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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.
    The Iranians responded by sowing mines in the Persian Gulf, and on 14 April 1988 USS Samuel B. Roberts struck one of those mines and nearly sank. The explosion ripped a seven-hundred-square-foot hole in the frigate, injured ten of her crew, and nearly broke her in two. Only an extraordinary damage control effort by the crew saved her.
    It could be argued that responding militarily to this attack on a U.S. Navy ship would accomplish little in either a political or a strategic sense. It also could be argued (and was) that responding by force of arms would berisky in light of the world situation. But there was no question that the nation’s honor had been injured, and not to respond ran other risks, not the least of which was a virtual invitation for future attacks on U.S. warships and installations. Within a very short time, President Ronald Reagan ordered the U.S. Middle East commander to take appropriate retaliatory action.
    Just four days after Roberts had been hit, three SAGs, consisting of three ships each and supported by a carrier battle group in the nearby Arabian Sea, headed into battle in an operation code-named Praying Mantis. Two of the SAGs, designated Bravo and Charlie, first destroyed two Iranian offshore oil platforms in the Persian Gulf that the Iranians had been using as outposts in support of their attacks on merchant ships. When the Iranian navy counterattacked, the Joshan was not the only vessel dispatched to the bottom. As part of SAG Delta, the frigate Jack Williams directed a group of A-6 Intruders from the carrier battle group onto a group of attacking vessels, including five high-speed, Swedish-built Boghammars. Loaded with Rockeye cluster bombs, the attack aircraft sank one of the Boghammars, causing the others to retreat into port.
    As the day wore on, two Iranian frigates— Sahand and Sabalan —joined the battle. After Sahand fired on U.S. aircraft, they and the destroyer USS Joseph Strauss retaliated with a barrage that included three Harpoons, four Skipper infrared homing rockets, and several laser-guided bombs. A number of the weapons struck home, and Sahand was left a flaming wreck that later sank. Sabalan too had fired on U.S. aircraft and paid the price by receiving a 500-pound laser-guided bomb that penetrated her superstructure amidships and left her dead in the water.

    The Iranian frigate Sahand burns in the Persian Gulf after an attack by U.S. Navy aircraft in retaliation for the mining attack on USS Samuel B. Roberts. Naval Historical Center
    In one day of sea combat, American ships and aircraft had soundly thrashed the Iranian navy, and U.S. honor had been upheld by force of arms in a time when cold war was the watchword of the day. Nations rarely go to war for the sake of honor alone. Yet a nation’s credibility is closely tied to its honor, so there comes a time when the use of force becomes a necessity if that nation is to maintain its stature on the world stage. Even the threat of a widened war takes second place to the need to defend the nation’s honor.
Brave Yankee Boys
    Operation Praying Mantis was not the first time that the U.S. Navy had been called upon to defend national honor. And it was not the first time such defense had been undertaken in the face of significant