Welcome to mid Rats with sal from Commander Salamander an Eagle one from Eagles Speak at Sea or Shore your home for a discussion of national security issues in all things maritime, and welcome on board. Everybody. We're glad you've taken time to join us, especially if you are with those attention to detail folks who like to join us live. Because for the podcast guys you won't notice,
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will be ready for you at a time of your leisure. And for today's show, we are we're going back again. History, heritage, ethos, institutional culture, all those things. They're more than just books, lectures, static displays, songs, stories and rituals, especially when they evolve an institution like the US Navy, or if you're looking at people themselves, those part of what we do. They tell a story and they help build an institution.
They add to that tapestry and to make it stronger and cold neutral parts. Really the good things, especially if you tell them and you remind yourselves in a regular basis what they are. They really do make the make an institution what they are. And today we're going to look back thirty five years ago the USS Samuel B. Roberts, a Oliver har Perry classic frigate, which are all gone from the service now, but at the time the SAMMYB.
Was just two years after her commissioning and she struck a mind and there's an incredible story there about resilience, about leadership and also about a place and time in our history, and you saw reflections of a great US Navy tradition
involving damage control. Whether you're looking at Commander of Lippold's coal or you're looking at the events of twenty seventeen with the collisions in Westpack with the Fitzgerald and McCain that we've talked about before, there's something that, regardless of what might be coming across the latest newswire involving our Navy, that it is that tradition that we had, we can all be proud of. And that's what we want to do today. Twenty five years ago we had on our guests Bradley
Peniston on and here we are at the thirty five year anniversary. Ten years later, we're going to have them on again because a lot has happened in the ten year, last ten years with the stories, still has more to tell, and so for the full hour, Brad will be joining us. He's the deputy editor of Defense one, and he is the author of what
really is the reference book for the US S Samuel Roberts. In nineteen eighty eight his book No Higher Honor save being the USS Samuel B. Roberts and the Persian Gulf and we just lost Brad on the line, So EGO one, I'm gonna roll it over to you for a second because it looks like I need to call Brad right back. Okay, I'm gonna sing a collection of show songs from Rogers Ammerstein South Pacific. No, I'm not joy all right, I'm here now, Sorry about that. That's okay, Brad.
That's one of the flavors of of live radio. You've missed my entire introduction, I think. But that's okay because you know who and you know the
incident. But we appreciate you taking time today to talk to us and the listeners, the mid rats about the ship and the sailors of the UNS Samuel B. Roberts, and one of the things I touched on in the intro and we actually chatted a little bit about in the pre show was here we are in twenty twenty three, and we look back to the events of nineteen eighty eight, and Samuel B. Roberts that nineteen eighty eight was almost as close within a few months of the armistist of the Korean War that we are
today to when the Samuel B. Roberts struck the mind in the Persian Gulf in nineteen eighty eight, and yet it seems really close to us, and we'll touch on some of those things familiarity. But I thought for the listeners, because I know some of our listeners, we're even born in nineteen eighty eight, where you know, for me, you and especial Sob my co host, nineteen eighty eight really seems like yesterday. I wanted you to take a moment and set the table in place. In time. We had the
frigate Samuel B. Roberts. She was just two years after commissioning and she found herself in the Persian Gulf and a dangerous piece of water. You know what was that snapshot in nineteen eighty eight when the crew woke up that that was the world they were existing in. Right, So the first thing you have to remember is that the Iran Iraq War was going on. And you're making me feel old by saying how long ago it was, But it's so far, it's so far in the past that people may well have forgotten.
But the Iran Iraq War started in nineteen eighty when Iraq invaded Iran and it had been grinding on just horribly. It was one of the most rifkly deadly worst of the twentieth century. And after things ground to a stalemate on land, both sides took to the water and they both uh. They both essentially tried to slash at each other's economic jugulars by thinking the oil tankers that were they were hauling their oil um out the Persian Gulf and then to the greater
world, and so caught in this fray were the Kuwaitis. They were just trying to shift their own oil out and their tankers kept getting harassed, bombed, and even sunk by um by both sides. And so the Kuwaitis entreated Washington. They said, hey, I know you don't you don't convoy with third party ships, but I wonder if we worked something out, And Washington said, m not not so interested. Whereupon Kuwait went to Moscow and and
suddenly suddenly DC had had second thoughts. Okay, let's let's see what we can do here. And the scheme they come up with was an operation called Ernest Will. They reflagged these Kuwaiti tankers. They painted out the names on the backs of the of the supertankers. Al Rica became um US as Bridgeton for example, homeported in Philadelphia and now under US flag, these tankers could legally be escorted by the US Navy. So this is where the Roberts comes
in. It was as you mentioned, I think you mentioned it was. It was just barely two years into commission in nineteen eighty six, and it was dispatched um in no, I'm sorry, it was a commissioned to eighty six. In February eighty eight, it was dispatched to the Persian Gulf to
join this convoy operation Operation Earnest Will. So it duly joined up. It duly escorted tankers from what they like to call the Kmart parking lot just outside the gulf all the way down to Quait, drop them off, let them load up, escort them back, and various groups of ships were there there. There were a couple dozen vessels US US warships doing this convoy duty at
any time. So April fourteenth, nineteen eighty eight, the Roberts is coming back from one of these escort missions and they are more or less in the exact center of the Persian Gulf. When the lookout in the Forecastle about four pm hazy day, he said, I see something. I see something. It looks like mines. So the OD gets out his binoculars, looks out there and says, yep, that's that's what it is. Let's uh, you know, all stop. The skipper happened to be below right at that
moment he was actually discussing. He was talking with his it is his chief mess cook, asking why there was too much spinach recently. But when he felt the ship backing down, obviously he you know, he ran up to the bridge, got his own binocks on it and said, yeah, those are minds. So what are they going to do. Well, there wasn't much training on what a skipper or NOD should do once they found themselves inside
a mine field. But but the skipper, Paul Wrenn, Commander Paul Wrenn, looked back down his wake and saw it pointing six straight to the to the end of the Persian Gulf, and he's like, okay, we got in, let's try to get out. And so he told everybody, okay, set GQ, but please do it quietly, uh you know, no chaos, no no loud noises. As everybody gets your gets your battle stations. And then he put out his APUs a little electric powered you know upboard
motors that that the Peri class had, and he started backing down. Um, now your audience probably knows this as as well as anybody, but uh, these were these were very simple minds that I Rand was laying back then, and essentially they were uh to a nineteen o eight design for the Russian Czarist Navy. That's how old the design was, and it was very simple. You had a weight, you had an anchor that was supposed to rest on the bottom. You had a length of chain, and then you had
a buoyant globe. And the globe was the you know, the cartoony mine that you see anytime anybody draws a picture of a mind. This thing. It's a sphere with little horns on it, and it is buoyant. And so the trick is that you're supposed to lay that chain. So they supposed to measure that chain so that the sphere floats just below the surfaces of the
water, so it's essentially invisible. So the fact that the look that everybody saw three mines on the surface meant that already these mines were not laid by the most competent of mind layers. Yet they were they were out there, and since there were only three of them, there probably were more, and the rest of them were invisible. So Wrin starts backing out. The Robert starts back and down its wake. The problem is that a blunt ended frigate
is not really meant to do that. It's like throwing the paper airplane backwards. You just really can't do it. And so they're back and down. They're back and down. Some people think they hear a scrape. Some people just are there when something boom, biggest exclosion anybody's ever seen, blows a truck size hole in the engine room, breaks the keel d room immediately floods. AMR three immediately flogs might get it. No MR two floods and MR
three starts to flood. And a Perry class frigate is an eleven compartment ship, meaning that it can you know, it's got eleven watersight compartments. It can lose any two of them and stay afloat, lose a third, and it's a lot dicier because here's one more thing, um and then I'll shut off and we can talk about whatever you want to talk about. But the Roberts was one of the tail end. Perry's bath and Ingles have been building
them for years. They built dozens of them apiece and uh, and that meant that they were the late Peris were as solid as any warship you can imagine. But they were also overweight for their design because of course, as a class proceeds, everybody wants to put their new dude ads on it. And I'm not I'm saying that. You know, you don't want new new systems and new sonars and new radars, but all of that adds weight. And the Roberts and the rest of the Peries have been built to a very
minimal standard. They're supposed to be cheap ships that they could produce a lot of. And so the bottom line is they lost two of their eleven compartments. Nobody knew whether they could lose a third and stay afloat. So there they were late afternoon, April fourteenth, nineteen eighty eight. They're on fire, they're flooding. Uh, they're surrounded by hostile forces. I mean, for god, think there were sea snakes surrounding them in the in the Persian
Gulf. It just could not have been grimmer yeah. Yeah, let me command to people your your book No Higher honor Um, which did tell this story. I just I mean, in preparation for the show, I reread it and it's a it's a really good book, and it lays out a lot of the difficulties that confront people in these Christis situations. But more importantly, it really does a pretty good background of how these Peri class frigates came
to be. I mean, I since I was a round her in the zoom walled era and probably no I remember you know that that book Patrol Frigate Design and how that came to be, and and you know you worked through that progression of how these ships came to be what they are and where they're there they're the strong points in their weak points were I think really well.
And I think the other one of the things I wanted to talk to you about was the story of Captain Wren and his decisions about who he wanted to be as DCA and damage control assistant and how that how that came to be one of the keys to the survival of the ship. And I think we couldn't segue from that into lessons learned from the Roberts that the Navy uh either has or has has not forgotten. Yeah. Sure, So Rinn was in some ways a very conventional naval officer. In fact, he he signed up
to be as well because his brother had been one for him. And so, you know, Rins in high school and he's hanging out with his brother and the rest of the you know, the rest of his wardrobe, I presume when they came to New York City, which is where Rin was born and grew up, and he just thought he thought naval officers were just the coolest guys in the world, and so that's what he wanted to do.
And so that's what he did after college and went through uh he went to Merris College and went through UM you know, went through Suppos school, um ocs, and now he's now he's in the navy. UM. One of his first tours was aboard riverine craft uh in UM in Southeastern Asia. They taught him the Navy taught him tie and taught him Cambodian and sent him up the Mekong River to command a squadron of riverine craft and he actually got into
firefights. He actually helped build bases in hostile territory, and he brought that experience back when he reported back to the more conventional surface fleet. So he goes through his various tours de Vaux and department head and he gets picked for command, and he gets picked to command command the Roberts. It's his first command. And he gets there and the first thing he does while the ship is, you know, the hall is coming together in bath bath mate.
He pulls his chiefs together and he says, look, it's all going to start with you guys. You know you're the you know you're the experts here, um, but here I want you to know how I'm going to run my ship. This is not going to be some second place ship. There's no second place in combat, and so we are always going to be the best ship. We're gonna be the best ship there is. I mean, he did not lack for for vision, um, but he said, here's
here's the key, Okay. The key is that everybody aboard this ship must come out of it thinking there was nothing he could have done better with his life for those three years. That we're gonna have pride. We're going to do it right, uh, and we're gonna be recognized as the best ship, and that's how he approached it. And he got, you know, he got a goat locker who was ready to back him up on that. He got officers who were signed in, and and he got a crew who
was ready to rock her up to it as well. So one of the things you alluded to, Salt was the way he chose his damage control assistant. And uh, you know, time was when DCA was a junior officer billet and and for many many places it still is. And the thinking was that you're just you're just running you know, you're running drills here. You know, you don't need anybody who's who's super experienced. You don't need anybody who you know, super super senior. He just needs somebody to make them,
make everybody do their drills and check the boxes. And that's not how Rint approached it. Rinn said, if it comes down to really needing the skills that a DCA imparts, then I don't want to have some junior officer doing that. I want somebody who's got the pull aboard ship to make sure that we drill aboard ship as much as we need. So he gave the job to Eric Sorenson, who was a senior lieutenant on board, and Sorenson had been on other ships and he was he thought that he was in line
for maybe cso maybe combat Systems officer or you know, possibly chick. But he he was not happy to get the DCA assignment. But Rin told him, look, Eric, you know, I've met you, I've worked with you. I know what you are. You're a bull, and you won't stop at anything to get what you know, gets your your mission done. And you're gonna be DCA and you're gonna do it, and you're gonna and
you're gonna train our train our crew the right way. And that's what happened, and sure enough Sorenson took the took mission on and he typed up his own DCA booklet. He thought the Navy's booklet was trashed, so he threw it out. He you know, he typed up what he thought we should be the way that that these sorts of things a run. And then he
drilled the hell out of the crew. And he talked to any member of the robbers, any member that plank owner, you know, any of the plank owners and the robbers, and he's just like, oh my god, Eric, Sorenson, Jesus just he's dcor DC for breakfast. He would not quit, not let us do anything, and of course that ultimately paid dividends. Um, you know, we haven't gotten quite up to the point where in the story where they actually you know, faced the problems, but we
can move into that. But I think that that that gives you a little bit of the sense and oh, I'm sorry. Saw one more thing that made that made Wrin unusual. Not only did he bring you know, actual combat experience, close up firefight, full and triggers combat experience. Not only was he farsighted enough to put a senior person in charge of the DCA job, but he also thought heritage was very very important to impart to motivating uh and imparting a sense of mission to a crew. And so his ship was
a Samuel D. Robberts. Well, who was Samuel D. Roberts He went off and he found out who Samuel D. Roberts was. He was a Navy coxon who served UF guadal Canal in nineteen forty two and who gave his life to save marines. During one particular evacuation, he steered his whale boat back and forth to draw Japanese fire so that the Marines could get off, took a bullet in the neck, died on the back flight, and got the Navy Cross for his valor. That was that was Samuel B.
Roberts. The first ship named after this Coxon Roberts, was the fourth thirteen, which was part of the small Boys who fought off the Japanese Center Force, the giant super battleship Centered Force that came around and was in a position to wipe out the landing at Lady on the Philippine Islands. And so this was part of part of the Battle of Lady Gulf, world's biggest naval battle.
And the turning point was this battle off Samar that the first ship Samuel B. Roberts was part of. So Rin said, okay, we got it. We got a fantastic name, we've got We've got a sailor we can emulate, We've got a ship we can emulate. Everybody's got to know what Samuel B. Roberts is on our ship. We're not gonna be some ship where nobody knows who the who the name on the fantail belongs to.
And so that was the third thing I think that really made him stand out was that he had this interesting approach to to imparting, imparting pride and mission to a crew. Yeah, I'm glad you brought the part of the heritage and I touched on it a little bit in the in the intro. Is it really is important because in many ways, and I think you you outlined as Captain Wrenn did that it helps you set standards, it helps you understand
as a reference point. You know, you had d E four thirteen, you had UM also DD eight twenty three, also the Samuel b. Rods and then of course we had fg U fifty eight and well, I was I'm looking forward to the to the next period class we have coming online that the Constellation class, the first three they've named, is going to be Consolation
Congress in Chesterpeak and it's kind of a little pet peeve of mine. And I've joked a lot with a friend Jerry Hendricks about this and we've done it on the show too, with the three of us that I can get an eye twitch with some of our naming traditions and um. Unfortunately we lost Captain
Wrenn. He passed away I believe last September about eight months ago. But you know the name Samuel B. Roberts, and there are other names that really have a tradition where you've got an eighteen year old sailor just out of boot camp showing up for his first command, can walk across the quarter deck and can reference where he is to what has gone before in the history of
our navy. It's kind of I guess it's really not off topic here because it made a difference to how the Samuel be Roberts fought because they knew where they came from. When we look at the naming of the Constellation class, you know, if you had a chance to bend in the ear or something is there. There's a hint that they get a little bit of our history because the Congress and Chesspeak worships. But there are some great names that aren't
in our fleet that probably we really should be. And I think you probably agree that Samuel B. Roberts, along with a few of their other friends in the Lady Goal, there's some great potential with this new class of frigates that we can bring some names back into our navy. Oh, no doubt. Um. I've written an up ed on just that point. Proceedings was kind enough to publish it some years ago, and we shall see. You know, these these things take time. I my own eye twitch sal is
when we name ships for living people. And as recently as as the reason in nineteen seventy, um, the Navy actually formalized a policy that said, you know, we don't do that, and then they broke it three years later with the Carl Vincent. So you know, it's I think I read somewhere that the Navy has a long tradition of not naming ships after living folks, and an equally long tradition of of doing so, so of breaking that
traditions. So you know, we shall see. But I will tell you this, Um, I really looked at a list of ships named for living people. US Navy warships named for living people. And there was a burst right at the beginning of the Navy when it seemed like every other ship was named for George Washington. And then we had a couple of Thomas Jeffersons, and then a couple of other you know, early founding fathers. But then
really it was it didn't happen that much. You know, maybe ten times in the eighteen hundreds, maybe you know, ten times through the middle of the twentieth century, and then in the last couple of decades that's just fallen apart, and we've gotten to the point where since twenty twenty, we've had seven ships named for living people, which is about one every eight months, and three of those not to not to bag on sec knabs, but three
of those were for former secretaries of the Navy. So, you know, it's one thing to name it after, you know, a ship that's been through fire in hell and sailors who've done you know, wonderful things and um, you know, it's another to name it after after a politician. I think my uh, I have a distant relative who was the only secretary of the Navy who got blown up when a cannon exploded. Uh way back when Gilmer he's he's the only secretary of the Yeah, uh only secretary or or
at least the stand well back zone. You know, they call it the Gilmer zone. Yeah. The the the number of h yeah, and the political ones are the ones that really get me. That the temporary expedient of naming after somebody who who has some immediate political meaning that that is that is difficult to reconcile with with some of the great names that we have for our
ships. Um. But we when we were talking about, uh, the Roberts and they go into this convoy operation and uh in nineteen eighty eight they run into a mine and you can take it from the damage. But two years later through it's three years later, four years later. Let scene ninety one when when the we're back in the Gulf, we've got the Tripoli and we got the Princeton, Uh, both running into mines in the in the very same places with very same waters. At the Roberts Goods got hit on
what what where? Where's the navy in the in the period between the Robbers running a mine and the Princeton and the Tripoli, Uh whatever? The Navy mine force that they're not out there protecting these these ships. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm sure you guys have heard the saying that you know, nobody ever got a medal for standing on the bridge of a mine. Mine warfare is just one of those neglected corners of mine. Um of the
naval enterprise. You know that it's always kind of working on really old ships with with older equipment. And I don't mean to completely harsh on the Navy and then in the in the past in ten twenty years, they've done really good stuff with remotely powered vehicles and and you know, it's a whole new, whole new ball game now that you can send out little robots to do
that. It's it's getting much better. But you know, you're you're saying, you know, why why did the Princeton run into a mind Why didn't they have more mind sweeper as well? And I don't know, I will tell you that. Um. In those three years, the Navy did modify ships equipment and procedures to improve damage control so that it could it's it's ships would be more ready to handle the kind of damage that came to the that appened the Rogers, I mean the Roberts there are you know, little little
tiny things. More gate valves were added to firemans. UM, More emergency tag out procedures were developed. UM. They had more first aid gear added to the repair locker. All of these are from the Roberts and the Stark
as well. UM. They also added a line to the to the rigs that said that if you're in a minefield, or you expect to be in a minefield, or you expect to take a torpedo hit, pull everybody out of the bridge, out of the bilges, you know, make sure they're they're up above decks so that they don't get lost in you know, the first first sudden swell of water if if the hull gets breached. So, you know, the Navy did its best to learn lessons and to change things
in those early years. But it's still it's still, you know, I think missing a good component of what of what it should have in mine warfare. Even in the last year, you know, we saw and yeah, I love how you describe the fact that you know, it's a over one hundred year old mine design, but nothing can shut down a waterway even in twenty twenty three then for somebody to yell or to see a mine, and we saw that recently in the Black Sea during the Russia Ukrainian War early on.
We haven't heard anything recently that we had John Conrad on from from g Captain I know him and Salmorcagliano are always two guys we want to go to when it talks about merchants and all it takes to stop merchant ships is not necessarily some old you know, horn with acid chewing through metal army mechanisms hitting a ship. It's just the threat of it, because insurance rates go through
the roof. And there's a NATO has a great mine warfare center up in Zimbruga, and there's they got a great book there that outlines the numbers and types of minds where they're all located over the globe. And even though that it doesn't get the attention that it has occasionally mine warfare, even within the last year, it does still tap everybody on the shoulder and to remind them
they haven't gone anywhere. And you don't have to be a first or even a second world power to be able to shut down major sea lines of communication just by throwing some one hundred and twenty year old minds out the back of the ship. Yeah, no, indeed, And you're absolutely right about merchants, insurance and shutting down commercial lines. But just to bring it back to the point of the US Navy, let's go back to Operation Earn as well.
When it started in nineteen eighty seven. The very first convoy, you had three small boys escorting the USS bridgeton the Reflag Kuwaiti tanker that was now
sailing with the Philadelphia home put. Anyway, they're they're going through the Persian Gulf, and the three Navy surface combatants are kind of spread out around the bridge and surrounding them, you know, they're moving down the thing, and then fam the bridgeton hits of mind, and the skipper of the bridgeon describes it later as a five hundred ton hammer coming down on the front of his ship, and the whole thing, you know, kind of porpoises and goes
up and down. But the crazy thing is the bridge instance, who was the tanker and had double hull, was still seaworthy after the outside hull got hold, but the inside, uh, the inside hull held and so after everybody you know, realized that the ship wasn't going to sink, they got under way again. But this time the bridgeston was leading the convoy and the
three Navy ships were trailing along in its wake. Because you know what, what merely damaged the tanker could very well send a Navy destroyer to the bottom. And in fact, one other thing too backt them figure for you, one other thing, um, and you guys probably know this as well. The weapon that has sent more Navy ships to the bottom since World War Two. Most of these were in the Korean War, but still, uh is the naval mind It's not it's not gunfire, it's not weapon, it's not
missiles. It is it is. You'd be pleased to know that. On the wall of the room I'm in, I've got a poster from the Naval Control of Shipping Organization and it is an image of the Bridgeton leading three US warships in that scenario just described. It's it's kind of funny that that became the symbol of the controller naval controller shipping people the poster childhood to speak,
right, absolutely, uh so. Uh. One of the things that that we I think that we really really need to talk about is the improvement you know, you mentioned some of it already in the damage control world as a result of the Roberts. And you know, I think that there's a new surface uh trainer uh in Hawaii for that's based on the Roberts. But you know, we've also seen that in the in the incidents of the of the
McCain and the Fitzgerald won a whole bunch of other ships. It seems like that the crews are doing a magnificent job under some pretty stressful conditions, managing the damage control stuff. Can you talk about that little bit? Has this been there's something you've been focusing on or yeah, no, I think you're right. The damage control efforts on both of those ships was outstanding. You
know, the ships took big hits and and uh and deadly hits. Um, and yet the ships managed to just you know, they stayed afloat. So you know, bravo zulu. UM. I do know as well that damage control. You know, immediately after the mining of the Roberts in nineteen eighty eight, it took a big step up people. People started to get serious. I mean, the US may be almost lost the ship to this hundred year old mine. Let's get serious about this. And so part of
it we're reviewing equipment. What can we do to make ships more more seaworthy or da much resistant? I guess you know, what can we do about training? Um? It all got more focus UM. And and this is interesting. I think one reason, one one way that you can track this
is that Rin became something of a legend in the service community. UM. And he you know, for for the rest of his life UM, which as you say, ended ended last year, but for the rest of his life he was sought after by UM naval schools, by h chiefs of operations, by groups of sailors, by ships to come and talk about how he did this, how did he forge his crew and how were they able to
meet the moment with a spurt damage control operation. UM. You know, he must have talked to two hundreds, possibly thousands of audiences over the year, and I think it really made a difference. You know, people wanted to hear it. People wanted to hear what he had done to survive, and they wanted to know how how did they could get their their ships and crews and sailors to survive. UM. So I think the it's it's it's
a testament to the Navy's ability to learn lessons once written in blood. But you know, they did learn it, and they did UM and they have applied it, and so the lessons of the Roberts are now taught in you know, in swass at service. Wartare officers of school at you know,
at boot camp. I think it's safe to say anybody who's coming up through the Navy these days knows what the Roberts did and knows what the major lessons were another thing that it brought back to mine looking at the book and reading back over the Stanley b. Roberts, kind of going back in a way to my opening question is in nineteen eighty eight, I was just the first classmanship and mussell um. It was. The Navy, off course, was much larger, but you had some great home ports. The the Standley be
Roberts was not the only ship. It was actually homeported in Newport, Rhode Island. We had ships that were homeported in on the East Coast in Charleston and Philadelphia, New York City. I'm probably missing a spot or two as well. I know on the West coast you could be stationed in Los Angeles, and with some of the issues they've had in San Diego where they just don't they only have enough room for sailors depart their car anymore. That's also
kind of a place in time with our navy. You know, you're talking about heritage and having a reference mark is I think one thing we've lost since nineteen eighty eight is it used to be that near major population centers, and sometimes in major population centers, the Navy had a presence. You had your local warships that weren't museum ships. They were actual sailors out in the economy.
The kids were in the schools, and you know, here we find ourselves in twenty twenty three, and everybody's just concentrated in a few ports. And it seems in a way that that has kind of made our navy a little more distant than it was in nineteen eighty eight. Yeah, you may be right. And you know what, you remind me of the last moose in New York City. I went to the Transit Museum, which is a
wonderful museum. It's it's in a disused subway station and they have lined the tracks, the line line a platform in this subway station with old subway cars and so they're all the way back from like the rickety you know, cast iron ones to the you know, the more modern, you know, streamlined ones. But you can go through these things. You can see the advertisements
decade by decade change on the interior of these subway cars. And one of them, from I think it was nineteen fifty struck me because it was essentially a schematic map of New York City and it's but what the map was was where you could see the various home ported Navy shifts, and they were like fifteen of them going up the going up the coastline of Manhattan. And it was being advertised on this on the subway car. Hey get off at forty ninth Street to see this battleship. Get off it, you know, fifty
third street to see this destroyer. And it's just for those of us who we feel like going aboard chips, even if they are museum ships. You know, what a what a treasure that must have been. But it also says it also it was just a different era when when somebody could get off their subway the subway car and go see a Navy ship. And you're right, it's a lot harder for a lot more people now, well part of
it. I mean, if you've you've told a great story in this book, and the book is being used to train, it's on the CNO's list of recommended reading, and I assume that a lot of people who are going to DC school are reading it. Um, let's talk a little bit about
the Navy's uh inevability to tell its story very well. I mean, it's there's some great stories we have, these wonderful you know, if you start from damage control stories, Kamikaze's attack from the Laffy back in World War Two, you know, five or six kamikaze, a ship ship survives and sails back home and goes into Seattle to a hero's welcome, and they didn't even clean up most of damage so they could show what the effect of the war
was. But we don't seem to be doing that kind of story. Everybody seems to be covering their rear ends rather than than extolling the virtues of the importance of having a strong fleet and the ability of these magnificent young sailors. We have to deal with a lot of things that that most people their age, and I'm using sailors I work with who were eighteen, nineteen twenty year old kids. You know, they were doing wonderful things and nobody really seemed
to know it. And unless you maybe you got a movie like a Top Gun or the or Top Gun Maverick where you can see these sailors on the flight deck actually doing stuff. You know, how do we tell a story like this like the Robertson make it more interesting to people's, uh than whatever it is we're doing now? Uh? You know, so at West twenty twenty two, so the big the big conference that takes a place out in
San Diego every year. UM, this very issue came up and Um, Congressman Luria, a lean Luria. UM who was she got quoted out um in the last election, but at that point she was still, um, you know, a strong voice in Congress. I thought, for you know, for exactly what you said, how can the Navy tell its story better? And she, of course as a former sailor herself, so you know, she had a very strong opinion on the matter. But she looked at you know, kind of the Navy's Twitter feed and she said, look,
does the average person know what choke points are? You know what what what? What is all this jargon that that we you know, we that we put out there, she said, And we expect people to you know, to to understand it, first of all, but then to to get viscerally, know, engaged with it the way that they would have to be if they were going to come in list or or you know, or even support
the Navy and you know, in their voting habits. Um. You know, she really she made a big deal in her last term of uh, you know, look just just you know, just do storytelling, you know, don't don't use these bureaucratic words that nobody's gonna understand. Get out there and say what the Navy does? You know? And and so I I
think your question is very relevant. I think it's also received. Um you know, I know, for example, Cino Guilding was there and in the audience was he was uh taking the Navy to task on this, so he knows about it, and um, you know where we go from there. I don't know if there's some Hollywood producer out there who wants to set the uh set the story of the Roberts to a feature film, shure, I wouldn't say. No. Yeah, I'm I am really surprised that nobody has
had the opportunity to do that, because it's it's an incredible story. You know, it's there. I wanted to give you an opportunity to you know, you can't talk about everybody on the crew. And when you have a ship hit as hard as the as Stanley Bee was and she still comes home on the back of a of a Dutch heavy ship carrying her on the back, um, it takes the entire crew. Is there's a huge story there that you know, doesn't have to be a multi billion dollar and you don't
have to create characters. They exist in real life. It's one of those things. You know, Captain Wren, he spent a lot of time talking about what he did, but he was always the man and the leader he was. Just an event had to take place for that to be revealed. And our fleet and our navy is just you. You can't throw a penny without hitting one. Just an event hasn't taken place to reveal that part of the story. And you know, we talked about the DCA, We've talked
about the Skipper as that ship was hit. You know what were some of the other major players that that really stand out that if somebody was going to do a screenplay, you would definitely want to have, uh an a list type actor to play that role. Well, I think you'd got to have Mike Tilly. Uh. Mike Tilly was um he was a young sailor out of Missouri. Um, you know, basically joined the Navy to get away from his tiny town in Missouri, and uh he had a knack for getting
into trouble. He uh he was on uh he had leave off the ship and in homeport and had a few too many beers and relieved himself. The only problem was he did it in front of a plate glass window in front of a big restaurant full of people, and uh hit and and so you know, Rinn found out about that and dressed him down. Um he was I think he tried to pass a fake ID. He just did a bunch
of different things. But after the third thing, when the when he came to Captain's mask, when was like, Tilly, I can't have this, And Tilly said, no, sorry, I really am going to do better. I promise the Navy the only thing I got going for me. Please give me one more chance. And Rin, who was in most aspects most respects a no nonsense guys, some saw something Untilly, so he let him say so. Fast forward then to us a fourteen April nineteen eighty eight,
and Tilly is a is a fireman. He's an enginement trainee, and he's down manning one of the four diesel generators um aboard ship. And the order gets passed. Okay, everybody, get out of your bottom spaces, you know, come up a couple of levels, a couple of decks, and Tilly says, you know what, I think, I'm just gonna stay here with my diesel generator because if we need it, we're really gonna need it.
And guess what they really needs it? Um the fire in the flood of the blast knocked all four of the generators offline, and not three of them off immediately, and then eventually the fourth one was overloaded and it's shut down as well. So now they're on fire, they're flooding, they're thinking, and they're without electrical power. So they are screwed. But do they've got Tilly. Tilly is down there inside the generator room and he's doing everything
you can to get restarted. You know, he's trying trying process AS, trying process B, and nothing's working, and so finally he's got one thing left. And you guys know this, and much of your audience, I
imagine know this as well. But what you can do on some of these big generators is you've got a preserved flask of high pressure air and you can get in there and you can manually open that up and that'll start the generator if you're lucky, and if you're not lucky, the generator just kind of throws a piston or blows up or you know whoever's on top of it pushing that that lever. It's not a good day for them. But it was already not a good day for the Roberts. And so Tilly says, Okay,
I'm going to do this. I can't get the generator started any other way. We're all down here with our battery battle lanterns. Nothing good is happening. I'm going to do the suicide start. So he climbs up on board this generator, closes his eyes, pushes the lever, and my god, the thing starts up. And Rinn didn't know this. Nobody else in the in the uh in the ship knew this. All they knew was they had no electrical power and all of a sudden, they've got one jenerator back
online. So help start working again. Uh, you know, fight the fire. That's great. They only discovered Tillie's heroics down in the generator room like hours later, and he kept he kept asking to come up after that, and they're like, no, no, are you kidding? Sit down there, Jo keep bringing a great so to make sure that thing doesn't stop anyway, I think that you know who needs a who needs an a list actor. I think Mike Tilly does. He's a great guy. I've met
him. I talked to him for the book, and h he's you know, really, this this guy who was a screw up the navy, was really what he thought was his last chance, screwed up in the navy. Rinn took a chance on him, and he was premental in saving the ship from mortal peril. You know, that's exactly the kind of story that we need to tell. And it's not just the Tillies of the world. There are you know, you could you can barely throw a rock on a ship
and not find some kid who has done something extraordinary like that. Maybe not quite the level of Tilly, but we don't give them. We don't get you know, all the credit goes to other people. It's not it's the you can't make a ship like the Robert's work without a screw up like Tilly
doing the right thing at the right time, exactly the right time. That's that's that I think if that could be dramatized somehow, that's that's the story that he maybe needs to tell about the about the workers and the and the in the inner workings of the ship. Yeah, I agree. I when I was a reporter, I was a report for the Navy Times for a few years, and um, my favorite talks were always with the people who
did the unsung, un you know, almost unknown jobs. The you know, the people who um, you know, who made the plumbing work, the people who who kept everything clean, that people who did you know, the horrendous jobs down under the where they never saw the sun, um, but they did them and they were vital and that's why the ship kept going. And I know there was a little production. I think actually either the Australian Navy or our Navy made it of the UH the collision back in the
nineteen seventies with the Australians last aircraft carrier. They told that story it really can you know, makes you cringe. The mistakes were made and I was thinking of your book and how well it told that story when I read the report from twenty seventeen with the collisions of the Fitzgerald and the McCain that you know there are there are two stories here that would be fascinating to see Drew
met done in a dramatic manner. One is what happened up at the bridge, but also what happened in birthing and damage control, that there are some sailors, probably a couple who who have some njps behind them that really rose to the occasion, like like we always see in our Navy, in our military in general. But again going back to a previous point, and not the same thing about the Norwegians, But you know, the Norwegians hit a rock in their frigate sinks. Our frigate hits the mind and it lives.
And a lot of it has to do with the fact of some of the challenges we've had converting the frem class frigate that the Italians and the French have had for years into what we're going to call the Constellation frigate. Is the fact that we were we're a little knit noisy about damage control, but for the right reasons, especially for what the but the Sammy B showed us.
I think another lesson that I wanted to make sure that we touched one is and the finest visions enabled service is if you're if you're going to kick us in the knees, be careful, is right. As a result of this, we came into Operation Praying Mantis, which we traded a mine for something else for the Iranians. We could outline a little bit how we reacted to the mining of the SAMMYB Right, So Praying Mantis took place on eighteen April,
so four days after the mining. And so in those four days you had a team of nails, Navy seals who dove into the water, EOD divers who who went into the mine field, and they pulled up a couple of mines. And because seals had seized an Iranian mine layer some months before, they were able to match the serial numbers, and so they had the evidence, they had the receipts, they had caught Iran red handed. And so the decision was made in the White House by President Reagan, we are
going to retaliate. And so there were various courses of action debated, you know, should we should we go after their their navy and harbor, should we should we blow up another oil platform, And they ultimately decided to do something in the middle. They had they had actually tried blowing up oil platforms a few months previously um As and and it kind of worked, but obviously did not have the durn effect that they wanted. So they thought that was
too little. We also don't want to attack naval bases. They decided, we don't want to attack Iranian Iranian territory, that's too much. So they decided that what we were going to do is we're going to sink one Iranian vessel. And so over the course of eight hours, um, they did in fact actually attack a couple of oil platforms. Um. They went after a few gunboats um boghammers they were they were called. They sunk a few of those and ultimately they did sink a frigate, one Iranian frigate, and
very badly damage a second. So um, you know, that was about half the striking power of the Irany navy at that time. So that was the that was the retaliation. You mind our chef, and we'll take out half your navy. It seems like a fair trade. UM. I tell you one thing, actually, if um, if you want, if you want, you you'd ask, you'd ask what what rins and what the Roberts effect on on the navy was. And I've got a quote here actually this
is from Brian McGrath. He's a retired captain. UM. I bet you guys know him, or at least know of him former CEO of the Bulkeley, the Stroyer Bulkeley UM under McGrath. He's not just some CEO either. He he himself won the Zoom Walt Award for Leadership and the Bulkeley war won the Arizona Award for Battle Ready Ship. So you know he knows where he speaks. And he said um and we quoted him. I quote him in the obituary I wrote for in last year. He said Captain Wren had enormous
influence in the way the captains who commanded after him approached their job. What we all heard from our captains, what we all heard from the training pipeline was a similar story. We're going to practice us over and again until it's perfect, and then we're going to practice perfectly over and over again. I think that really sums up, you know, the dedication to training and being ready. They've been exemplified and that I think the Navy has ever since tried
to live up to. Yeah, Bryan, it's a good good friend of our program. Have you found him on a number of times, And I'm glad to hear that that lesson reached to the to the following commander CEOs. It's it's an important lesson. Train train like you fight like you'll fight, and things tend to work out the way they should work out before we move
on to something else. Any any other lessons that we need to on the thirty for that versary need to we need to grab from the the Roberts and from the Stark and some of those other adventures that went onymous and the I call out the Arabian Gulf back in those days. Well, I think two of the biggest lessons that the Roberts holds is, first of all, never under a smate your enemy. Um. As we said a couple of times, this was ae hundred year old mind design. It probably costs about a
thousand bucks and it nearly sent a navy warship to the bottom. Um crossed ninety six million to return her to service, and she was returned to service, and she served for for more than a decade after that. So it served perfectly well, but was laid low by the lowest of low tech when it comes to naval warfare. So that's one UM. The second lesson is the heritage matters. Um. You know, I didn't didn't go into exactly
what happened during the damage control effort. But I will tell you this that as the sailors ran to and fro pulling out hoses, um, you know, pulling pulling shells from there there the magazines that were getting warm from the fires. They had to pass the quarter deck over and over because that's just how a frigate is laid out. And on that quarter deck was a bronze
plaque that WRIN had commissioned before Robert's ever set to sea. And on this plaque it had the name of the first Robert Shift D four thirteen and the names of all the men who fought aboard her. So, you know, a big thing, eighteen inches by three feet, you know, big hunk
of bronze. But it became a touchstone, and quite literally because during the moment of peril, the crew would run by and they'd slapped the plaque for luck, or to for remembrance, or just to say, okay, other crews have done this before, other crews have been in peril and they've come through. We can too. And that's all about the power of heritage,
and I think that's one that the Navy should never forget. Yeah, if that reference point that people made, it is comfortably no other people have done this before and had harder you know, you know, fear not and head forward type of thing. One thing, the one thing I wanted to cover before we ended up the hour is one thing people don't know about you,
and it's it's kind of timely. Is you are. I don't know if this is something to get depressed about or something to be proud of, but you are one of the last cohorts to get a degree in Soviet and Eastern European studies that you got from Yale, and I believe nineteen ninety before the Soviet Union decided to collapse, and you actually after you graduated, you went over to Moscow right after, so that you can disappear in modern and Russia
has So we all have an idea of the type of intellectual effort a young man or woman makes to get an undergrad degree, especially in an area at that time that you started your undergrad period, and you why that whole change take place that you never even though you do other things in your life.
You write books, you create websites, you edit major your publications, but your mind never really leaves that area you invested so much of your youth looking at and studying and researching and in your case living for a little bit. And you know, here we are fourteen months into the Russia Ukrainian War. I just wanted to ask you, Brad, you know what, somebody from your background in your perspective, you know, we look back to thirty five
years. We'll just back up a few more to the where you saw the Soviet Union fall to here we see the largest land war in Asia, Russians versus Ukrainian using roughly Soviet equipment. You know, what are some of the things the last fourteen months or so fifteen months keep coming to mind if you've watched these events unfold. So the reason I, the reason I embarked on Soviet Studies degree in the first place, was an excellent teacher I had in
high school. She was a history teacher, missus Mossy, and she taught a senior course on Russia, and so I loved her her US history course, and so senior year came along and I took her her Russian Studies course, and one of the things she taught was that in Russia, maybe you know, at least as clearly as in any other country, you see cycles
of history. And one of the things about Russia is, you know, go back to Peter the Great and you know, one Russia will go through a western leaning phase and then a withdrawal phase and back and forth, and Russian leaders will will alternate between trying to westernize our country and then trying to exploit the feelings that they have for their own, you know, sort of
set generous nature. And so I think, you know, you asked me how I regard, uh, what has happened, and I think I just feel foolish, not for having learned about Russia, but or having forgotten this essence of Russia. Um, you know kind of in the in the twenty tens, uh that it it westernizes, but then it withdraws again. And you know, this is what we're seeing, you know, more in in, you know, in more extreme fashion than we have in a century.
But it's still the same thing. You know. You listen to Putin and listen to his his excuses for why he had to go into Ukraine, and there they are echoes of the past and the Russian Empire and what it had to do. Um, And I you know it it's not it's not a break. It it's continuity. It's just the cycle coming around again. Well, we've taken up a lot of your time in the wee hours of the night, Brad. But thank thank you so much for coming on. It's
been a great pleasure. I again highly recomm and your book um no higher honor it is. I think it's timeless. It's a very important book for everybody who who cares about what happens at sea and what happens in the United States Navy, and it's a it's a great sea story and so many ways. So thank you for coming on talking about it again and sharing your thoughts with us tonight. Yeah, no, absolutely, my pleasure love to talk about the Roberts and loves talk about navy stuff, so I appreciate it.
It's been a great night. Thanks a lot, Brad, and thank you everybody for joining us for another edition in god rats and until next time, I hope you have a great navy day. Cheers, folding your the Dame. It's a long way to dipperany, It's a long way to go. It's a long way to differany between gn I know I don't by because dealing and well lest a swell, it's a long long way to dipper Lam it, but my life like them.