Entertainment, Books - Navy Times

Uncommon leadership

In "No Higher Honor," Bradley Peniston tells the story of the Perry-class frigate Samuel B. Roberts and its successful fight to survive the damage done April 14, 1988, by an Iranian mine during the Iran-Iraq War.

But this is more than a story about the attack and survival. It is an inspiring story of an extraordinary vessel with an extraordinary heritage and heroic crewmen determined to save their shipmates and their ship.

Most of all, it is a story about leadership. It is the story of a commanding officer's determination that his ship was not going to be merely a good ship; it was going to be the best ship of its class.

It is a story of preparing a newly formed crew to prevail over any threat, then encountering a threat well beyond what any training curriculum could have imagined.

The Samuel B. Roberts, FFG 58, had quite a heritage to live up to, and its crew was well aware of that.

The first U.S. warship named Samuel B. Roberts was a small, hastily built World War II destroyer escort, DE 413. The 1,800-ton vessel was commanded by a reserve officer and assigned to escort duty during the amphibious landings at Leyte Gulf in October 1944.

By all measures, the superior Japanese force should have brushed aside the meager American defenses and wreaked havoc on the landing force. Roberts was ultimately sunk by the gunfire of heavy cruisers, but not before it put a torpedo into one Japanese cruiser and shot up another. The Japanese admiral, thinking he was facing a superior American force, abandoned the attack.

The destroyer escort left big shoes for its modern-day namesake to fill, and the skipper of the frigate Roberts, Cmdr. Paul Rinn, was determined to fill them. He chose as the ship's motto "No Higher Honor," a quote from the Leyte Gulf after-action report of the destroyer escort's skipper.

Author Peniston is the managing editor of Defense News, a sister publication to the Military Times papers. His extensive research is evident in "No Higher Honor."

Peniston covers the ship's construction, manning and training; its deployment to the Persian Gulf to escort Kuwaiti tankers in danger of attack by Iranian forces (and sometimes by Iraqi forces, as well); the mine strike and battle to save the ship; the U.S. attacks on Iranian warships and oil platforms in retribution for the mining of the Roberts; and the repair and reconstruction of the ship -- an undertaking of unprecedented scope for any U.S. shipyard.

By all rights, a ship as badly damaged as the Samuel B. Roberts should not have survived. But the captain's unrelenting emphasis on damage-control training and equipment provided the crew with the edge needed to overcome overwhelming odds and save the ship.

The mining of the Samuel B. Roberts illustrates the potency and danger of mines. Inexpensive and easy to deploy from just about any platform that floats, a mine can cripple or sink even the most sophisticated warship.

Since World War II, mines have sunk five U.S. warships and damaged at least that many more. Yet the Navy continues to give short shrift to offensive and defensive mine warfare.

"No Higher Honor" should be required reading for naval officers. But beyond that, it should be part of the library of anyone, military or civilian, who gives serious thought to how top-performing teams are built and then kept at the top of their game -- be they teams of sailors, teams of workers or teams of managers.

The common denominator is leadership. Beneath the surface of the exciting story it tells, leadership is what this book is all about.

‘No Higher Honor: Saving the USS Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf.’ By Bradley Peniston. Naval Institute Press. 275 pages. $29.95. Available through the Military Times online store.

Navy Rear Adm. Tom Brooks was director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs during the Persian Gulf tanker war at the time the frigate Samuel B. Roberts was damaged and during the retaliatory attacks on Iranian oil platforms and naval ships.