Navy Reports Finding of Mine Field Where Tanker Was Damaged

The Navy found a mine field in the Persian Gulf channel where the supertanker Bridgeton hit a mine Friday and several underwater explosives were recovered, Pentagon officials said today.

All the mines that were found were moored to the bottom of the 90-foot-deep channel where the 401,382-ton Kuwaiti tanker was hit 120 miles south of Kuwait, the officials said. The mine punched a truck-sized hole in the tanker’s hull below the waterline, flooding four of 31 oil holds.

Despite the damage, the ship was being loaded with oil to half its capacity for a southbound Navy-escorted voyage through the gulf, which is expected to begin later this week. The U.S. Coast Guard was preparing to certify the Bridgeton as seaworthy.

Frigate Would Have Sunk

Pentagon officials expressed concern that the Navy frigate Crommelin would have sunk had the 3,585-ton ship hit a mine. The Crommelin is one of the three Navy ships that escorted the Bridgeton and the smaller Gas Prince on the northbound convoy.

“The ship would have gone to the bottom,” one official said. “If a mine would have ripped a hole like that in the hull of a frigate, there would be no chance to save the ship.”

The Crommelin has a draft of 14.8 feet, far less than the 36-foot draft of the Bridgeton when the tanker is empty. The Crommelin possibly could have passed over the mine field without having detonating any of the explosives.

Tanker Followed

All the escorts lined up behind the Bridgeton after it was hit, using it as a minesweeper.

A Navy team found “several mines” in the two-mile-wide channel over the weekend, officials said, but the details of the discovery were sketchy.

“The fact that several mines were found and not just one or two makes it an intentional mine field,” one official said, speaking on condition he not be identified.

There was no indication when the mines were sown, but officials said that any boat “capable of throwing an anchor over the side” could plant an underwater explosive.

Discovery of the mine field gave new urgency to dispatching Navy RH-53 minesweeping helicopters to the gulf, officials said.

“It makes the issue of this whole minesweeping thing a very big one,” one official said.