Location
Sassan Platform · Sirri Island
Mosquito Fleet · Mission 6 · Sassan Platform · Sirri Island
ORDRE OPÉRATIONNEL · 18.04.1988 · IRGCN PLATEFORME SASSAN Crewman K. Karami. Boghammar-class fast attack craft. Hull number 3. Defend Sassan platform against American attack. Surface group designated USS WAINWRIGHT, USS SIMPSON, USS BAGLEY. Air group designated A-6E INTRUDER, two pairs. Buy the platform's evacuation chopper sixty seconds. — Cmdr. R. Hashemi
Cockpit and net traffic recorded during the operation, timestamped from mission start.
Operation Praying Mantis, fought on 18 April 1988, was the largest US Navy surface engagement since the Second World War. It was retaliation for the mining of USS Samuel B. Roberts days earlier, itself part of the wider Tanker War — the 1984–1988 phase of the Iran–Iraq War in which both belligerents attacked merchant shipping in the Gulf, and the US reflagged and escorted Kuwaiti tankers under Operation Earnest Will.
In a single day American forces destroyed the Sassan and Sirri oil platforms, sank the Iranian missile boat Joshan and the frigate Sahand, and crippled the frigate Sabalan. The engagement effectively ended Iran's ability to contest the Gulf's surface at sea and hastened the war's close that summer. It also entrenched a lesson both navies still carry: in these waters, a stand-up fight between Iranian surface ships and US carrier air power ends one way — which is precisely why the IRGC Navy invested instead in mines, small boats and anti-ship missiles.
A scene from the campaign's narrative, shown after a successful run. Mild spoilers.
The boy is nine. He is in the kitchen of a small house in Bandar Khomeini. His mother has been sitting at the table since eleven o'clock without moving.
The neighbor woman comes in without knocking. She has brought a pot of stew and her eyes are red. She is going to be the one to say it because his mother cannot.
"Yusef-jan," the neighbor says. "Your father saved a helicopter today. He saved twenty-three men. You will hear about him on the radio later. They are going to read his name on Tehran radio at six o'clock."
The boy nods. He understands what is being said and he understands what is not being said.
"Where is he?" the boy says, although he knows.
The neighbor woman starts to cry.
His mother stands up at the table for the first time in two hours. She walks past both of them and out the back door, into the yard, where the lemon tree is. She stays out there until the sun goes down.
The boy puts his school bag on the chair where his father sat in the mornings.
He does not cry tonight. He cries the next day, and the day after that, and most days for the next two years. But not tonight.