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Operation Praying Mantis April 18th 1988 Jets flying from aircraft carrier Enterprise (CVN-65) sink Iranian frigate Sahand (F-74) in retaliation for the mining of Samuel B Roberts (FFG-58) four days earlier.
Operation Praying Mantis April 18th 1988 Jets flying from aircraft carrier Enterprise (CVN-65) sink Iranian frigate Sahand (F-74) in retaliation for the mining of Samuel B Roberts (FFG-58) four days earlier.

No Higher Honor: The Road to Operation Praying Mantis, 18 April 1988
"Mr. Secretary, I think we've shed enough blood today," said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William Crowe to Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci. With that, the primary target of Operation Praying Mantis, the Iranian frigate Sabalan, dead in the water with a laser-guided bomb down her stack and U.S. Navy planes ready for the kill, was given a stay of execution. Sabalan's skipper, the infamous "Captain Nasty" (named for his habit of firing into the crews' compartments of neutral merchant ships and tankers, and leaving the high-casualty scene of attack with his trademark radio call, "Have a nice day") also lived to go on to be a vice admiral. Nevertheless, the cost to the Iranians of the one-day operation was very high: over 60 dead and 100 wounded. Sabalan's sister, Sahand, was on the bottom, the largest warship sunk by the U.S. Navy since World War II, smothered by a rain of air- and ship-launched Harpoon missiles, laser-guided air-launched Skipper missiles, and a variety of other air-delivered ordnance. The Iranian missile boat Joshan was also on the bottom, having fired the last operational U.S.-supplied Harpoon missile in the Iranian inventory at the cruiser USS Wainwright (CG-28)—and narrowly missing—crippled by a shower of Standard missiles fired in surface-to-surface mode and then sunk with guns. Three Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps speedboats were also sunk and others damaged. An Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom fighter, hit by an extended range Standard missile from Wainwright, barely made it back to Bandar Abbas, Iran. Two Iranian oil platforms in the Arabian Gulf, used for intelligence collection and staging points for Iranian reconnaissance and attacks against neutral shipping, were also heavily damaged by U.S. naval gunfire and demolition charges emplaced by U.S. Marines off USS Trenton (LPD-14). U.S. forces were unscathed, except for a Marine AH-1 Sea Cobra helicopter that crashed into the ocean after nightfall while pursuing Iranian speedboats, killing its two-man crew. Operation Praying Mantis, the largest U.S. Navy surface action since World War II, did succeed in modifying Iranian behavior, and represented the culmination of several years of undeclared war between the U.S. and Iranian navies (both of them, regular and Revolutionary Guard). Although there continued to be tense encounters, the Iranians refrained from laying additional minefields in the Arabian Gulf.

Taken on: August 13, 2020
Tags: Everybody's photos tagged with IraIranian IraIranian Everybody's photos tagged with frigate frigate Everybody's photos tagged with Sahand Sahand more » Everybody's photos tagged with (F-74) (F-74) « less
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Operation Praying Mantis April 18th 1988 Jets flying from aircraft carrier Enterprise (CVN-65) sink Iranian frigate Sahand (F-74) in retaliation for the mining of Samuel B Roberts (FFG-58) four days earlier.

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