Neptunus Lex

Curt of “Chaotic Synaptic Activity” has a book review up on the now amost-forgotten Tanker War in the Arabian Gulf - especially as it has to do with an incident in the Spring of 1988 - the US had taken to escorting Kuwaiti-flagged oil tankers - when the USS Samuel B. Roberts became an inadvertant contestant in that struggle by striking an Iranian mine. The story of crew’s desperate - and ultimately successful - efforts to save the ship make compelling reading, according to Curt:

“No Higher Honor‚Äù brings you to the mine strike with an extensive knowledge of the ship design, the mission requirements, and the command structure and philosphy. Once the mine was hit, the story details the timeline of events, and the desperate, but pre-planned responses carried out. In the aftermath of the event, (author) Brad (Peniston) gives you the upper level geo-political response, which resulted in Operation Praying Mantis. He also provides the tactical details of that operation, followed by the subsequent return of the ship to the States and how the Bath Iron Works expertise put this ship back in operation.

Operation Praying Mantis was known throughout the US Navy as The Great Arabian Gulf sink-ex - what had initially been planned as a graduated response with the targeting oil platforms being used as intel gathering platforms, but which escalated into a brief and bitter exchange of fire between the USN and the navy of the Islamic Republic (IRIN) when the latter sent ships to counter-attack the US surface action group taking the oil rigs under fire. The one-sided results of this clash of arms were an Iranian frigate going to the bottom - the Sahand, run by a particularly nasty and problematical captain - as well as a Combattant-class gunboat, the Joshand, and several smaller speedboats. The IRIN Sabalan, a sister to the Sahand was also badly damaged but allowed to pulled clear of the fight by a tug. This demonstration of maritime power projection - despite the protestations of their many Arab neighbors, the Iranians had come to insist that the “Persian” Gulf should be considered their lake - was also followed up three months later by the disasterous shootdown of Iran Air flight 655 by the USS Vincennes, who was herself at the time engaged in a running surface action against still more Iranian gunboats.

Check out Curt’s review.