The U.S. Navy's Savage 8-Hour War Against Iran

all right joining me for this episode is my longtime good friend Brad peniston the deputy editor of Defense one Brad and I both worked at military.com in the early days but not at the same time Brad was one of the original writing team at military.com those were the days when the Pentagon press Corps or the Pentagon paos had no idea what to do with the organization that didn't have a print arm yeah I think we were actually the first to get a press pass for an all digital organization they they really didn't quite believe that somebody didn't print on paper was a was a legit news organization and we also share the same stable the book over your left shoulder we'll talk about today no higher honor which is about the Mind hitting the Samuel B Roberts and the other Associated story so I asked Brad to join us for this this episode to go deep on what happened before and after and in Gray detail what happened during operation praying mantis so let's set the scene Brad my viewers have heard about the United States's relationship with Iran primarily through the prism of the F-14 sale to Iran I've done two episodes about the Iranian f-14s so let's just review the bidding real quick the chavaran as President Nixon for airplanes to keep up with the Iraq threat and the Soviet threat actually um and so Nixon basically said whatever you want they did a fly off at Andrews Air Force Base between the tomcat and the eagle the Shah liked the Tomcat so he wound up getting 79 of the 80 that they ordered uh in the middle of that delivery the Shah was deposed by the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution began they took a number of Americans hostage and held them for 444 days at the embassy in Tehran and the other thing that happened at that time is Iraq invaded Iran one facet of that war that we don't pay enough attention to is the tanker War so let's talk about operation Earnest will as you mentioned Iraq invaded Iran Iran retaliated within a couple years uh the fighting had ground down to trench warfare basically a stalemate although there was also a rather horrific War of the cities where each side lobbed missiles at each other's uh civilian neighborhoods um but around 1982 Iraq uh hit on a new stratagem which was to go after Iran's economic jugular the uh the the tankers that carried Iranian oil and petroleum products you know out of the gulf and and to The Wider World um there was also some suspicion that uh Saddam Hussein had an even more Machiavelli intake on this which was that he wanted Western help to end this war that he had started and he thought that by disrupting the world's oil supplies he could get uh the United States and other people involved to to bring it to a halt um that didn't work out quite the way he he thought it did but the tanker War ensued so year after year 82 83 84 85 Iraq and then Iran began attacking ships in the Gulf ostensibly the ships that were helping out you know their enemy but you know in practice uh anybody who's a who's an available Target so around about 1987 Kuwait got sick of this and they went to the amount of diplomatic effort along two axes the first was to Washington and they said hey I know that the US Navy isn't really keen on protecting third-party ships but what if we take some of our tankers and we re-flag them under U.S flag and uh Washington kind of said so at the same time other kuwaitis went to Moscow and basically said the same thing and Moscow said yeah we can throw a couple ships your way at which point Washington said yeah did we say no we meant yes [Laughter] so uh this was the beginning of as you said operation Earnest will it was a convoy operation uh it started in mid-1987 and it involved um something like six-fold the number of U.S warships operating in the Persian Gulf region they did some crazy stuff with this re-flagging they would actually like paint new names on the stern and and that sort of give them new home ports and we had one ship in particular that that hit a mine and uh fortunately the same Naval architect design that keeps oil from spilling out uh save this ship but but that was sort of a a heads up or a warning to the United States of this threat and in turn we went to the Iranians and said you know if you do this again we're going to take military action so let's fast forward to 14th of April 1988. there was at that time a frigate by the name of Samuel B Roberts that had joined the Ernest will operation and the Roberts was you know it was an Oliver Hazard uh fairy class frigate but it was unlike most of the other frigates that had come before in that its crew was really really well trained uh it was led by a guy named Paul Wren Commander Paul Wren and Rin was an interesting guy he had been in the riverine Navy in in Southeastern Asia he had come up through the surface Warfare ranks and this was his first command and the Samuel B Roberts was uh was a brand new ship and uh so Rin gathered his plank owners together and he said look this is not going to be some random ship in the Navy this is going to be the best ship in the Navy we are going to be the New York Yankees nobody is going to be better than us and he said this starts with uh the idea that every sailor who serves aboard the Roberts I want them to think that there was nothing better that they could have done with their lives for those you know two three four years than serve aboard this frigate uh and he said another thing too which is kind of unusual um he really believed in the power of Heritage to uh to motivate a crow and so he said all right so what's our ship's name it's Samuel B Roberts well who was that he was a Navy coxswain who during the Battle of Guadalcanal uh sacrificed himself to save the marines coming off the beach he steered his his whale boat back and forth the Long Beach where Marines were were fleeing from from the Japanese and uh uh and and distracted them long enough to to get them off the beach he did not survive the encounter he was given the Navy cross and and soon enough the Navy named ship after him and not just any ship this was the Samuel B Roberts de 413 which was a hero of the battle off Samar where a bunch of small boys essentially faced off a Japanese battleship Force so you know coming then on to the 1980s ship the Roberts and Rin said look we've got big shoes to fill but we're going to fill them you know serve with pride where the Samuel B Roberts they deployed to the Persian Gulf again their very first deployment and they arrived in February 1988. so you said let's bring it up to 14 April 88 well this was this was when the Roberts was coming back from escorting uh a Tankard had dropped it off at Kuwait and it was coming back West East back to the mouth of the gulf when the lookout on the folksville said I see something and the OD said okay I'll stop and they got out the big eyes and they looked and there were a trio of floating mines in front of them the thing about floating Minds is if you do it right you can't see them because these were mines to a a design actually made in 1908 for the Russians RS Navy and it consisted of a weight on the bottom a length of chain and the the round you know classic picture of a mine that you would see in any cartoon sphere with with little horns on it and what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to make that length of chain just sufficient to not break the surface so whoever laid these mines hadn't done quite a good enough job of it uh they should have been hidden they weren't but they only saw three of them probably they were more so Ood calls up Captain Rin Rin runs up to the bridge he says okay this is what we're gonna do we're going to back out you know we got in here we're going to see if we can back out the Wake but a frigate is not really meant to back straight it's like throwing a paper airplane backwards you know just not not built to do it and so um they start up the uh the apus the little electric powered uh you know sort of the cells on the side of the thing and they start backing up and they get maybe 15 minutes everybody thinks maybe they're going to get out of there uh the skipper by the way has brought everybody up from the lowest level of the ship just as a precaution and then bam a huge explosion they've hit a mine it turns a truck size hole a midships it breaks the the ship's Keel puts a big hole in the engine room that feels immediately knocks the power offline another huge space is filled and and they got you know more flooding besides so they're on fire they're flooding uh they're in the middle of a Minefield you know with with hostels all around them uh it's just a bad bad situation so we have some sound of Commander Wren on the ship's intercom The 1mc Briefing the crew on the status after they kind of get the damage control situation under control and you can hear uh how he exudes leadership to your point this guy's uh you know one of those great leaders that the Navy is blessed by sometimes so let's take a listen to that that uh that audio [Applause] Progressive flooding has been controlled and we are riding the ship again keep your heads up we're doing a good job help is on the way there are two ships less than 70 miles from us right now coming at Max Speed however we've got to fight this problem ourselves we don't know what the size of the my field is and I'm not really excited about having two ships come in and have the same thing happen to them has happened to us so we're gonna have to hang in there like said it'll be a lot of skies and fight this thing on our own we're doing fine now keep charging keep your heads up anybody who feels fatigued or feels down make sure you report it to your on scene leader so we can take care of you okay the last thing is it's getting dark we need to maintain visibility clear the decks of any debris that might cause somebody to slip or fall again clean up the uh the missile hazards and make sure we have a safe platform here to continue our damage control fight that is all so you can see that they'd already gotten they've gotten things more or less you know under control through about five hours they managed to stamp out the fires you know get everything shored up get the flooding equalized uh eventually they're taken undertow and they're towed into Dubai they're put up on blocks and and they kind of wait to hear what the Navy wants to do with them in the meantime uh the national command Authority starts rigging for Revenge now at the time the Commander in charge of Naval forces in the Persian Gulf was uh Admiral Tony Les who I know you ward you know you you know less you served under him yes I was his aide when he was Airline I've talked about him several times on the channel remind the viewers he was seal the Blue Angels when they transitioned from f4s to a4s and they became an official Squadron and not just a demonstration team he was CEO of the Ranger and then he was air lant when he was a three star that's back when both coasts West and East were both three star hours now the air boss is the West Coast guy in AirLand is a two star so he was nav sent and and what that means specifically is in those days the way the Navy was organized Fleet structure there was no fifth Fleet there was only nav sent Middle Eastern command and he was subordinate to seventh fleet now seventh fleet stops at about what India I think and they're focused on China where fifth Fleet is focused on the Persian Gulf and the north Arabian Sea and Suez and that sort of stuff so the Navy was reorganized later but in these days admiralest two star was the guy in charge in the area there so National command Authority comes back and says all right and start planning and so less puts together a couple of options but it becomes clear that you know what what is desired is a proportional response so you know with the the minimal could be well maybe we'll hit a couple of the oil platforms that the Revolutionary guards the Iranian paramilitaries use for command and control but that had been tried you know a couple months before um an operation called Nimble Archer and you know it it's maybe served a term purpose but but not sufficient it was deemed also they they didn't want a plan to go attacking the Iranian Iranian Navy at its home base they didn't want to cross into Iranian airspace Iranian Waters they wanted to keep it out in international waters and so they settled in a plan uh that would involve taking out two platforms and hunting one exactly one Iranian warship so just to go back a little bit and the impetus the final straw if if you will of this plan was making good on the it's not quite a threat let's call it a promise that if they found more mines if we found more minds and we could trace their lineage to Iran then we were going to take military action so when Sammy B was pulling into Dubai an EOD team went out and recovered some of those mines and the serial numbers matched Iranian equipment so that was the final straw for this planning from National command Authority as you said so here we go operation praying mantis the basic construct are three surface action groups sags bravo charlie and Delta I don't know what happened to Alpha and there was a battle group foxtrot and that was the USS Enterprise another thing to point out at the outset in these days the Enterprise was in the northern part of the north Arabian Sea kind of in the it's starting to neck down a little bit towards the Strait of our moves but not in the Gulf proper that's right so talk to us about the construct of these sags and their primary and secondary objectives uh as you mentioned you got uh service Action Group Bravo which consisted of uh two destroyers and an ampib you had the uh the Destroyer Lind McCormick you had the Destroyer Merrell and you had the amphibious transport doc Trenton and so they were ordered to go after two of the oil platforms that were being used by the Iranian paramilitaries there was also a service Action Group Charlie which was the Wainwright a cruiser the Simpson which was a frigate um same class as the Roberts and Bagley frigid of an older class so you got these two groups the SAG Charlie was also assigned an oil platform and so the whole thing kicked off about 8 A.M with the uh the launch of the Roberts Hilo actually the the helicopter had been transferred from the Roberts when went into Dubai and it was operating from from one of the the sags in the gulf and it lifted off uh and and seg uh Bravo approached the sasan oil platform and um you know the the skipper had his his Farsi language radio Communicator get on the horn and called over to the platform and said look you know in five minutes I'm an open fire at that point they saw two sea going tugs that they used to Ferry Crews back and forth from Mainland Iran to these oil platforms come aboard and they don't know how many people got on them but they they went away so the skipper uh the guy in charge of sag Bravo gave him another 20 minutes beyond the five minutes they unloaded with their five inch guns but they had them sent to air burst uh not to to actually Target the platform so when those Air Bursts went off obviously somebody was left behind a Gunner and he opened up with a zsu 23 which is a Soviet AAA weapon but obviously can be used against anything really it's a very high powered AAA Gun the rounds fell well short of the ships but they're like okay game on and they unloaded with and these are the the two small boys unloaded with their five inch 54s and basically just started taking out that gun emplacement and immediately the Iranians came up that same common frequency and said okay ceasefire we want to get that last guy off so this ocean-going tug came back got that last guy off and uh they they sailed away now they really start pounding the oil platform for 40 minutes and at the same time the Trenton launches a flight of two or three ah1 cobras and we have some FLIR footage of the cobras firing tow missiles any tank weapon at what they believe to be the barracks compound sort of the you know the the square buildings on top of the platform and as they're doing that you can also see if you look closely at that flare footage that the five inch rounds are still hitting so they're basically taking it to uh this this platform after that's done the Trenton sends a couple of h-46s with with a ground element to the platform they repel down to the platform and they set a whole bunch of explosive charges to detonate some hours later when those charges detonate that platform is is basically destroyed so in the meantime sag Charlie is heading several miles away to take out the Siri platform uh same deal they pull up the skipper radios a warning you got five minutes before I intend to open fire evacuation takes place uh and then something unexpected happens like Marines landed on the Sasson platform seals were supposed to land on Siri and so they were you know psyched to repel and put charges down and blow that thing up another flight of cobras was doing just like they'd done on the previous platform sort of trying to clear the way with 20 millimeter fire and Tow missiles but as they approached another zsu was directing fire in a way that they were afraid they were going to get hit so they kind of beamed the platform and and and exited the the area for the time being and at that point seg Charlie really unloaded with their five-inch guns and there must have been other Munitions on the platform because the secondaries just basically did the Seal's job for them they made the call that okay seals do not need to go aboard the platform it's destroyed which the seals were not very happy with apparently so that's that's what sag Charlie did meanwhile back to Sag Bravo because now they're going for their secondary Target and they had a a a contact that they thought at first was Iranian but they did the judicious thing and and identified them they get this radar contact and they launch a helicopter to go get eyes on whatever it is and turned out to be a Russian warship and so they managed to raise them on the radio and they said Russian warship Russian warship uh essentially what are you doing and the the Russian guy says I'm just here to take some photos you know for history okay well you know we're shooting things so you know stay clear please I think overall as we said the tone was set that we're going to do kinetic stuff but this is a proportional response right and so it wasn't a free-for-all had it been you can imagine had we launched a standard missile or Harpoon at a Russian warship uh that would have escalated to put it mildly in a Way Beyond commander's intent so smart move to sit on your hands send your h60 out there I guess it was the Roberts 860 to go check it out he's like hey this is a Russian and then talk to him and they're like like you said you know hey we're just here to take the pictures for history right yeah so meanwhile meanwhile right sag Charlie is continuing North after essentially destroying the Sarah the Siri oil platform and it gets uh uh a ping on its radar um and so this one turns out to be an Iranian warship it turns out to be the joshen um a sort of a small missile boat I mean it was it was small but it was it was highly armed it had you know at least one and possibly more us-made Harpoon missiles the the surfaced air surface to surface missile that had been sold to the shop before the Iranian Revolution it was another example of high-tech U.S Weaponry that uh that the US found itself you know facing off against so uh the halege ocean they they say essentially you know uh Josh and joshen you know you're approach sailing into danger wave off and here's the thing because they had been authorized to sync exactly one Iranian warship they declined to immediately Engage The joshen it was not the biggest it was not the best ship that the Iranians had they actually had two Sam class frigates much more capable than the joshan that's what Tony less and and the rest of the naval forces really wanted to get they hadn't spotted it so far today and we're talking midday now we're talking maybe around noon uh and so they were going to pass on the joshun um and and see if the the frigates the Sam frigates would come out to play but they kind of pushed their luck the joshun pushed their luck so as you said they're talking back and forth the CEO of seg Charlie is like okay say your intentions and the the Iranian CEO comes up and says somewhat cryptically I intend to carry out my mission so it's like what does that mean is it what's your mission what and so that seems a little bit uh like a hostile intent kind of messaging and then that guy goes Nordo further that ship locks up the Wainwright which is one of the ships the small Boys in Sag Charlie and so now it's like okay um you know we've kind of met hostile intent here further the joseon fires a harpoon missile at Wainwright so okay Harpoon Airborne both Simpson and Wainwright fire a total of five standard missiles at this joseon as the Harpoon is coming at them simultaneously they release chaff clouds again this is a testament to good training four of the five standard missiles hit the joshen and the Harpoon gets sucked off on the chaff so it does no damage so uh good work there by sag Charlie another member of sag Charlie the Bagley fired a harpoon but it landed short it didn't hit so all the standard missiles hit the Harpoon did not hit and so that's not the best day for the Harpoon I guess no no Harpoon was kind of a dated Weapon by this time we believe the Iranians of the number of harpoons they had was like maybe six and they the one they shot was maybe the only one that would have gotten off the rail at the same time now the problem is getting more and more complicated uh E2 picks up some f4s coming out of Boucher an air base in Iran and sag Charlie is having none of it uh you know attempts to warn them off the f4s approach and so uh uh wainwright's uh fires a pair of standard missiles and uh at least damages one of the f4s chases them off they go they return to base um as far as I know they both made it down one of them was definitely damaged air threat neutral realized repelled they finish off the joshun with some more five-inch gunfire now meanwhile back on the Southeastern extreme end of the Persian Gulf the Iranian Navy has put to see and the first things that the Air Group sees as they're monitoring is these bog hammers hauling ass Westward right and bog hammers are Scandinavian boats again the part of the uh the things that the West sold Shah era Iran you know good for what they are you know small and fast and and you know they pack a punch and they had sortied and I should note actually that these were not Iranian Navy these were again the Revolutionary guards the paramilitaries who are out there and they start causing Havoc they attack um a U.S jack up oil barge they attack uh the Willy tie the U.S flag support ship and so um you know so the uh the word is given to to take them out and so it's a sag Bravo vectors U.S aircraft over two a6s in a in a 14. CAG 11 is the airwing a board Enterprise this is VA 95 the flight lead is a guy I served with later at the time he's a lieutenant commander I served with him he was the deputy KAG when I was KAG Ops aboard George Washington Jim angler a fantastic human being just a great guy Jim Engler is the flight lead uh basically rolls in on these bog hammers but he gets his tasking literally from the highest levels because the bogh Hammers these small boats weren't part of the overall plan uh you know the the pilots the aviators call into you know their command who calls into their command who calls into lass who sends it up the national up to the National command Authority it gets all the way to the Oval Office and President Reagan says yeah go get him and so back down the chain of command and so it's weapons free on these bog hammers Jim Engler and his wingman and their BNS remember A6 which we talked about in detail with the Paco episode uh very recently so if you haven't seen that one check it out there's a lot of Basics about the A6 Intruder but they roll in each one takes a separate bog Hammer drop Rock eye so let's talk about rock eye real quick Rock eye I think the nomenclature is CBU 20. basically it's a a casing that as you pickle it it comes open and all of these omelets come pouring out it's in any Personnel weapon and the pattern if you drop them at the proper altitude is about the size of a football field the Tomcat actually could drop Rock eye and I've dropped some uh in training at Vieques back when we had the range there off of Puerto Rico and it really does you look down when it goes off it looks like it the shape of a football field a rectangle so they dropped some rock eye Jim Anglers missed the bogh hammer he was going after his wingman had a direct hit on the other bog Hammer so one bog Hammer neutralized the other you know was was hauling ass back home at best speed so that those two a6s now were gas critical so they climbed back up hit the tanker and await further tasking so the the plot will thicken we're not done with Jim angler at this point let me just correct something I I said earlier uh Ward I had said that it was the it was an American jackup barge it was actually panamanium and this is important because this is another reason why they had to go all the way up the chain of command this was the first time that the U.S Navy had intervened to stop an attack on a third party uh asset in the Gulf so it was it was not an American that was being attacked in this case and so in order to get permission to do it they went all the way up to the White House and back and as we mentioned sag Bravo was headed for another oil platform Rakesh and roulette said okay let's call it off he was not comfortable with the escalation it was starting to get a bit nutty right f4s we got bog hammers we got uh you know these the neutral shipping is getting hit by these sort of Berserkers that are Manning these bog hammers going with really indiscriminately just whatever they came across they were blasting away and uh and so all of these elements were kind of beyond what the planners had thought was going to happen like we said they we thought it would be sort of something we could do surgically hit a Sam class frigate their price ship and then call it proportional and then say okay that's it but it's getting a little bit crazy so Admiral less is trying to de-escalate it so he says okay don't hit Rakesh now take a course Southeast and let's look for these Sam class frigates meanwhile the E2 and and some of the other early warning indications pick up another Sam coming out of the port there in Iran that's right bander Abbas this was finally at last the Sam class forgets a hand uh there were two of them in the Iranian Navy and this one finally poked its nose out of court about 3 P.M local time so uh it comes out as you say it got picked up uh and and it's heading out into the Gulf and you know this is a good time maybe to mention that one of the things that made praying mantis uh a real um a milestone in in Naval Warfare is that it was the first time that the Navy had really tried out its networks you know it was the first big uh operation where you had what we you know what we've come to think of is as digital networks it was obviously a lot simpler and you know a lot more primitive back in those days but you had actually data links going on uh and this was the first time that they'd really tried it out so uh the the Sahan pokes its nose into the Persian Gulf it heads South it was picked up by Delta and Delta phones into uh to Admiral less and said okay well you know here's here's that frigate we were talking about we already sank one chip can we go after the frigate let's radio it back to tag Delta and he says the hand is in your vicinity take him the a7s that have been sitting on the flight deck in an alert status are champing at the bit and so as less gives that order KAG launches those alert a7s with the express intent of supporting sag Delta with whatever they need now meanwhile these a6s are up overhead on what we would call strike cap Jim angler and also the deputy CAG Captain Bud Langston so he's up there and he's actually the closest guy to this uh Sam class frigate and he does like a Midway you know dauntless profile pushes through the scattered Cloud layer and drops down to 50 feet so he's headed for and you know his his Bombardier Navigator is is giving him the the steering cues and everything so they're doing what the A6 does best which is coming low in fact they're so low that that Sam class frigate is trying to shoot him with their their guns and can't train them low enough so the rounds are going over the A6 as decag Langston flies overhead and as they're headed outbound still very low this Sam class frigate not to be confused with a Sam fires two Sams sa2s and they they miss because he's dumping out chaff so at this point they've met the Rules of Engagement for a hostile Act so decag Langston is now going to climb back up and get ready to drop some ordinance he's now uh fulfilled the requirement he has visually id'd the ship and he's been met by hostile action the ship fired at him and so he he Wings up he attacks the ship fires a harpoon at it and while that harpoon's in the air he gets a query from uh uh from I guess the Enterprise who wants to know what his intentions are and he's well I've I you know my intention is to sink the ship I've already fired a harpoon at it I'm just waiting for it to hit and so he that does hit and he follows up with some 500 Pounders one of those hits the bridge he sees it you know take the bridge out so he figures okay that ship is is neutralized to put it mildly so decag Langston rtbs back to Enterprise meanwhile another Sam class frigate is detected that's right and this this one is the sabalan and the sabalan had a particular reputation in the Gulf its Captain was known for wellness atrocities on the high seas some Iranians would allow you to get off your tanker before they sank it the captain of the sabalon was not known for for such niceties his nickname on the radio was Captain nasty so Captain nasty is out in the gulf and it follows the a6s to go after him the A6 in in that we're talking about is is the two ship that's led by Lieutenant Commander Jim Engler who's who's now you know off the tanker and he's just waiting for uh further tasking bro he winds up rolling in on sabalan staring down the fire coming at him drops Rock eye 500 Pounders successfully neutralizes that second Sam class frigate reportedly the uh the 500 pounder went straight down the stack and detonated in the engine room for his actions with that attack uh Jim Engler was awarded later the the distinguished flying cross now meanwhile the first Sam class frigate the Sahan which is basically a Hulk at this point is being engaged by another small boy the USS Joseph Strauss launches another Harpoon which hits and then these a7s who are super frustrated now because they said on the deck for the first part of this and then their tasking was basically stolen by decag they were supposed to hit sabalon and and so they're like we're not going to land with this ordinance so they kind of did a sync x uh on Sahan and dropped a bunch of 500 Pounders and so that that ship was basically riddled uh by the entire strike package in various forms and sag by the time it was all over yep if it wasn't going down before they they managed to get the ordinance on it it certainly was going down afterwards and it did in fact go to the bottom of the Persian Gulf and so the US Navy had its its major combatant as far as you know the Iranian Navy had major combatants it had sunk that um and so the the sabalan meanwhile slightly to the north was on fire it was dead in the water and uh Admiral crowl chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called it off said okay that's it you know we've shed enough blood today time to go home so that's finex for up operation praying mantis I think the box score roughly is U.S lost one Cobra so that's two air crewmen killed and I don't know how many Iranian Sailors were killed but basically we put half their Navy out of commissioner at the bottom of the Persian Gulf yep roughly speaking so the epilogue uh is sort of three-fold right so there are a couple of things yeah three things that came out of operation praying mantis uh it was first of all uh groundbreaking in several ways from a a tactical point of view I mentioned uh the use of the networks that has become the American way of War it was also the first U.S missile duel between ships uh and I think the second in the world I think there was uh the Israelis had gotten into one some years earlier but it was certainly the first time that the U.S had exchanged missiles with another Naval with other Naval assets um it uh it showed once again how a relatively unsophisticated uh force can inflict grave damage on a more sophisticated Force I'm talking about the Roberts a 1908 mine that probably cost a thousand bucks had put this you know 100 million dollar ship out of commission uh you know this is a lesson that you know we learn and we learn every time there's a fight it's a lesson that the Russians are learning uh in Ukraine it's a lesson that you know our forces learned in Iraq and Afghanistan you know you don't have you can't make a force That's So Sophisticated that it can't be hurt by by relatively unsophisticated enemy so that's the Tactical side uh strategically um or or geopolitically it very shortly brought to an end the iran-iraq war this thing had ground on for almost eight years it was by some counts the third deadliest war of the 20th century it had been just horrific trench warfare indiscriminate uh killing of civilians by missiles and cities uh and about a month after the U.S had this one day war against the Iranian Navy the Iran Iran essentially threw in a towel it said you know we you know just can't do this you know if other people are going to get involved then then no Moss uh so there was a ceasefire and then an accepting of the Un brokered Peace and the war came to an end you pointed out rightly that the asymmetric threat is something we got to think about when we talk about fifth generation this and Next Generation that you can't ignore Antiquated World War One minds and what they could do as you're doing all the Gucci zumwalts and and the other things that we're into the first question should be what happens if it hits a World War One air of mine right what's the answer so that's a lesson but on the good side these sags performed exactly as intended this is your U.S Navy on The Cutting Edge expeditionary Warfare at its finest that compelled these two Nations to stop fighting for one thing but the tanker war ended so that was the desired outcome and it did work so you've got to say you know Bravo to the National command Authority and the U.S Navy for how they executed here yeah it was a very very complex operation albeit one that was over in less than a day but it certainly showed uh how uh advanced concepts of operations are meant to be put into action and this is also pre-jointness so there aren't any heavy tankers there's no J fact in Riyadh this was the Navy as your sort of atom you know the elements and operating as a battle group and strike groups are supposed to operate and this was very much a Cold War era and Beyond kind of construct we would train as a singular unit and then in the later part of my career anyway again post Desert Storm uh you know Goldwater nickels and what were the other or you know laws that made jointness a thing uh you would never do this kind of exercise this kind of operation uh by yourself one service would not you would have had strike Eagles coming out of uh you know Gutter and uh b2s out of Whiteman I mean you know it would have been an all hands on deck every service wants their piece the action so this was maybe the last sort of great Navy War at sea uh kind of opportunity and then you turn the page a few years later and now we're doing Desert Storm which the Navy had a huge part at one time we had seven carriers in the area but they were working for the Joint Task Force uh you know and and that that the idea of the Admiral aboard the carrier is now in charge of anything uh was greatly diminished yeah very much on the custom of an era between one era and another between you know as you said last time the Navy really could could do a one day war by itself so Brad thank you for bringing your expertise to bear and we look forward to having you on again very soon great Ward thank you all right that'll do it for this episode if you're not already a subscriber click the button and ring the bell so you don't miss anything if you'd like to help support the Channel please click the super thanks the heart icon below or become a patron at patreon.com Carol and in the meantime I look forward to talking to you again very soon [Music]

Channel: Ward Carroll

Views: 896,589

Keywords: Ward Carroll, F-14 Tomcat, U.S. Navy, Iran, Iranian Navy, Operation Praying Mantis, Tanker War, USS Samuel B. Roberts, DCS World, Top Gun, aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise

Id: iH0qIQkmDWI

Length: 42min 27sec (2547 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 02 2023