A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy (5 page)

Guided missile cruiser USS
Wainwright
, also known as “The Lonely Bull,” one of the Navy's participants in Operation Praying Mantis.
U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive

Richard Molck and Robert Reynolds had come to Philadelphia on a sad mission. Both men had served in the Navy in the guided-missile cruiser
Wainwright
in the late 1980s. It had been a good time, when they had belonged to a special club where lifelong friendships were made and where boys became men. Today, 11 September 2001, they had come to bid farewell to their ship.

Wainwright
's nickname had been “The Lonely Bull,” and on this day she looked particularly lonely. Her days of service were over and she was slated to be committed to the deep as a target ship. Molck and Reynolds had come to the shipyard in Philadelphia to salvage a few artifacts from the doomed cruiser so that some part of her might live on. They had removed a number of items and had gone to get a truck to transport them. As they drove the truck back through the streets of the old shipyard, bumping their way over railroad tracks under a bright blue sky, bulletins began coming in over the radio, saying that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center's north tower. Not sure what was happening, but sensing that it was momentous and foreboding, Molck felt a sense of comfort when they arrived at the pier and saw the American flag flying from
Wainwright
's fantail, just as it had in those days when he had been a young fire controlman second class in her 4th Division.

The Pentagon after being struck by a hijacked civilian airliner on 11 September 2001. All on board the aircraft and 125 people in the Pentagon were killed.
U.S. Navy (Cedric H. Rudisill)

Not knowing what else to do, and on a mission for which there might not be a second chance, the two men went back aboard their old ship. They climbed down into the after steering compartment to continue their salvaging. They had not been there long when they heard that a second plane had hit the other tower of the World Trade Center, and when they heard that the Pentagon had been hit as well, they knew the nation was, once again, at war.

As they continued to work, Molck heard approaching footsteps on the deck above; the sound reminded him of that April day in 1988 when he had heard the pounding of feet along the steel passageways as the Sailors in
Wainwright
's crew rushed to their battle stations.

In the dimly lit missile plot room, Petty Officer Richard Molck listened intently as reports of the approaching Iranian fast attack craft
Joshan
continued to flow in. Four times, the Americans had warned the Iranians to turn back. But
Joshan
continued to close on
Wainwright
and the other ships of
SAG Charlie.
Joshan
was a 154-foot, 2,334-ton vessel whose name translated to “boiling oil.” No stranger to combat, she was a veteran of earlier battles in the Iran-Iraq War, having once used her deadly Harpoon missiles to destroy two
Osa
patrol craft during an assault on the Iraqi ports of Al Faw and Umm Qasr.

When the Iranian vessel was within thirteen miles, Captain J. F. Chandler,
Wainwright
's commanding officer and commander of SAG Charlie, took the ship's bridge-to-bridge radio in hand and said: “This is United States warship
Wainwright.
I order you to stop your engines and abandon ship. I intend to sink you.”

Recounting this engagement in
Great American Naval Battles,
Michael Palmer wrote that “the scene was reminiscent of an earlier action” by a U.S. naval commander when, “in February 1800 Captain Thomas Truxtun, commanding the frigate
Constellation,
intercepted the French frigate
la Vengeance
[and using] a speaking trumpet, demanded that the French frigate ‘surrender to the United States of America.'” The more heavily armed
la Vengeance
ignored the demand and was then soundly defeated in battle by
Constellation.
Like the Frenchman in 1800, the Iranian in 1988 also ignored the American demand. Just who was to be soundly defeated on this day remained to be seen.

Peering into the glowing cathode-ray tube of his radar repeater in
Wainwright
's CIC, Operations Specialist Third Class Steven Twitchel stared at the glowing pip that represented the approaching Iranian vessel. With every sweep of radar the contact grew brighter. Suddenly, his keenly trained eyes detected video separation, and he knew what that meant. His natural impulse was to stare in shocked dismay at what he was seeing, but discipline and training took precedence, and he immediately reported a missile inbound.
Joshan
had fired a Harpoon at
Wainwright.

Chief Gunner's Mate Douglas Brewer had been serving in “The Lonely Bull” since October 1986 and was
Wainwright
's leading weapons chief. His actual battle station was gun repair, but his duties during general quarters required him to move about to the various weapons stations. When
Joshan
attacked, Chief Brewer was out on deck, just aft of the forward 25-mm chain gun that had been added to
Wainwright
's armament to protect against small-craft attack. From his vantage point he could see some of the chaff launchers and was glad to see them firing soon after he heard the report of a missile inbound. With luck, these decoys might lure the missile away from
Wainwright
so they might all live to see another day.

On the bridge, Chief Warrant Officer Jon Fischman knew that chaff had to be employed carefully because if it were haphazardly placed, it could cause the missile to acquire one of the other ships in the SAG. As
Wainwright
's
officer of the deck, Fischman also knew that Captain Chandler's other options were limited. The Vulcan Phalanx close-in weapon system had locked on to the missile, but with the Harpoon coming “down the throat” as it was, the ship would probably be seriously damaged if the Phalanx caused it to detonate by engaging it. There was little they could do but hope that the missile missed.

Up in CIC, Operations Specialist Second Class Tom Ross, who had been serving in
Wainwright
since 1985, heard the captain tell all to brace themselves and felt his heart thumping in his chest. He remembered that an earlier Iranian propaganda broadcast had warned that the Americans would “never leave the Persian Gulf alive.”

Out on deck, Doug Brewer actually saw the Harpoon as it roared in toward his ship. He fervently hoped the Harpoon's acquisition radar would prefer the fluttering chaff “tinfoil” to the ship beneath his feet.

From the starboard bridge wing, Jon Fischman watched as the missile grew larger at a very rapid rate. At less than one hundred feet, he could see the lettering on its side, and he realized that he would not be seeing those letters if the missile were coming straight at him.

Inside CIC, Tom Ross felt the bulkheads rattle as the Harpoon roared down the ship's starboard side, close aboard. It was a moment he was not likely ever to forget.

Brewer was most relieved when he saw the missile plunge into the sea astern of the ship, hitting just fifty to seventy-five yards from
Wainwright.
As Palmer later wrote, “In a literal sense,
Wainwright
had ‘dodged a bullet.'”

With the roar of the missile still echoing in CIC, rapid but disciplined orders and reports filled the air: “Whiskey, this is Alfa Whiskey. Red and free!”

“Fire SWC!”

“Birds affirm.”

“Birds away on hostile track 1077.”

Again, the bulkheads rattled as several surface-to-surface missiles left
Wainwright
's rails in retaliation. The other ships in SAG Charlie—frigates
Simpson
and
Bagley
—opened fire as well.

Ross heard the air tracker's radio crackle with a report from a helicopter that the first missile had reached
Joshan
and “blew the top right off.” The Americans were shooting better that day than were the Iranians. Several more missiles found their marks and
Joshan
was, in Ross's words, “turned into metal composite and sank.”

Wainwright
's trial by fire was not yet over, however. A number of Iranian aircraft had sortied from bases on the southern Iranian coast, and one of
them was headed straight for the American cruiser. Like
Joshan,
this aircraft ignored all warnings. Again, missiles ran out on
Wainwright
's rails, and again she opened fire. One of the missiles damaged the Iranian fighter, which quickly turned heel and ran back to the safety of its base in Bandar Abbas. This was the first time in history that an American warship had simultaneously engaged both surface and air targets with missiles.

The action continued on into the day, with other SAGs and U.S. aircraft engaging designated targets, repelling Iranian attacks, and retaliating with devastating effect. When the sun finally set on the Persian Gulf, half of Iran's operational navy had been destroyed.

When the battle had subsided and
Wainwright
was steaming out of the area, Chief Warrant Officer Fischman decided that, under the circumstances, it would be all right to break one of the rules; he announced that the smoking lamp was lighted on the bridge. He and the other smokers immediately began to light up, and he noted that several of the nonsmokers were joining in too. Just as eight cigarette lighters fired up, Captain Chandler emerged from CIC and, looking at his officer of the deck, asked what was going on. Fischman replied, “Well, Captain, since you've been filling my pilothouse with smoke from the missile rails, I figured the smoking lamp was lit.” Chandler smiled at Fischman and countered: “First of all, this is not
your
pilothouse, it's mine. I just let you play out here for a few hours. And second, the lamp goes out unless someone can run me out a cigar.” One quickly appeared from somewhere in CIC.

From his ringside seat in CIC, Tom Ross had seen his ship and his shipmates in action, and he later summed up the action well when he said it was “the best feeling I ever had in my life . . . and the job that everyone in combat did that day was an awesome testament of just how bad ass our ship was under that kind of pressure. I would go to war any day with those guys anytime!” He also added proudly, “If you mess with the Bull, you'll get the horns.”

Memories of that day had momentarily distracted Richard Molck from the unfolding drama at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the footsteps he had heard earlier turned out to be those of a Sailor coming to tell him that he and Reynolds would have to leave the ship. In light of the terrorist attacks, the shipyard was being closed down for security reasons and all “civilians” would have to depart the area.

Before they departed, Molck took one more look around. Standing there in the dark cavern of the after steering compartment, inside the steel skin of the once potent warship, he suddenly felt reassured. He sensed that, despite the devastating news of passenger airliners serving as the guided missiles of
a fanatical enemy against the American homeland, the nation would survive these attacks just as
Wainwright
had survived those attacks in 1988, when he and his shipmates had gone to war with the Iranian navy in the confines of the Persian Gulf. Then and now, the nation's honor had been challenged and, now as well as then, it would be the enemies of the United States who ultimately would pay the price. Bull's horns or eagle's talons, it didn't matter: Americans don't run from a fight.

The sinking of the
Joshan
had been just one part of a larger sea battle that took place on that day in April 1988—the first U.S. Navy surface battle since World War II—at a time when U.S. forces rarely were permitted to engage in combat operations. It had come about for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the matter of honor.

In recent times, combat in the Middle East has become an all too frequent occurrence for American Sailors. But during the many years of the Cold War, the United States was legitimately concerned about the terrible destruction that would come about if the use of force led to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Because both superpowers had vested interests in many parts of the world, including the Middle East, American statesmen and military commanders had been very reluctant to risk combat operations in any of those hot spots for fear they might have disastrous consequences. Many U.S. Sailors spent an entire career making arduous deployments under the constant threat of all-out war, yet never hearing a shot fired in anger.

But in 1988, economic considerations centering largely on oil and a growing realization that the United States could no longer afford to remain politically disengaged in the Middle East brought about a new level of involvement there. When, during the Iran-Iraq War, the Iranians began attacking oil tankers and other vessels in the Persian Gulf as a means of putting economic pressure on their enemies, the United States made the bold decision to place many of these vessels under U.S. protection.