No Time to Fire, U.S. Skipper Says : Frigate’s Defenses Were in Order, He Reports; 2nd Warhead Found

The captain of the American frigate that was attacked by an Iraqi aircraft in the Persian Gulf said Wednesday that defense systems aboard the ship were fully operational at the time of the raid but that there was not sufficient time to deploy them.

In his first public comment since the Sunday attack that left 37 sailors dead, Capt. Glenn R. Brindel of the guided-missile frigate Stark told reporters that he had no warning that a missile had been fired at his ship until a lookout visually sighted the projectile streaking through the night.

After the visual sighting, Brindel said, the missile was at “a significantly close range, and there were only a few seconds for defensive measures to be put into effect.”

He said the ship’s Phalanx system, designed as a last-ditch defense against incoming missiles, was being switched from a manual to an automatic mode when the first of two missiles exploded on the Stark’s port-side hull, knocking out the ship’s electronics.

Normally Not Automatic

The Phalanx, a multibarrel, rapid-fire gun, was normally kept in a manual mode because in automatic, it might shoot at low-flying non-hostile aircraft, Brindel said.

In Washington, the Pentagon said later in the day that an unexploded missile warhead had been found aboard the Stark, wire services reported.

Lt. Cmdr. Chris Baumann, a Pentagon spokesman, said late Wednesday that the missile warhead, from a French-made Exocet, “has been disarmed, crated and is now aboard the USS LaSalle.”

At his press conference here, the ship’s captain expressed grief over the incident and told reporters he was not sure whether he was to blame. He also singled out one of his sailors, a Californian, as a hero for his efforts to save fellow crewmen and fight the fire that followed the attack.

Appears Under Stress

Brindel, who in January was promoted from commander to captain, answered reporters’ questions calmly but appeared to be under stress.

Earlier in the day, he attended ceremonies at a remote corner of Bahrain airport in which 35 metal coffins covered with American flags were taken from a helicopter and placed in an Air Force C-141 transport for the journey home to the United States. Two servicemen remain unaccounted for and are presumed dead.

Taps was played as the last of the coffins was placed on the plane, and Brindel comforted the widow of one of the dead sailors who, waiting for her husband to go on leave, had been visiting Bahrain at the time of the attack.

Barbara Kiser, widow of Stephen G. Kiser of Elkhart, Ind., a senior chief petty officer, attended in a billowing maroon dress with a flowing white scarf. Her 5-year-old son, John, was also there. He placed his hand over his heart as the bugle call was drowned out by a passing flight of Bahraini jets.

“I don’t have to mourn or wear black because I know my husband is in heaven,” she said. “I’m happy because I know he’s better off.”

The U.S. ambassador to Bahrain, Sam H. Zakhem, said he planned to see the Iraqi ambassador and present him with two items from Kiser’s widow, who is a devout Baptist. The items are a New Testament in Arabic and a letter, addressed to “The men who attacked the Stark, Dad’s ship,” expressing the sentiments of peace and forgiveness.

At his press conference, Capt. Brindel said, “I wept today as I saw caskets being loaded on a C-141 to be taken back to the United States.”

Asked if he felt any guilt, he replied: “I feel grief and a lot of sorrow for what happened aboard the ship. I don’t know whether it was my fault, the fault of an operator or an act of God.”

He said that he was in the ship’s command center at the time of the raid and that most of the crew members were watching a film.

Brindel confirmed that two missiles hit the ship, about 30 seconds apart, and that remnants of one of the missiles indicated that it was a French-made Exocet of the type used by Iraq. The other missile was not identified.

The type of missile is significant because the ship’s radar, according to Capt. Brindel, did not show that a missile had been launched from the Iraqi plane. The Exocet is guided by radar, and its radar signal could have been detected by the Stark. But there have been suggestions by Rear Adm. Harold J. Bernsen, commander of the U.S. Middle East Force, that one of the missiles was laser guided and did not emit a radar signal.

Some military analysts in Washington said it was possible that the unidentified missile was a more advanced AS-30, a supersonic, laser-guided missile made by Aerospatiale, the same French firm that manufactures the Exocet. Iraq reportedly has bought as many as 200 AS-30s from France since 1985.

Designed specifically for use with the Mirage F-1 fighter that attacked the Stark, the AS-30 flies almost twice as fast as the 600-m.p.h. Exocet, carries a heavier warhead and emits no homing radar signal that the frigate might have detected. It is guided by an invisible laser beam emitted from a pod on the attacking aircraft, according to Jane’s Weapons Systems, a standard military reference.

Other analysts, however, noted that the AS-30’s range is reportedly only about six miles, while the Stark is believed to have been attacked from a distance of 11 to 12 miles. These analysts said it was possible that both missiles were Exocets but that their homing radar switched on only in the last seconds of a one-minute flight, giving the frigate no time to react.

Capt. Brindel said the Iraqi plane had been tracked from 200 miles out and that it was given two radio warnings by the crew of the Stark. He said that between two and three minutes elapsed between the second warning and the moment the first missile was sighted by the lookout.

The captain said that under the rules in effect at the time of the incident, Iraqi aircraft were considered friendly. He said he is allowed to fire on aircraft only if they show hostile intent.

“The people (among the crew) I talked to I believe acted correctly, but did not have the necessary information to launch a counterattack at (a distance of) 10 miles out,” Brindel said.

Present with him at the news conference was Petty Officer 1st Class Michael O’Keefe of Palmdale, Calif., whom Brindel singled out for praise. O’Keefe, 27, a veteran of eight years’ service, told reporters that he was asleep at the time of the attack. He said great confusion engulfed the crew’s quarters immediately after the first missile exploded.

“I saw a fireball and knew we were in trouble,” O’Keefe said.

He said he went through the compartment pulling sleeping sailors out of their bunks and propelling them to ladders leading up to safety.

There were no lights, he said, and seawater was being poured into the compartment in an effort to put out the fire.

Brindel said O’Keefe worked nonstop for 34 hours fighting the fire. He described him as a hero.

“When you lose that many friends and shipmates, it is a nightmarish situation,” Brindel said, “one you don’t like to bring up again.”

O’Keefe, son of Michelle Nash O’Keefe, graduated from Reseda High School in 1978, according to school and Navy records. He enlisted in 1979 and trained at the Naval Training Center in San Diego and later with the Fleet Training Center in Norfolk, Va. O’Keefe, who is a hull maintenance technician, began serving aboard the Stark in 1982 and was made petty officer first class in April, 1985.

The C-141 aircraft carrying the 35 coffins arrived at Rhein-Main Air Base outside Frankfurt, West Germany, later Wednesday, and the bodies were taken to a U.S. Army mortuary to await shipment to the United States, according to wire service reports.

Later in the day, two seriously wounded sailors--Petty Officers 3rd Class Lawrence M. Bareford of Fredericksburg, Va., and James Wheeler of El Paso--arrived back in the United States for treatment at Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio. They had been flown from Bahrain via West Germany.