraqi aircraft went “feet wet,” as aviators term flying over water, the pilot announced his presence to any U.S. warship by turning on his radar for a couple of minutes. The American AWACS plane flying out of Saudi Arabia would contact the Iraqi over a certain radio frequency provided every month to Iraqis by the U.S. military attaché in Baghdad.42 The Iraqi pilot would reply using a predetermined call sign, again provided by the U.S. military, and the AWACS would pass on the location of all the U.S. ships in the northern Gulf.43 There were draconian measures if the Iraqi pilot failed to adhere to this protocol, including being shot down if he came within thirty nautical miles of a U.S. ship without contacting the Americans.44
