Kidd (DDG 993) - Naval Cruise Book

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y AVY ARMAD FIRED 1,065 SHELLS Iranians on tower got 20 minutes' warning to leave COMPILED FROM WIRE REPORTS WASHINGTON -- As soon as President Reagan chose the target. Saturday night. the Navy assembled a small but powerful armada and prepared to train its weapons on an armed Iranian oil platform in the Persian Gulf. Monday, four destroyers pounded the twin-towered platform with 1,065 rounds of 5-inch shells. Officials said Reagan selected the plat- form, sitting in international waters, from a list of targets presented to him hy the Penta- gon. The platform - equipped with radars, 25mm anti-aircraft guns and 50-caliber ma- chine guns -- was not on the front page of the list, officials said. but Reagan chose it to send Iran a message. Apparently to emphasize that Iranian weapons -- and not Iranians -- were marked for retribution, the US. force warned people seen on the derrick 20 minutes before the at- tack to get away. The Navy broadcast on distress frequen- cies. hailing the rig by name: Rashadat. Rashadat, this is the US. Navy. We will com- -lti mence firing on your position at 1400 hours t2 p.m. in the areal. You have 20 minutes to evacuate the platform. Pentagon officials said three Navy destroyers - the HOEL, LEFTWICH and the YOUNG - were moved Sunday to join the destroyer Kidd in firing posi- tion, about 6 miles away from the rig. Officials said the four American des- troyers were together by 2 a.m. EDT Mon- day to the southeast of the platform, about 90 miles northeast of the Qatar coast on the western shore of the gulf. The four ships then moved toward Rashadat and arrived at the rig about a half hour before the 85-minute bombardment began at 7 a.m. EDT. The KIDD, LEFTWICH and YOUNG, equipped with the Navy's new- est 5-inch guns, blasted up to 20 rounds per minute per ship as six sailors in each ves- sel's loading room restocked the 22-ton guns' ammunition drums. The HOEL, equipped with an older 5- inch model weighing 64 tons, also had I3- man crews reloading 141-pound rounds into the ammo drums, defense officials said. It was like the scene in Bonnie and

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1 G 2 Rosbodor 2 Oil Plorform burns os rnoom 51 pounds owoy 3 C: A Before ond Afrer, 5 The cle-onup A Cfvde when Faye Dunaway gets it, one Navy officer said unofficially, detailing the use of more than 1,000 of the 51,154 shells. Ifwe could have done the job with 10, we'd have used IO, another Navy official said. We needed 1,000, so we used 1,000. One tower was destroyed, about 90 percent of the other fell to the pounding. The platforms two towers were all that were left from a November 1986 Iraqi bomber attack. The center tower was de- stroyed in that bombing, leaving two tow- ers side by side. After lVlonday's bombardment, the Navy mopped up, sending out search-and rescue helicopters to see if any Iranians on the platforms had survived. None were found, although Pentagon officials said it was believed not all of the estimated 20 to S10 men on the towers had heeded the Navy's warning. 5 Officials said some Iranians might have stayed on the platforms and there might have been casualties. The four destroyers were accompanied by the missile cruiser STANLEY and the frigate THACH, which provided protec- tion from Iranian aircraft, officials said. Only one Iranian F-4 Phantom fighter, purchased from the United States by the shah of Iran in the 1970s, was seen taking off from an airfield near the coast., the offi- cials said. But it flew away from the action, they said. ln a separate action, the Navy boarded a similar platform at the northern edge of the same oil field, 5 miles to the north of the attack, after Iranian personnel aban- doned it during the bombardment. The Americans destroyed the radar and com- munications gear on this platform. JT