[jambutty]

The point is Ianto.W. any warship at sea will have its main radar operating. No ship would put to sea without them especially in what is to all intents and purposes, a war zone. From the pictures of HMS Cornwall that I have seen you can see three radar aerials. The small one farthest for’ard is the navigation radar and the other two cover the air and sea around the ship. All three would have been operating.

The Iranian flotilla of gunboats didn’t appear out of the blue. They had to travel from somewhere and would have been visible on radar for at least 25 miles and that means that it would take at least half an hour to travel that distance. Lets face it a flotilla of small boats racing across the sea towards HMS Cornwall from Iran had to be considered as at least threatening. They were unlikely to be coming to invite the skipper to a cocktail party.

OK! So sending a shell across the bows of the approaching flotilla maybe a bit olde worlde but a ‘star shell’ a few hundred feet above their heads would certainly have got their attention. In any case what was to prevent the captain from manoeuvring the frigate to put it between the advancing gunboats and the boarding party vessels? Unless in doing so he knew that his ship would be in Iranian waters. And from that it follows that he also knew that his boarding party had strayed.

The rules of engagement would have been the same as they have always been bullseyebarb – if attacked or threatened defend yourself.

The captain has a duty to protect the ship and its crew and he failed to take any action to protect the boarding party.