A Shouted Alarm, A Fiery Blast

By Ed Magnuson

As is often true in the Persian Gulf, the seas were placid, and the sailors standing watch aboard the U.S.S. Stark could see an endless display of stars in the clear evening sky. The sleek vessel, 445 ft. long and 45 ft. at the beam, slipped quietly through the water at a mere four knots. Under the subdued lights of the combat information center inside the warship's superstructure, sonar operators watched their blue-green screens and listened with headphones for the pinging sounds that would indicate the presence of underwater mines.

For the 221 officers and enlisted men on the Stark, the duty seemed almost too routine. They had been patrolling the gulf for nearly two months, spending much of their time on "Condition Three" alert: midway in a range of five conditions, it meant that a third of the crew was on duty at all times, working four-hour shifts before taking eight hours off. The ship's varied defensive systems were all manned and presumed to be operational.

Captain Glenn Brindel, 43, commander of the Stark since January 1985, knew that the gulf's serenity was often illusory. With mines concealed below, jet fighters screaming above and antiship missiles lurking onshore, sudden violence was an ever present danger. More than 200 vessels had been attacked in the gulf during the past three years. Earlier on this day, Iraqi jets had delivered missiles into a Cypriot tanker, leaving it dead in the water. The increasing threats to shipping in the vital region were precisely why the Stark was there, signaling U.S. determination to keep the oil lifelines open.

At the moment, however, the ship was in a relatively safe area some 80 miles northeast of the island nation of Bahrain and fully 40 miles south of the main war zone. A frigate of the Perry class, the smallest combat vessels in the U.S. Navy, the Stark was steaming alone. The closest ship was 35 miles away. The U.S.S. LaSalle, the flagship for the seven warships operating in the gulf, was in port in Bahrain.

While the frigate dawdled along, its search radar sweeping the skies in a 225-mile radius, other American military eyes were also watching the gulf. Earlier, an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) surveillance plane had taken off from its base in Saudi Arabia, which operated the electronics-laden Boeing 707 jointly with the U.S. On radar, the combined U.S.-Saudi crew detected a single Iraqi Mirage F-1 aircraft as it lifted off from the Shaibah military airport ten miles southwest of Basra at around 8 p.m. Heading southeast along Saudi Arabia's coast as Iraqi planes often do, the Mirage flew much closer to Bahrain than was normal. Suddenly, the fighter jerked into a sharp left turn, heading east. The Iraqi pilot apparently had spotted a target on his scope.

Aboard the Stark, radar operators picked up the jet when it was about 200 miles to the north and tracked its southward course until it was virtually due west, well off the frigate's port bow. At that point, no one on the American ship had particular reason for alarm. As Brindel said later, Iraqi warplanes "commonly come down the gulf and pass within close distances." None of them had ever attacked a U.S. vessel. Even the Iranians, whom the Americans considered a greater threat, often flew their jets within missile range of U.S. warships but would back off after receiving radio warnings.

Now the Mirage, flying at 5,000 ft., headed toward the Stark at 550 m.p.h. Tucked under each wing was a French-made Exocet AM39 air-to-surface missile with a 352-lb. warhead and a range of 40 miles.

At 10:09 p.m. Brindel ordered a radio operator to flash a message: "Unknown aircraft. This is U.S. Navy warship on your 078 ((the Stark's bearing relative to the Mirage)) for twelve miles. Request you identify yourself. Over."

The message was sent in English, the internationally recognized language for such communications, and on a radio frequency that military aircraft are expected to monitor. There was no response. The Iraqi fighter was still closing in on the Stark. The ship sent a more demanding message 36 seconds after the first: "Unknown aircraft. This is U.S. Navy warship on your 076 for eleven miles. Identify yourself and state your intentions. Over."

Again, there was no answer. From that distance, the pilot might have been able to see the Stark's running lights.

Brindel, who was not on the bridge but in the combat information center one deck below, still expected the plane to pull away. The ship's monitors gave no indication that the pilot had locked his targeting radar on the slow-moving frigate, a necessity before launching a missile.

Twenty thousand feet overhead, the AWACS crew had noted the Iraqi jet's search radar sweeping the Stark. But the airborne observers too failed to detect any evidence that the frigate had been targeted. At 10:10 p.m., however, the AWACS crew was startled to see the fighter suddenly bank sharply to the south, then circle tightly and dart northward toward its home base.

Both the AWACS spotters and those on the Stark had missed the most ominous sign of all: just before its twisting turns, the Mirage had released one of its Exocet missiles. Within seconds it launched another. Traveling at more ) than 500 m.p.h., the initial warhead would reach the Stark in one minute.

The radars on the Stark should have detected the missiles after they left the Mirage. But for still unexplained reasons, they apparently did not. Thus no one on the ship was aware of the incoming warheads. The lapse would prove tragic. Despite the frigate's sophisticated gadgetry, the first word that she was under attack came in a most ancient seagoing manner: a lookout spotted the incoming "flying fish" skimming just 15 ft. above the water. Like Captain Ahab sighting Moby Dick, the sailor shouted a warning into his intercom to the bridge.

There was almost no time to react. The first Exocet would hit the Stark within ten seconds. To Brindel, that was not enough time to get the ship's Phalanx antimissile system switched from a manual to an automatic mode and into action.

The missile struck, ripping through the thin steel hull midway between the deck and the waterline. It tore open a 10-ft. by 15-ft. hole on the port side. Spewing unexpended fuel from its short flight, the Exocet smashed into the crew's cramped quarters. Sleeping sailors were jolted out of their bunks. Some were hurled through the ship's open wound and into the sea.

The flames torched upward, igniting the frigate's aluminum framing, and swept into the combat information center. The Stark's electrical systems quit, and the ship was paralyzed. Even if the crew had known that yet another missile was racing toward them, they would have been literally powerless to do anything about it.

"There was an explosion, and I was thrown out of my rack," recalled Petty Officer Michael O'Keefe. "I heard them saying, 'General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations.' I started yelling and pulling people out of their racks. I made it to the exit, but there were flames already there. I told everybody to go to the emergency escape hatch. We got there, and we had water already pouring in." Then came the second explosion. Still, O'Keefe kept pushing some of his mates toward an escape hatch. "I grabbed them by their heads and their pants, just shoving them out. Then I smelled smoke, and I saw the fireball."

The second missile sliced thunderously through the superstructure, spreading more flames. The unexploded warhead from one of the two missiles was found three days later, after the repeated fires had been extinguished and crewmen were able to enter the area. The Stark's fire fighters also found to their horror that many of their mates had been incinerated in their triple- tier bunks or asphyxiated by fumes as smoke and toxic gases flowed through the ship's ventilation system.

With the vessel's normal electronic system disabled, a crewman issued a distress call with a small hand-held radio powered by a battery. It was heard aboard the U.S.S. Waddell, a Navy destroyer, which spread the word that help was needed. Nearby vessels and helicopters from Bahrain responded.

The Stark's situation was critical. "It was a close call," a Pentagon source explained later. "For a while we thought we'd lost her." As the fires raged, the ship's starboard side was deliberately flooded to lift the damaged port side farther above the waterline. Even as Secretary of State George Shultz publicly announced the attack that night, there was no assurance that the Stark would survive. But the crew fought heroically to check the inferno.

One nation's response to the tragedy could have been quicker. When the AWACS crew realized that the Iraqi plane had attacked the Stark, it sent an urgent plea to two Saudi pilots who had earlier scrambled their U.S.-built F- 15s from the Saudi air base at Dhahran. The AWACS asked the Saudis to chase the Mirage and force it to land. The Saudi airmen were eager to comply, but their ground controller did not have authority to permit such an operation. Before he could secure approval, the killer aircraft was safely at home in Iraq.

Three days later a weary Brindel told reporters that the Iraqi Mirage had attacked his ship "without warning." He acknowledged that the assault was probably a mistake, but he expressed his anger at Iraq for sending pilots "to fire on targets without identifying those targets." His rules of engagement had permitted him "to shoot anyone down that shows hostile intent," he said, but his interpretation of that rule was that he should not open fire unless the threatening aircraft actually "is shooting a weapon at you." Brindel insisted that the "entire combat system aboard the U.S.S. Stark was fully operational. There were no deficiencies. We did not realize the missile was fired until it was too late to engage with our systems."

The Navy immediately began an urgent investigation into all circumstances of the tragedy, particularly the reasons for the Stark's failure to spot the missiles that were headed her way. Investigators will undoubtedly interview two U.S. Navy technicians based in Bahrain who said that the Stark's Phalanx system had a computer problem the day before the attack. Berthed in Bahrain at that time, the frigate went back to sea without getting the Phalanx fixed, the technicians claimed, because a key part was unavailable.

The Stark's skipper will be quizzed extensively. "I feel grief and a lot of sorrow for what happened," he said. "I don't know whether any of it was my fault . . . I don't know whether it was an act of God." When a Navy helicopter carried 35 flag-draped caskets (the bodies of two other crewmen are missing) to an honor guard salute in Bahrain before the long journey to the U.S., the ship's captain was consoled by a survivor of one of the victims. Barbara Kiser, wife of Chief Petty Officer Steve Kiser, had traveled to Bahrain with their son John, 5, for a family reunion. Instead, she stood beside Brindel as casket No. 33 was placed aboard a C-141B Starlifter aircraft. "She told me that her husband was not in that casket," the captain explained. "Her husband was with the Lord, and the Lord had reasons for what happened. She lent more support to me than I to her."

On Friday relatives of the Stark's fallen crewmen gathered for a memorial service at the frigate's home base in Mayport, Fla. Once again, Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy were on hand to console the families of Americans who had died in the service of their country. Beirut. Grenada. Gander. Challenger. The U.S.S. Stark had joined the short list of names that evoke a nation's sorrow.

With reporting by David S. Jackson/Bahrain and Bruce van Voorst/Washington