Drumbeats of War - Persian Gulf Attack
A grenade attack. That what Lloyd’s List Daily Commercial News is saying may have caused the damage to the M.Star, a very large carrier of crude oil, operated by Japan’s Mitsui OSK Lines. LLDCN has been reporting maritime news from Australia since 1892. They are an unimpeachable source. They deal with the economic realities of shipping.
One of the Persian Gulf media outlets, which has continuously protested against the possibility of the incident being an attack, and whose headline read “Attack Ruled out in Hormuz Tanker Incident”, briefly ran a photo of the M. Star in port at Fujairah in the UAE after the attack, with a clear view of the ship and the damage.
The impacted area is on the starboard side of the ship, exactly below the superstructure from where it is navigated, and where the crew’s quarters are.
Since the ship was traveling in the Persian Gulf, coming from the United Arab Emirates, toward the Strait of Hormuz, that means whatever struck it came from the side that was NOT facing Iran. It came from the UAE side.
The ship’s hull looks like it is constructed of rectangular steel plates, about twice as long as they are high, probably welded together. The size of the plates is difficult to estimate, but maybe 3 feet high, 6 feet long.
From the waterline to the railing, the ship is 14 plates high.
I cannot see how long the ship is, but for this class of supertanker, a good guess would be 150 plates long.
The damage is 7 plates high, starting exactly at the waterline.
It is 3 plates wide.
The damaged area is almost perfectly square.
It is caved in perhaps 6 feet at the center of the rectangle. The plates crimpled inward, but are not torn. It is especially crimpled at the waterline. Less so at the top and sides of the square.
The ship’s paint is somewhat discolored in some places, as from fire or explosion, or the results of fighting a fire that apparently broke out on the deck of the ship.
There is no damage visible outside of the rectangle.
Something hit it. That something was not a wave. I’ve looked at photography of large ships whose bows have been ripped apart by rogue waves. Huge holes torn in the sides of ships by rogue waves. And I know that happens more often than most people suspect. But the damage of the M. Star does not in any way look like anything I’ve ever seen from a rogue wave.
Manoj Mathew, master of the two-year old supertanker, reported to Lloyd’s List that the ‘explosion’, as he distinctly called it, blew off five doors of the crew’s quarters and damaged the lifeboat above the explosion. (Other sources said the lifeboat had been ‘blown away’. Apparently not true.)
I can understand Lloyd’s assessment of the event being caused a grenade, by which they probably mean an RPG, rocket propelled grenade, ubiquitous in the killing fields of the Middle East.
Another possibility would be a larger weapon. Like a missile that failed to explode its main charge, but produced a concussion within the ship, which then caused the damage on deck. Israeli sources are theorizing ‘a missile, torpedo or some other means.’ Analysis of the damage may give some answers to those doing the analysis. Not sure if we will ever be privy to those answers, or be sure of them if we are.
But for sure, it looks like the world just dodged a bullet.
