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At 12:41 a.m. Bernsen ordered the choppers to halt the Iranians' continued seeding of the waters. The strafing resumed until the Iran Ajr was disabled, its stern on fire. Six hours later in the light of dawn the SEALs from the Guadalcanal scrambled up the hull of the crippled ship. They found no one alive. Three bodies had been left behind by the fleeing crewmen amid a scene of destruction caused by the chopper assaults. Windows were shattered and huge gouges pocked the hull and cabin. Offices and other rooms had been ransacked in a hasty effort by the Iranians to destroy papers.
When other Navy experts arrived to inspect the ship, they found that all but two of the nine mines arrayed at mid-deck were armed and, as one officer said, "ready to go." Luckily, one bullet that had pierced a mine had not set off its 250-lb. load of explosives. If it had, the other mines would presumably have ignited too. The crew might have been killed, and the long- sought evidence would have vanished.
The M-08 mines were of a primitive design created by the Russians as early as 1908 and still manufactured in recent years by North Korea. When a ship hits one of the protruding spikes, acid is released, detonating the charge. The tethers were set to keep the mines, waiting unseen but lethal, within 40 ft. or less of the surface. Navy specialists said the same type of mines had damaged the Bridgeton in the shipping channel to Kuwait in July and the Texaco Caribbean just outside the Strait of Hormuz in August. The same type of mine destroyed a supply boat in the Gulf of Oman last month, killing five crewmen.
As the Jarrett approached the site, moving cautiously to avoid any mines, the crews spotted ten Iranians drifting in rubber rafts. Sixteen others, including four wounded sailors, were in the water, clinging to flotsam or still swimming. All were picked up. The survivors claimed that two of their crewmen were missing and that one had sped off in a motorized "Zodiac" speedboat. The Iran Ajr's captain, who spoke English, was among the wounded.
While Washington officials pondered what to do with the men they delicately termed "detainees" rather than "prisoners," the Iranians were transferred from the Jarrett to the La Salle. Dressed in fresh La Salle T shirts and oversize jeans, the sailors were bound by the wrists with plastic handcuffs, their ankles were tied with cord, and each crewman was put on a cot in the ship's vehicle-storage room. On Saturday they were flown to Oman and released to the International Red Crescent (the Islamic version of the Red Cross) for repatriation. Their ill-fated ship was packed with explosives and scuttled in deep water off Bahrain.
U.S. officials had no qualms about the swift use of force in the incident. "These guys were performing a hostile act -- putting mines in the water," said Crowe. "Warnings don't make sense at that point. You want to stop them -- and we did."