Terror in the gulf

By CPL Damian Shovell

LS Ben Sime entered the water to rescue American sailors who had been injured in the terrorist attack on two oil terminals.

Photo: CPL Damian Shovell

SMNCSO Jordan Bell on watch in HMAS Stuart on operations in The Gulf. An oil rig burns of natural gas on the port horizon.

LEUT Mark Sirois remains vigilant as Stuart patrols The Gulf. Stuart went to surface warning red when two oil terminals came under attack.

AB McCallum onboard HMAS Stuart.

Ready to close up at Action Stations at a moment’s notice, Stuart keeps constant watch on her surroundings in the still-dangerous waters of The Gulf.

All photos this page, unless otherwise stated, by LCPL Neil Ruskin.

When dawn heralded Anzac Day on April 25, perhaps no Australians could poignantly contemplate the sacrifices of war more clearly than HMAS Stuart’s ship’s company stationed in the Middle East.

Stuart’s exhausted sailors found themselves recovering from an intense period of action in which they and three other Coalition vessels under Stuart’s control disrupted a coordinated terrorist attack against the two oil terminals, Kwahr Al Amaya (KAAOT) and Al Basra (ABOT), in the North Arabian Gulf (NAG).

This attack saw three American sailors from the patrol boat USS Firebolt killed and four seriously wounded. Having arrived on station in the NAG on April 14, Stuart’s captain, CMDR Phil Spedding, was the Maritime Security Operations commander and had tactical control of Coalition vessels at the time.

“One was USS Yorktown, a cruiser, and she was to the southwest of the ABOT terminal in the ‘fullback’ position.

I had a patrol boat, the US Coastguard Cutter Wrangell in position to catch vessels coming out of the Kwarh Abd Allah waterway and board them,” CMDR Spedding said.

The other vessel in the NAG at the time was Firebolt, which had just returned unexpectedly from a cancelled escort duty and was now employed as the KAAOT guard ship.

Had Firebolt not returned, Stuart was scheduled to patrol KAAOT on the fateful evening of April 24. “At about 1900, on April 24, we were patrolling just to the north of the security zone around ABOT, USS Firebolt was patrolling around KAAOT and she detected one of numerous dhows that had entered the security zone that day,” CMDR Spedding said.

“She sent her RHIB with a plastic laminated chart to show the master where the security zone is, and that they needed to leave.

As the RHIB drew alongside the dhow detonated.” Stuart was 4.1 nautical miles to the south of Firebolt at that time and few onboard, except those on the GDP or bridge, heard or saw the explosion.

“Initially we thought little of it.

I was called to the operations room where I was told of a report of an explosion and I went to the bridge and saw it was close to Firebolt’s position,” said CMDR Spedding.

“Then we received a message from Firebolt that the fishing dhow had exploded with their RHIB alongside.

The RHIB had capsized and six [later confirmed as seven] people were in the water.

At that stage we still didn’t know it was a terrorist attack.” Stuart immediately began closing at best speed to lend assistance to Firebolt and prepared to launch the port sea boat with a medic.

Concurrently, Stuart’s Seahawk helicopter, call-sign Hamish, was 50 minutes into a routine surveillance flight six nautical miles to the south-east of Firebolt. LCDR Rick Allen, the flight commander onboard, said the crew did not observe the initial blast as Hamish was heading 160 degrees true at the time.

“We were two or three miles away from Stuart when we got a call that there had been an explosion about six miles away [from Seahawk Hamish’s position] and once we were dispatched towards it we instantly saw a cloud of black smoke,” LCDR Allen said.

With only minutes remaining before sunset, Hamish could see strobe lights and distress flares onboard Firebolt and on arrival at the incident site could see the overturned RHIB and the crew of the USS Firebolt throwing lifelines to sailors into the water. With casualties in the water, Stuart directed Hamish to commence rescue efforts.

Leading Seaman Ben Sime, the sensor operator onboard Hamish, said he could see numerous people, life rings, strobes going off and debris and oil in the water as he prepared the rescue winch and the cabin to receive the injured.

“The first guy that we came to, I could see a gouge in his head, there was a lot of blood. Unfortunately we couldn’t get him into the strop because of his injuries,” he said.

“There was a group of people near the overturned RHIB so we attempted to drag him toward that and to assist him from going under. We tried three times.

On the third time he let go and went under the water and didn’t come up.”

With only a crew of three, and no one to go down the wire to assist the injured into the strop, the crew made a decision for LS Sime to enter the water. Dressed in his flight suit, helmet and life jacket, LS Sime conducted a diverdrop from about 10 feet and Hamish moved to a position to monitor him.

“I inflated my lifejacket and had a pistol grip underneath the casualty’s chin to keep his head out of the water,” he said. Moments after LS Sime entered the water, the first of two attacks was launched against ABOT.

This was a large explosion and could be heard and felt onboard Stuart and clearly identified the dhow explosion as part of a coordinated terrorist attack.

The second attack six minutes later was again felt by the Stuart. Darkness had now set in and the crew of Stuart’s RHIB relied on the light provided by Firebolt’s searchlights to load LS Sime and the injured seaman onboard before taking them to Firebolt’s transom, where Sime and one of Firebolt’s divers began CPR on the casualty who stopped breathing.

“There were three or four other casualties on their quarter deck [of Firebolt] with broken arms and legs and shrapnel wounds and you could hear them screaming out,” LS Sime said.

Onboard Stuart, CMDR Spedding had brought the ship to action stations and raised the surface warning to Red at the instant of the first attack on ABOT.

Reporting from ABOT was still at this point confused, and as the ABOT workers had evacuated shortly after the incident, it was some time later before MT Ness, a tanker alongside ABOT, gave a clear report that two small boats known as “cigarette boats”, (common in the area trading food and cigarettes with fishing vessels), had launched separate attacks against ABOT.

The Iraqi security detachments on ABOT took the boats under fire using small arms as they approached and they both detonated before reaching their target.

From the moment Stuart’s RHIB prepared to depart, Stuart’s MO, LCDR Jody Bailey and the Ship’s Medical Emergency Team (SMET) prepared for casualties, and at 2007, Stuart’s RHIB returned with the first three. LCDR Bailey described the condition of the casualties.

“Two of the first three patients were seriously injured and they were managed in the wardroom by the SMET team.

One of the guys was later declared deceased,” LCDR Bailey said. After reconfiguring its crew, Hamish conducted a medivac stretcher-lift from Firebolt’s forecastle, and on return to Stuart the Medical Officer directed that one of the casualties be medivaced to the 405th Armed Forces Hospital (Kuwaiti Military Hospital) where he later died.

Stuart continued to receive casualties as the night progressed and Stuart’s RHIB returned to Firebolt to ferry the dead and wounded before receiving the final body at about 2200.

Seaman Jordan Bell, one of Stuart’s SMETs, was a communications operator on Boarding Team Green on the morning of the 24th and had boarded about 10 dhows before meeting with USS Firebolt’s RHIB for a short break.

He found himself later trying to save the lives of some of the other US seamen he had met that morning. “I found the human aspect really hard.

The casualty [he assisted in the wardroom], seemed like a good bloke and I probably would have been mates with him if it was in different circumstances,” SMN Bell said.

“On the third time he let go and went under the water and didn’t come up.” “The casualty... seemed like a good bloke and I probably would have been mates with him if it was in different circumstances.”

“There were three or four other casualties on their quarter deck with broken arms and legs and shrapnel wounds and you could hear them screaming out.”

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