Sandstorm Slows Progress of Kuwait-Bound Gulf Convoy

The latest convoy of U.S. warships and re-registered Kuwaiti tankers ran into a storm Thursday that slowed its progress up the Persian Gulf toward Kuwait, shipping officials said.

It was not known when the convoy would reach Kuwait, because poor visibility caused by a sandstorm whipping across the gulf could force the ships to halt for the night, the officials said.

At last report, the convoy was said to be somewhere north of Bahrain, off the coast of Saudi Arabia, where 5-foot swells and 20-m.p.h. winds had forced it to slow down, the officials added.

3 Ships Leave Convoy

In what struck maritime officials here as an unusual announcement, the Pentagon disclosed in Washington that the assault carrier Guadalcanal and two other U.S. Navy vessels had left the convoy early Thursday to proceed to other “assigned locations in the gulf.” It did not elaborate.

Maintaining that “loose tongues sink ships,” Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and other Pentagon officials have kept convoy movements secret since the supertanker Bridgeton hit a mine last month on the first U.S. escort mission up the gulf.

This has meant that tracking the convoys has become a matter of guesswork by shipping sources, supplemented by sightings by U.S. and British television crews carrying out patrols of their own in helicopters and chartered ships.

Experts Puzzled

What struck some experts as odd about the Pentagon’s announcement was the diversion of the Guadalcanal. The 11,000-ton ship was serving as the base for the Sea Stallion helicopters that have been sweeping the sea in front of the convoy for mines. Shipping officials said that normally they would have expected the Guadalcanal to stay with the convoy, because the waters near Kuwait have been found in the recent past to contain mines.

The departure of the Guadalcanal and two other vessels left a destroyer and two frigates to escort the supertanker Townsend and the gas carriers Gas Queen and Gas Princess the rest of the way to Kuwait, where another tanker convoy is loaded and waiting to embark on the trip down the gulf.

Pentagon officials said Wednesday that the convoy will leave as soon as the northbound ships reach Kuwait. When this would be was not clear because of the sandstorm, which reduced visibility in the area to a few hundred yards, maritime officials said.

Speedboats Grounded

However, although this meant that the convoy would have to move more slowly, it also gave it additional protection against the possibility of attack by small Iranian speedboats based at Farsi Island just north of where the tankers and their escort were last reported, the officials added.

“Ships can still operate in those conditions, but small boats can’t,” one source said.

Relying on speed and stealth, the convoy slipped into the gulf Wednesday morning, passing without incident the Silkworm missile sites that Iran has reportedly installed along the Strait of Hormuz.

Indeed, although Iran has warned the United States to get out of the gulf, the only threats encountered by the three convoys to be escorted through the gulf so far have been mines.

Other Ships Attacked

Other, unescorted ships have not been so fortunate. Shipping sources said that a Yugoslav container ship, the 7,478-ton Bribir, was strafed by machine-gun fire from an Iranian patrol boat in the southern gulf on Wednesday afternoon. There were no casualties, the sources said.

The attack, the second against a commercial vessel in three days, occurred in an area where Iranian patrol boats frequently stop and spot-check ships to make sure they are not carrying war materials to Iraq.

On Tuesday, a Norwegian chemical tanker, the Osco Sierra, was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and machine-gun fire from a small boat south of the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf of Oman.

It was the first attack on commercial shipping outside the Persian Gulf since the Iran-Iraq War began more than seven years ago.

Renegade Operation

Iran denied responsibility for the attack, but shipping officials said they believed it was carried out by Iranian Revolutionary Guards, over whom even the Iranian leadership seems at times to have little control.

In another development, officials in Bahrain said the body of one of three U.S. servicemen missing since an SH-3D Sea King helicopter crashed in the gulf last month had been found. The dead sailor was identified as Radioman Second Class Albert B. Duparl of St. Croix, Virgin Islands. His body was taken to Bahrain, but no other details were immediately available.