Desert Storm - Battleship USS Missouri Comes Under Iraqi Anti-Ship Missile Attack

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today on the 24th of january a week into the air war of desert storm two iraqi mirage f1s take off from al-jarrah airfield armed with the proven and feared exorcit anti-ship missile a weapon that has in the recent past severely damaged and sunk u.s navy and royal navy warships they head south east towards the persian gulf the iraqi air force is going to try to do what it hasn't attempted thus far in this conflict to sink a coalition warship in november 1990 two months prior to this moment and during desert shield the buildup of forces in saudi arabia prior to desert storm commencing the u.s launches operation imminent thunder a dress rehearsal massed amphibious assault involving 20 vessels and 18 000 sailors and marines on ras algar in saudi arabia the fourth and fifth marine expeditionary brigades then embark on five amphibious assault ships and remain in the persian gulf desert storm begins on the 17th of january 1991 with the five-week air campaign against saddam's military the coalition's naval forces conduct cruise missile strikes anti-ship operations against the iraqi navy anti-mine operations and naval bombardments against iraqi positions on the kuwaiti coast given the press coverage of imminent thunder and knowing that those amphibious troops are now massed just off the kuwaiti coast iraqi divisions are deployed along the coastline to defend against the amphibious assaults they believe will come this brings more iraqi troops into range of naval bombardment and weakens the iraqi front line facing the coalition to the south of the approximately 100 combat vessels of the coalition naval forces most are positioned in the gulf and saddam knows that these vessels are doing untold damage to his forces in kuwait on the 24th of january the flight path of the two exocet-armed iraqi mirages is causing confusion for coalition air controllers they're maneuvering almost as if it was on purpose right along the border between the area of responsibility of the u.s air force and the u.s navy and are now heading southeast along the saudi coast this has caused confusion and now no u.s aircraft are in range to intercept them at any moment they will likely turn to port and make their attack against coalition warships in the gulf the aircraft are just minutes from a potential launch range british hospital ship rfa argus has positioned herself on the western side of the fleet in order to receive helicopter casualty evacuations if required she is likely the mirage's target guarding argus is type 22 frigate hms brazen which has just detected the bandits she has a problem though her crew have just discovered a fault in one of her sea wolf anti-aircraft missile launchers it's not clear whether she will be able to defend herself and the hospital ship at full efficiency a young radio operator aboard hms brazen radio operator 2nd class paul charlton is just 20 years old and is on his first ever navy deployment he has no idea that mirages are moving in against his ship and at this moment he receives a high priority radio message protocol demands that he hand delivers this message to the ship's operations room twenty-year-old radio operator second class paul charlton would later in life create a youtube channel called the mighty jingles upon arriving at the ops room he recalls the following an immediate priority signal a sorry immediate precedence signal had come in that had to be rushed to uh the p-word the principal warfare officer who was on duty in the ops room because we were at action stations i didn't know why we were at action stations i didn't know we were under direct attack walked in the ops room immediately knew something was going on uh got rugby tackled by the ors the ops room supervisor who was a chief radar operator and told in no uncertain terms uh to not bother anybody for at least the next five minutes so i just had to stand there and wait and had a grandstand view of the ops room coming together in order to fight this threat so yeah they were close they were really close the thing is um the procedure for because they were going for the argus hospital ship we were just in the way and our response would have been to put ourselves in the way uh intercept the missiles with sea wolf if we could and if not launch decoys and hope they went for the decoys because if they didn't go for the decoys we were gonna have to have to take the hit i tried to give this signal to the piwo and was immediately shoulder stretched by the uh ops room manager and told him leave him alone don't interrupt we're busy and that was the precise moment when a pair of i believe with saudi arabian air force f-15 eagles intercepted these two burnt bandits when they were about two or three minutes outside of exodus at launch range so i was standing there in the ops room just watching all of this happen and suddenly realizing wow this war suddenly got very exciting anticipating that the iraqis might also launch land-based anti-ship attacks against the coalition warships the air campaign extends to include strikes against mobile launchers and storage facilities for iraq's 50 to 70 chinese-built hy2 seersucker land-based anti-ship missiles a variant of the earlier silkworm missile saddam has set up a storage facility inside a girls school in kuwait correctly assuming that the coalition won't launch airstrikes against it these images show the syrasucka missiles on trolleys in the school corridors by the 20th of february coalition intelligence believes that all launchers have been destroyed along with most of the missiles in theater unfortunately this isn't the case at 4 52 am on the 25th of february an a6 intruder is flying on a bombing sortie over kuwait and iraq the crew spots two plumes of smoke as two land-based anti-ship missiles are launched out into the persian gulf the first crashes into the sea immediately but the second levels out and makes its way towards its target a battleship that first served in world war ii the uss missouri the missile travels at just under the speed of sound but at a relatively high sea skimming altitude between 4 and 700 feet the a6 that spotted the launch transmits a warning to u.s naval forces central command but this hasn't been forwarded to the group in time the missouri is escorted by u.s navy frigate uss jarrett and minesweeper uss avenger and british royal navy destroyer hms gloucester frigate hms london and minesweeper hms catystock gloucester is the first to detect an incoming contact by radar at 21 nautical miles range inside a designated air lane for coalition aircraft returning home after hitting targets in iraq and kuwait she executes a snap turn to starboard to unveil her c-dart anti-air missiles near her bow a crew are under pressure to defend the surface group but also to prevent a potential friendly fire incident 43 seconds after the contact was first spotted the crew of gloucester correctly classified the contact as an incoming anti-ship missile and two sea darts are launched as the sea darts are on their way the seersucker is visually spotted by lookouts on missouri she dispenses chaff countermeasures into the sky around her attempting to confuse the enemy missile's radar and switches her phalanx close-in weapon systems to auto-engage just four nautical miles away gloucester's sea darts arrive and destroy the missile mid-flight missouri's phalanx never opens fire possibly because its radars were being confused by her own chaff all because the seersucker hadn't achieved a good lock and appeared to be missing a stern of her the entire defense of engagement from detection to classification and successful interception has taken 89 seconds the a6 which has spotted the missile launch attacks the launcher with cluster bombs the following morning of the 25th of february further air operations are conducted to find and destroy cyasaka launchers hms gloucester is replaced by falklands war veteran type 42 destroyer hms exeter and in the afternoon the surface group is in the same position with missouri conducting coastal bombardment exeter receives a radio report from minesweeper hms atherston that she's visually spotted a plume of smoke near the coast to their west her crew don't know for sure what it was but the plume would be consistent with another seersucker launch against the surface group exeter alerts the other ships in the group that another potential missile could be inbound the observed smoke was actually from the detonation of a kuwaiti oil well near the coast by iraqi forces but the surface group don't know this and must treat the threat of an incoming missile very seriously this time frigate uss jarrett is quite close to missouri at just two to three nautical miles both switch their phalanx systems into auto engage mode missouri begins to launch chaff pods into the air around her again to confuse the supposed incoming weapons radar seeker however as the traff pods explode above her dispensing thousands of metal strips into the air uss jarrett's phallic system automatically classifies the chaff as a target the gun slews to starboard and fires a 220 round burst of 20 millimeter fire into the chaff cloud just above the missouri four of these rounds hit the missouri herself two of which penetrate widely armoured areas of the ship but luckily no casualties are suffered a second chaff cloud explodes above her and again jarrett's phalanx opens fire on it but this time is manually shut off by an alert sailor the events shown here are the only attempts by the iraqi military to directly attack coalition warships in the gulf the more continuous threat was posed by iraqi naval mines an obstacle that would have made an amphibious assault on the kuwaiti coast perilous no such assault was attempted in the end but general norman schwarzkopf would later say he had every intention of conducting amphibious operations if they became necessary and that he was glad that saddam feared such a possibility enough to concentrate his forces inside kuwait allowing for the ease of the ground forces left hook north and east to cut them off when the ground campaign commences [Music] you

Channel: The Operations Room

Views: 1,170,529

Rating: 4.9121132 out of 5

Keywords: Time-Lapse, History, Documentary, aircraft, time lapse, animated, war, desert storm, operation desert storm, gulf war, iraq, kuwait, us navy, saddam hussein, iraqi navy, royal navy, bubiyan, exocet, mighty jingles, uss missouri

Id: DDfDnZ7FiZg

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 21 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/zappor]

Great episode, with a nice surprise from a young radio operator!

[u/MostHolyHighGround]

ayo jingles is in this

[u/Th3Eagle85]

The topic, sponsor and participation from Jingles is a bit award atm. But it's a great vid as always from the operation room.

[u/lookslikematlock]

Here’s footage from a command room of this incident. praise the YouTube algorithm