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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 ofa 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.
Praying Mantis
    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