No Higher Honor (40 page)

Dave Walker, the gas turbine chief, became a chief warrant officer and an instructor at Surface Warfare Officers' School before retiring from the service. After U.S. forces overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, Walker found work in Iraq, first teaching army soldiers about riverine warfare and then running gas-turbine-powered power-generation plants.

Others left the navy after their hitches were up. Several dozen settled in and near Maine—Joe Baker and Mike Tilley among them—and commemorated 14 April with an annual Mine Blast party.

Many carried the psychological effects of the mining for years, including insomnia and sensitivity to loud noises. Lester Chaffin, who deployed a second time to the Persian Gulf aboard another frigate, began experiencing anxiety attacks as his ship approached the Gulf. His skipper sent him back home from Bahrain. The electrician moved to West Virginia and became an independent repair contractor.

Many former
Roberts
sailors spoke of their time aboard the ship as the best of their service. John Preston, who left the navy and rose to chief petty officer in the U.S. Coast Guard, called his
Roberts
shipmates “the
greatest crew I ever sailed with.” Engineman Alan Sepelyak said it turned a boy into a man.

But some are still rankled by what they say was an unfair distribution of medals after the mining. More than a decade later, Rinn still regretted that he didn't get decorations for more of the crew—especially those who sustained injuries—and he worked for several years to correct that. “Absolutely my fault,” he later said. “Probably twenty-five to thirty guys more should have gotten Purple Hearts.” He said that others had no doubt deserved medals as well, but that no one had come forward in the wake of the mining to bear witness to them. “I thought once about asking for a Navy Achievement Medal for everyone, but when was that ever done? Never. The
Indianapolis?
At Leyte Gulf? No.”

After Rinn turned over command of his frigate in summer 1988, he was appointed the navy's head of ship survivability. It was a post he accepted with some irony. “Up until I hit the mine in the
Samuel B. Roberts
, I'd probably shot as many missiles as anybody else in the navy . . . I wasn't the damage control guy; I just stressed it on the ship. I'd say I was a big-time warfighter. Now, ship blows up, guy saves ship, all of a sudden you're the guru, and you can't escape it.” He was promoted to captain, selected early for major command, tapped as the assistant to the navy's surface warfare chief, and sent back to sea in 1994 in one of the surface navy's most prominent jobs: captain of an Aegis guided missile cruiser, the USS
Leyte Gulf
(CG 55). His second command tour brought a successful deployment to the Persian Gulf and the prestigious John Paul Jones Leadership Award from the U.S. Navy League. He followed that with an assignment as special assistant to two chiefs of naval operations.

A vanishingly small proportion of captains are selected to become admirals: 1 or 2 percent a year. But when Rinn's name went to the flag selection board, he was optimistic. He had a strong record, and he figured it would be hard for the navy to say “no” to a captain who'd saved his ship and gotten on the nation's front pages for it.

The first time Rinn came up for promotion to admiral, the flag officers' board rejected him. The board met in secret, per navy custom, and destroyed its notes afterward. There is no official record of the reason for his rejection. Rinn waited a year, was passed over by a second board,
and retired, disappointed, in 1997. “I'll always feel bad that it didn't happen, because I think I could have made a difference,” he said.

But he was proud of his naval service and his two commands at sea, and time along with a senior executive position with a respected consulting firm near Washington, DC—eased the sting. In 2003 he spoke to a packed hall of midshipmen as part of a prestigious lecture series at the U.S. Naval Academy. Moreover, Rinn kept the ear of top navy leaders, who came to him from time to time for his opinion. “If I were a flag officer, I wouldn't be living where I'm living, I wouldn't be as well off, my family wouldn't have seen me, I'd probably look older,” he said in 2005. “Life is funny. Be careful what you ask for; you may get it.”
¹³

FIVE U.S. WARSHIPS
have been lost through hostile action since World War II—all in the Korean War, all to naval mines. Since then, none has come closer to sinking than the
Roberts
did in 1988.

In the years since the mining, the
Roberts
burnished its reputation as an outstanding ship. It won six awards in a row for crew reenlistments and was a perennial contender for its squadron's Battle E. The frigate served well in Operations Desert Shield and Storm. It set records for Caribbean Sea drug seizures. Two of its commanding officers went on to become admirals.

In September 2005 the
Roberts
was transferred to the Navy Reserve, where it was slated to carry on much as it had for a decade, performing counterdrug operations and participating in international naval exercises. Its retirement was foreseen, but not for many years. Decommissioning was planned for 2018.

FOR THE U.S. NAVY
, the story of the third USS
Samuel B. Roberts
became a touchstone tale of courage and competence under fire. Nearly two decades after the mining, sailors still learned about Ford and Fridley at boot camp. Midshipmen debated Rinn's decisions at the U.S. Naval Academy. Officers studied the ship's damage control effort at department-head school in Newport. For a crew of brave sailors, there is no higher honor.

T
his unofficial list of the men aboard the USS
Samuel B. Roberts
(FFG 58) on 14 April 1988 is based in large part upon the official muster of 23 March 1988, as provided by the Naval Personnel Command, with revisions to names and rates where credible sources provided reason.

OFFICERS

CDR Paul X. Rinn

LCDR John R. Eckelberry

LCDR Glenn P. Palmer

LT Robert L. Firehammer

LT Bradley G. Gutcher

LT David A. Llewellyn

LT Gordan E. Van Hook

LTJG Robert Chambers

LTJG John D. Sims

LTJG Michael L. Valliere

ENS Steven Giannone

ENS Michael Infranco

ENS Robert H. Miessau Jr.

ENS Robert B. Sobnosky

ENS Kenneth J. Rassler

ENLISTED

BMCS George E. Frost

BM1 Richard L. Fridley

BM1 Warren F. Whitman

BM2 William B. Buttery

BM2 Darrel Hyche

BM2 Kim T. Sandle

BM3 Eric W. Cross

BM3 Joel Echevarria

BM3 Doug Medland

BM3 Jim Owens

BM3 Patrick Sawyer

BM3 Eduardo Segovia

SN Bobby F. Gibson

DC1 Ward Davis

DK2 B. Robinson

DKSN Rufus Siler

DSC James Norman

DS3 David Matthews

EMC Robert C. Bent

EM1 Lester Chaffin

EM1 James Seward

EM1 James E. Whitley

EM2 Edwin B. Copeland

EM2 John Kolynitis

EMFA Jeffrey Oster

ENC George A. Cowan

EN1 Charles Kunesh

EN1 Joseph Reineke

EN1 Ronald Starks

EN1 Mark T. Dejno

EN3 Robert Bunn

EN3 William Dodson

EN3 Darryl A. Heath

EN3 Jeffrey Kelley

ENFN Dean Simmons

ENFN Mike Tilley

FN Joe Baker

FN Robert King

FN Marvin Moore

FN Alan Sepelyak

ET1 James Aston

ET1 Alden Weiss

ET2 Lawrence Deem

ET2 James Muehlberg

ET2 Shawn Scully

ET3 Joseph LaJudice

ET3 Benjamin J. Ledo

ET3 William McCarty

EW2 Fernando Cruz

EW2 Ronald Easton

EW3 Dave Laycock

EWSN David Robinson

FA Anthony Dizillo

FA Bobby Isaacs

FCC Mark Guay

FCC Alan G. Jochem

FCC Dale A. Lynch

FC1 Dana W. Loney

FC1 Matt Shannon

FC2 Richard Craig

FC2 John Preston

FC2 Randall Winchester

FC3 David Jacobs

FC3 Jack T. Paprocki

SN Robby Ramkumar

FN Chris Seward

FR James A. Ford

FR P. Hernandez

FR L. Williams

GMCS Thomas Reinert

GMG2 J. McClintock

GMG2 Derek Whidden

GMG3 Robert Lewis

GMG3 Edward Rivera

GMG3 Javier Velez

GMM1 Lawrence F. Lorusso

GMM2 Robert Clark

GMM3 Randy Lee Thomas

GSEC Alex Perez

GSE1 Michael C. Wallingford

GSE2 David Claus

GSE2 Malcolm Grazier

GSE2 Thomas Wagner

GSE2 Larry A. Welch

GSE3 Craig Poulos

GSMC David J. Walker

GSM2 Valen Hemmer

GSM2 Thomas Holcomb

GSM2 Randy A. Tatum

GSM3 David J. Burbine

GSM3 Michael Raines

GSMFA Michael Horta

GSMFN Wayne J. Smith

HM1 James E. Lambert

HN Kenneth Jones

HT1 Gary W. Gawor

HT2 Ted Johnson

HT2 Timothy Regan

HT3 Lonny Louwers

HTFN Christopher Pond

IC1 Donald Shankweiler

IC2 Michael Flynn

IC2 Robert Nares

MA1 Stanley Bauman

MSC Kevin Ford

MS1 Anton Doctor

MS1 Joseph Fortin

MR2 William Aiken

MS2 Steven Fout

MS2 Scott W. Frank

MS2 Scot Joseph

MSSA Luciano DeFeo

MSSA Vernon Gowler

MSSA Angelo Ortiz

MSSN R. Puricelli

OSC Keith Voorhees

OS1 Scott Beals

OS1 Kenneth Dalton

OS1 Mark A. Rajotte

OS1 Carlos Salinas

OS1 Thomas Mowry

OS2 David Jackson

OS2 Kevin Keeler

OS2 Stephen Kimball

OS2 Richard Raymond

OS2 John Smetak

OS3 Tom Gavin

OS3 Craig McGivney

OS3 Jeffrey McKee

OS3 David Mikos

OS3 Gregory Tanner

OSSA Navin Helms

OSSN Andrew Flood

PC2 Hermann Timm

PN1 Eric Blair

PNSN Charles Morin

QMCS Robert L. Grafing

QM2 Randall W. Graves

QM2 Daniel J. Nicholson

QM3 Mike O'Connor

RMC John Williams

RM1 Daniel Clancy

RM2 Gary Jackson

RM2 Michael McCarey

RM2 John Douglas Thomas

RM3 Jeff Krick

RM3 Ronald Paradis

RMSA David Shade Dietert

RMSA Richard A. Bailey

RMSA John L. Paul

SA Willam Caton

SA Lamont Fields

SA David E. Lee

SA Sean More

SA Raymond Rogers

SA Alexis Young

SH1 Roger Abardo

SH2 Stephen Dawson

SH2 Willard Schmitt

SH3 Edgardo A. Baybayan

SK1 James Thompson

SK2 Ronald Kelley

SK2 John Ruppert

SK3 William Stephens

SM1 Charles R. Dumas

SM1 Serge E. Kingery

SM2 Mike Roberts

SMSN Billy Moore

SN Jose Burgos

SN Christensen

SN Charles Gatewood

SN Richard Klemme

SN Norbert Rios

SN Nelson Riviera

SN Julia Walker

SR David Fountain

SR M. Franchitti

SR James A. Frey

SR Rod Hernandez

SR James Horn

SR S. McKeon

SR Brian Perkins

SR Schlotzhauer

SR D. Stutzke

SR Salvad Zamont

STGC John D. Carr

STG1 John Bailey

STG1 Joseph D. Boyd

STG1 Daniel Whaley

STG2 George Liggins

STG2 George Tarley

STG3 Arthur DiRocco Jr.

STG3 Kenneth Lenox

STG3 David Pieratt

STGSN Ularislao Cordova III

STGSN Thomas Wolf

TM1 Alan L. Van Reese

TMSN Steven David

YN1 Paul D. Hass

YN3 B. Landgraff

YN3 Don Walton

HSL-44 DETACHMENT 5

LCDR Tim Matthews

LCDR Dan Smith

LT Steve Blaisdell

LT John Funk

LT Craig Miller

AD2 Gurule

AE1 Sim Samuels

AE3 Mark Filley

AE3 Robert Schill

AMH1 Blunt

AMH2 Crandall

AT2 Russell

AW2 Wesley Deti

AW2 Gerry Robertson

AW3 Robert Schill

AXC Jim Lee

AX2 Billy Ross

AZ2 Sanders

CHAPTER 1

  
1
.
  
PH1 Chuck Mussi, “To See the Dawn,”
All Hands
, August 1988.

CHAPTER 2

  
1
.
  
At Marist, Paul Rinn displayed a rough-and-tumble attitude in a student newspaper article about intramural basketball: “One should not really try to classify the type of defenses used by the various teams, for more often than not, they appear to border on the hand-to-hand-combat-type zone. However, the important thing to remember is that the larger the bumps and sprains are now, the better the memories will be later.” (Rinn, “Hoops for Goofs,”
The Circle
, 16 December 1965.)

  
2
.
  
The
Sarsfield
tour also gave Rinn his first taste of international crisis. In 1971, the destroyer was sent to the north Indian Ocean. The Pakistani military was battling Bengali separatists, while India, beset by refugees, was preparing to send its own troops to settle the situation. “We didn't have standoff weapons on that ship,” Rinn said. “If someone threw a cruise missile at us or if there were a gun battle, there was no doubt in my mind that we were going to get hit.”

  
3
.
  
Interview, Paul Rinn with author, 30 November 2004.

  
4
.
  
Rinn, as quoted in
Hudson Valley
magazine, December 1990.