At sundown in the Persian Gulf on 18 April 1988, a day filled with missiles, naval gunfire, and bombing, two Iranian oil platforms were aflame and several Iranian vessels, including three warships, were sunk or disabled. An American helicopter and two Marine pilots had been lost. The day’s conflict, involving nine American warships and a carrier air wing, remains the largest surface naval action for the United States since World War II.
The Middle East was as troubled and difficult a region for the United States in the 1980s as it is today. Beginning with the Iranian hostage crisis and continuing with the Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 Americans and the Iran-Contra scandal, a series of military and diplomatic failures lowered U.S. prestige and standing among Persian Gulf countries. By the mid-1980s, the ongoing land war between Iran and Iraq spilled over into the gulf and threatened oil shipments, the economic lifeline of the Western alliance.
The fighting in the gulf became known as the Tanker War, as both sides attacked hundreds of oil tankers in an effort to disrupt the economy of the other side. Iraq, lacking a significant navy, attacked mostly from the air, while Iran used surface vessels and mines in the shipping lanes. Two Iranian frigates, the Sahand and Sabalan, were especially noted for brutal attacks on unarmed neutral shipping. At the time, the United States had only a small group of ships, called the Middle East Force, in the Persian Gulf. This force observed, but did not interfere in the attacks on merchants, a posture that grated on many American commanders, who viewed the Iranians as pirates or terrorists in the shipping lanes.
An Active U.S. Role
In late 1986, Kuwait asked the United States and the Soviet Union to protect its tanker fleet from Iran. The administration of President Ronald Reagan saw it as an opportunity to improve America’s standing in the region and to exclude the Soviets from a vital area. After negotiations, the Americans agreed to place all 11 of Kuwait’s oil and gas tankers under the American flag and escort them in and out of the gulf. The U.S. stance toward other tankers remained unchanged.
The escort duty was still in the planning stages when an Iraqi plane, seemingly on a routine mission, unexpectedly fired two Exocet missiles into the frigate USS Stark (FFG-31) as she patrolled in the gulf on 17 May 1987. The attack, soon deemed accidental, killed 37 sailors and directly led to a greater awareness of the dangers of the region and, ironically, greater U.S. coordination with Iraq. With Iraq as a virtual ally, American focus turned to Iran.
When the escort program—Operation Earnest Will—eventually began that summer, the first escorted supertanker struck an Iranian mine. Amid various Iranian threats of further mining, a low-level conflict developed that fall between the United States and Iran. American forces grew in size and capability, becoming Joint Task Force, Middle East, while Iran kept up a policy of harassment that pushed just short of provoking a full-fledged response. The Americans deployed Special Forces on two floating bases to prevent further mining and to counter Iranian small-boat attacks. A series of small-scale clashes followed in the fall of 1987: U.S. forces boarded and sank an Iranian mining ship. A firefight between SEALs and Revolutionary Guard small boats left several Iranians dead. Iran fired a Silkworm missile at a U.S.-flagged tanker in October, blinding the captain; the United States destroyed an Iranian oil platform in retaliation.
Raising the Stakes
Tensions eased as the escorts continued over the winter, but Iran decided to resume the mining the next spring. On 14 April 1988, the frigate Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) hit a mine and only heroic damage-control efforts saved the ship from sinking. The Americans considered various options for retaliation and quickly settled on three objectives. The first two targets were Iranian oil platforms in the eastern gulf (named Sirri and Sassan) used as command-and-control centers for tanker attacks. The third objective was to sink a warship, preferably one of the notorious Iranian frigates. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Crowe, personally phoned the senior U.S. commander in the gulf, Rear Admiral Anthony Less, and instructed him to sink the Sabalan, considered the more dangerous of the two vessels.
Over a busy weekend of planning, U.S. commanders designated three surface action groups, or SAGs—three ships each—to carry out this mission, soon code-named Operation Praying Mantis. The groups were designated Bravo, Charlie, and Delta. Carrier Air Wing 11 from the Enterprise (CVN-65), stationed just outside the gulf, would assist.
The operation began at 0800 on 18 April. SAG Bravo—the Merrill (DD-976), Lynde McCormick (DDG-8), and Trenton (LPD-14)—approached the Sassan platform. Following a warning to evacuate, the ships commenced a bombardment with naval guns and Marine Cobra helicopters. At the same time, SAG Charlie—the Wainwright (CG-28), Simpson (FFG-56), and Bagley (FF-1069)—carried out a similar attack on the Sirri platform located to the east of Sassan. Both platforms were soon aflame. Marines were able to board and gather intelligence from the Sassan platform, but the Sirri platform was too damaged to allow for boarding. With those two objectives complete, the first part of the operation was a success. The third group of American ships, SAG Delta—the Jack Williams (FFG-24), O’Brien (DD-975), and Joseph Strauss (DDG-16)—was having no luck with its mission to sink a ship, spending frustrating hours patrolling the Strait of Hormuz hoping to catch a glimpse of the Sabalan or another Iranian warship.
Iran’s Reckless Challenge
With all that as a backdrop, at mid-morning someone in the Iranian command hierarchy, still reeling from a recent battlefield defeat at the Iraqi border, made the fateful decision to directly confront the Americans. A U.S. intelligence officer would later observe, “there were young Turks at the helm,” and “the people who were supposed to be in charge, either were asleep at the switch or were not available to take charge, and the whole action got out of hand.” The Iranians launched an uncoordinated, piecemeal response—one that was nonetheless bold. They first sent out some smaller vessels and planes. Incongruously, the Sabalan, for the moment at least, remained in port at Bandar Abbas, moored between two large tankers for protection.
SAG Charlie was still in the general area of the Sirri complex when, at 1048, U.S. intelligence caught wind of the first Iranian naval sortie of the day. Rear Admiral Less, in Bahrain on board the command ship Coronado (AGF-11), was keeping in constant contact with the three SAG commanders, and at 1130 he instructed Captain James Chandler on the Wainwright to try to locate and identify an Iranian ship that was seen approaching the vicinity of Sirri. Shortly thereafter, at 1145, sensors on board the Wainwright detected the electronic chatter of an Mk-92 fire-control system, a sure sign of a modern-era warship. Chandler ordered a helicopter from the Bagley to fly out and identify the new arrival.
Eleven minutes later, after evading some small-arms fire from Iranian Boghammers (small, fast, armed patrol boats), the helicopter radioed that the contact was the Iranian attack boat Joshan, a ten-year-old, 154-foot, French-made craft the Iranians called a Kaman patrol boat. As the vessel came closer, Chandler scanned detailed intelligence information about the Joshan, including a photo of her commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Abbas Mallek. The rapidly approaching boat had Harpoon surface-to-surface missile capability and was already within firing range. The news flashed back to Less, who made a quick decision. Realizing this might be the only chance of the day to sink an Iranian ship, he ordered Chandler: “Don’t let that ship get past you. Take that ship.” As directed by higher authority, Less had earlier told all his commanders to “be as humanitarian as you possibly could.” He thus instructed Chandler to warn the Joshan before sinking her.
Unheeded Warnings
At 1200, Chandler sent the first of four simple, similarly worded messages over channel 16 to the Joshan. “This is a warning,” he slowly recited. “Stop, and abandon ship. I intend to sink you. Over.” The Joshan radioed immediately that she had no hostile intent, but showed no sign of slowing and continued on her fast, inbound course. The atmosphere grew tense as the crews of all three ships of SAG Charlie sat poised to simultaneously launch an attack and/or defend against one. The U.S fire-control radar was locked, missiles were “on the rail” ready to fire, and sailors had their fingers on the missile-launch and chaff-launch buttons, ready for anything as all waited for the next move in the showdown.
The Wainwright continued to issue warnings, four in all. Not shooting first was nearly a fatal mistake for the Americans. At 1213, events unfolded quickly. The Joshan was just 13 nautical miles away when the Wainwright once again detected the signal of an Mk-92 fire-control system, this time actively scanning for a target. At 1215 the Joshan fired a Harpoon missile. The crew of the Bagley’s helicopter spotted the white smoke of rocket exhaust near the Joshan as the missile roared aloft and zoomed toward the Wainwright. (The U.S.-made Harpoon, developed in the mid-1970s, has a top speed of 646 mph, meaning its impact time would be measured in seconds.)
Excited voices in the Wainwright’s CIC called out about the missile separation. The spell broken, the Wainwright immediately launched chaff, activated heavy electronic countermeasures to confuse the missile, and began evasive maneuvers. Chandler ordered all hands, other than a select few in CIC, to hit the deck, and the captain quickly radioed to the Simpson, also standing by with weapons systems armed, and gave her permission to fire.
The Simpson fired an SM-1MR Standard missile from the Mark-13 launcher at her bow. Typically used for antiaircraft purposes, a Standard missile is capable of traveling 1,900 mph, fast enough to hit a jet fighter traveling twice the speed of sound. In this case, for the first time in actual combat, it was rigged for surface-to-surface mode. The missile sliced through the air toward the Joshan. For a brief instant, both combatants’ weapons were simultaneously airborne.
Lookouts in the Wainwright saw and heard the Harpoon come roaring in. Something, perhaps the cloud of chaff or the electronic noise generated by the defensive systems, confused the old missile’s guidance radar, if indeed the radar worked at all. The missile veered just enough to miss the Wainwright. Those in the CIC heard it pass about 100 feet along the starboard side with a deafening whoosh. It landed in the water.
A Flurry of Aerial Action
The Joshan was not so lucky. Aware of an incoming missile, her crew launched chaff, but the missile from the Simpson smashed into the smaller ship. On board the Wainwright, the CIC crew, shaken but jubilant over the near miss moments earlier, noticed the Joshan’s fire-control radar went offline at the exact moment of the hit. The Simpson had fired a second Standard missile at 1217; it too struck the Iranian ship.
At 1226, the Wainwright fired her first SM-1MR and scored another hit. After taking three American missiles, the Joshan was badly hurt, but not yet sinking. Chandler ordered the helicopter closer to assess the situation. It reported the Joshan’s superstructure was damaged and the ship was ablaze from bridge to stern, but the forward gun was still intact. Hearing that, the Simpson fired another missile. Four missiles, four hits. Yet the Joshan still floated. At 1244 Less instructed Chandler to close and finish off the Iranian ship.
Only a few minutes after the helicopter crew had reported on the damage, an incoming plane appeared on the radar screen. It was an Iranian F-4. The Wainwright fired an SM-2MR missile and scored a partial hit, but the damaged plane remained airborne. The cruiser fired another SM-2MR two minutes later and missed—but by that time the F-4 had turned and was limping home, broadcasting emergency signals to the airfield at Bandar Abbas. With the skies clear, all three ships from SAG Charlie moved in on the smoking Joshan. She eventually sank later in the day; Iran claimed there were 11 casualties.
Around the same time as the missile exchange was occurring, Iranian Boghammers attacked an American supply boat at the Mubarak oil fields in the eastern gulf. A-6 Intruder attack planes from the Enterprise came to the rescue; the decision whether to attack went via satellite all the way to the White House. Given the green light in a matter of minutes, the U.S. planes ran off the attackers, sinking some in the process.
In the meantime, observers on the Jack Williams in SAG Delta reported multiple incoming Silkworms. The ship fired chaff and swerved violently to avoid the missiles, five of which were clearly visible to crew members and news media on board. The Department of Defense press pool on board the Jack Williams duly reported the events and sightings; their dispatches circulated in American news media over the next few days. Later U.S. authorities downplayed the reports, saying the missiles were radar echoes or other false signals. The sightings were never fully explained. The United States had warned Iran earlier that any attacks with Silkworms would lead to a dangerous escalation.
Iran Sorties a Frigate
At 1459, in another risky move, the Sahand, sister ship to the Sabalan, left Bandar Abbas. The Sahand, though not quite as infamous as the other frigate, had made her share of attacks on unarmed merchant ships, and she now apparently was setting out on a mission to avenge the platform attacks. U.S. intelligence was well aware of the sortie, although the frigate’s identity was uncertain; SAG Delta was contacted and told to be on the lookout.
The Enterprise kept sending up planes, rotating crews each time, looking for the Sabalan or another suitable target. The long hours started to take a toll on the pilots as the day wore on. Commander Arthur “Bud” Langston and his bombardier/navigator took off on a reconnaissance mission from the Enterprise in an A-6 Intruder, its wings heavy with ordnance. Joining up with an EA-6B Prowler and two F-14 escorts, the aircraft headed for the Strait of Hormuz. Shortly after, the EA-6B (an electronics jammer and communications plane) informed Langston that an Iranian frigate, possibly one of the targets, was under way. Langston put his plane in a holding pattern above the Strait of Hormuz
He didn’t have long to wait; the Sahand was eagerly coming out to join the fray. “We were up high, maybe at 15,000–20,000 feet, and we saw a frigate coming out of the harbor at high speed, really making a lot of white water,” Langston recalled. The location and silhouette fit with the intelligence information, but Langston was still unsure of the ship’s identity and the hazy weather conditions in the gulf made it difficult for the Americans to see. He moved in for a closer look. Realizing there would be international ramifications if he were wrong, he believed that being certain of the target warranted the risk.
His A-6 screamed downward to near-surface level, a couple of miles behind the fast-moving frigate. He pulled out of the dive and the ship opened fire. “That gave us a pretty good idea it wasn’t a friendly,” Langston said. As the A-6 streaked past the ship at a range of about 50 yards, he saw “tracers were going over the canopy from its antiaircraft guns and shoulder-fired weapons. Rounds were going off all around the canopy.” The A-6 climbed and swung out to a safe position about 15 miles away.
Destruction of the Sahand
Langston quickly informed the Enterprise he had found the target and called for the launch of the full strike group. The rules of engagement stated that because the enemy fired first, he was authorized to attack immediately. But first he radioed a warning. “I made a call on guard to the [hostile] ship, not knowing if they were monitoring, and transmitted in the blind notifying the Iranian frigate that just fired on the A-6 Intruder that they had five minutes to abandon ship. I was going to take them under fire.”
On board the Enterprise, Commander John Schork, executive office of Attack Squadron 95 (VA-95), got word the strike group would launch its seven planes—one A-6 and six A-7 Corsairs. While those aircraft rushed to the scene, Langston waited the promised five minutes, and then began a solo attack.
He unloaded on the frigate, starting with an air-to-surface Harpoon missile. “I shot the Harpoon, which exploded right behind the ship’s bridge. [The frigate] billowed smoke and went dead in the water quickly. Then I made attacks with two Skippers [1,200-pound bombs] and followed up with the laser-guided bombs.” This initial attack started several large fires on board the Sahand.
The strike group arrived and began to attack with Harpoon missiles. As Schork and his group flew in, SAG Delta was closing and preparing for its own attack on the frigate. “They talk about the fog of war, that is a true story,” Schork later said. “I was getting ready to launch the Harpoon and someone on the Joseph Strauss came on and said ‘Break off your attack, we are going to fire.’ So in our cockpit, we said, ‘Bullshit, we are pressing the attack.’” The Joseph Strauss fired a Harpoon nearly simultaneously to Schork’s launch; both missiles hit the Sahand at roughly the same time. The official report later called this a “coordinated” attack from the surface and the air. The others in the strike group moved in and launched their weapons at the Sahand.
The frigate that had terrorized so many helpless merchants was now taking the brunt of an overwhelming assault. The O’Brien and other SAG Delta ships were too far away to actually see the Sahand as the attack occurred, but their crews were well aware of what was happening. “I remember vividly you could hear the weapons impacting the ship. What was fascinating was watching my crew. It wasn’t [bravado]. Everyone got very quiet and you could really tell that everyone understood what was really happening over the horizon,” said Commander Robert Johnston, executive officer of the O’Brien.
Schork continued the attack for a few more minutes with Skipper bombs. “I targeted the part of the ship that wasn’t engulfed in flames. To this day, I don’t know if it was the bow or the stern.” Then Schork got into position to unleash even more firepower. “We flew close and the only people I remember seeing were in an orange life raft that clearly had abandoned ship.” Seeing the extent of the damage that had been inflicted, Schork decided to end the assault. “I was the senior guy in the cockpit. I took a look and I said, ‘That’s enough.’ Our job was not to kill the guys who were clearly just abandoning ship. That’s not the way we do business, so I made the decision not to release those final weapons.” The strike group headed home to the Enterprise.
An Incomprehensible Move
SAG Delta also ceased fire. Iran sent boats to rescue the survivors, and the U.S. ships did not interfere. The Sahand, afire and completely enveloped in thick black smoke, floated dead in the water for several hours before finally sinking late that night. Iran eventually reported casualties from the Sahand at 45 dead and 87 injured.
The same Marine Cobra helicopter group from SAG Bravo that had attacked the Sassan had flown patrol missions all day when a call came in the late afternoon that the Wainwright (SAG Charlie) was seeing small-boat activity and needed air support. The squadron commander picked his best pilots and sent two helicopters on the 50-mile flight. The aircraft reached the Wainwright and landed, but one of them had to immediately take off again to investigate a suspicious surface contact. The Cobra flew off into the evening sky.
At 1700 the section of A-6s that earlier had attacked the Boghammers in the Mubarak oil field completed midair refueling and headed back to the strait. Initially they were told to return to the Enterprise, but the strike leader, Lieutenant Commander Jim Engler, reported that they were still adequately armed to continue the mission. They remained on patrol.
At that time, the Iranian authorities decided to send out another ship, the dreaded Sabalan. The move left U.S. intelligence officers “scratching their heads” because “it made no tactical sense at all.” Iran had to know at that point that it was hopelessly outgunned, but the Sabalan was sent out anyway. The Joseph Strauss informed Engler of the ship’s position. His planes approached at about 1715 and spotted the frigate among other surface contacts.
“I had a photo of the Sabalan on my kneeboard,” Engler said. “I had the [infrared] up on my primary video screen to check each radar contact. As we moved from surface contact to surface contact, we came upon a ship that matched the profile of the Sabalan, and as I was building my own confidence that we’d found the correct ship, I suddenly saw AAA rounds and reported that we were taking fire, and that we had the Sabalan. We received almost instant clearance to engage.” Another A-6 pilot reported the Sabalan fired multiple missiles as Engler made his attack dive. Engler launched a single laser-guided bomb at the Iranian frigate and scored a direct hit.
As Admiral Less, closely monitoring the situation from the Coronado, recalled: “They had video pictures [later] and you can see the bomb go right down the stack of that ship right into the engineering spaces. The ship gives it sort of a belch or a burp. You can see it kind of go ‘whoop’ into the ship and then you see the ship stop dead in the water.”
The Sabalan was crippled. By then, another strike package was inbound from the Enterprise. The first strike group continued to circle the area and watched the Sabalan feebly attempt to return to port, trailing a major oil slick.
On board the Coronado, Less was in satellite contact with his superior, Marine General George Crist at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa. “I said, ‘General, the ship has stopped. The weapon went down the stack and we’ve broken it,’” Less recalled. “I didn’t have the video at that point, but I said, ‘It blew up in the engineering spaces. The ship is DIW, dead in the water.’” Less informed Crist that a strike group was on the way to devastate the Sabalan. The word quickly went up the chain to the Pentagon, where Admiral Crowe and Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci considered their next move.
This was the Sabalan, Iran’s most-feared ship and one that Crowe had personally told Less to sink, just a few days earlier, now sitting at their mercy. But the Sabalan suddenly did not seem so fearsome and neither did the Iranian navy—or what was left of it. Crowe and Carlucci agreed that the day had been successful and that all objectives had been met.
Less remembers Crowe’s final communication: “Admiral Crowe came back with, ‘We’ve shed enough blood for the day.’” Less then called off the strike group and allowed Iran to tow the stricken vessel to port. Iran said 29 on board the Sabalan and been injured but amazingly reported no deaths. The A-6s returned to the Enterprise after more than six hours in the air. “The fastest six hours of my life,” as Engler remembered it.
The action was swiftly coming to an end, but late in the day the Cobra helicopter that had taken off from the Wainwright to investigate a surface contact reported it was evading a missile—then the Cobra vanished from radar. Marine Captains Stephen Leslie and Kenneth Hill were killed. They were the only American casualties of the operation.
Assessing Praying Mantis
Eleven days later, the United States made a policy change, one eagerly awaited by the Middle East Force ship captains and the gulf states alike. Secretary Carlucci announced on 29 April that the U.S. Navy would now act to protect all “friendly, innocent, neutral vessels flying a nonbelligerent flag, outside declared war/exclusion zones, that are not carrying contraband or resisting legitimate visit and search by a Persian Gulf belligerent.”
Gone was the tentative, small-scale military involvement in the Persian Gulf. Echoing what so many U.S. military personnel had wanted to say since the start of the Tanker War, Carlucci added, “We cannot stand by and watch innocent people be killed or maimed by malicious, lawless actions when we have the means to assist, and perhaps prevent them.”
Though Iran tried to spin the day’s events as a moral victory, the fact remained that the operation badly hurt its war effort in the Persian Gulf. Before Praying Mantis, Iran had the Sabalan and Sahand as working frigates and had only to avoid harming U.S.-flagged ships. But at the end of April its two best warships were out of action—as were other assets—and all neutral merchants were off limits. It was a dramatic change.
Further tragedy struck in July 1988 when the USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shot down an Iranian passenger plane. Faced with a series of spectacular defeats at the hands of Iraq on land and hemmed in by the United States at sea, senior Iranian leaders met in July to discuss ending the seemingly endless war. On 20 July 1988, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made his final decision in favor of peace. Soon after the end of the war, American forces in the region contracted to former levels, where they would remain until Operation Desert Shield two years later.
For the United States, Operation Praying Mantis was a success on multiple levels. Operationally, it was the largest engagement of any kind for the U.S. military since the Vietnam War and the largest sea-air battle since World War II. It was the first live-fire test for a new generation of high-technology weapons, which worked nearly flawlessly. There were no embarrassing equipment failures or costly lapses in judgment. The missile exchange between the Joshan and the Wainwright was the first such engagement for a U.S. Navy warship. The operation was the first test of a satellite-communications network that allowed leaders in Washington to personally direct combat operations halfway around the world. U.S. intelligence, using both human and technological assets, was one step ahead of Iran all day. In many ways, the operation validated the training, hardware, and doctrine of the modern U.S. armed forces.
Politically, Praying Mantis put to rest the lingering doubts in the region about America’s staying power. Iran boldly, if foolhardily, took on America head to head in the Persian Gulf and failed. For one day at least, the Iranian hostage-rescue disaster, the horrible Beirut bombing, and the Stark attack seemed part of the distant past. For the first time in a long while, nearly everything had gone right. For the U.S. military, maligned since the Vietnam War, it was a day of redemption.
This article was adapted from the author’s book Inside the Danger Zone: The U.S. Military in the Persian Gulf, 1987–1988 (Naval Institute Press, 2007).