| An original opinion from Rantburg’s own gorb. |
My thoughts are in no particular order, but here they are. One thing I noticed is that the video seems to have been taken in the dark. Combined with the idea that the tanker was probably evacuated means they could probably easily get away with running a boat up next to it and detaching the unexploded mine.
Conversely, the limpet mines could be attached to a lightly crewed ships almost as easily, especially if there was some kind of simultaneously distraction ploy.
I don't know if the water currents would make placing the limpet mines difficult while the ship was under way.
The photos of the holes in the tankers seems to show them to have been in a line at about 6' above the waterline in all cases. Not exactly where an underwater torpedo would have hit. I do not believe the tankers had been unloaded by the time the pictures were taken.
It seems that any kind of missile or drone would have a hard time duplicating this kind of accuracy regarding hole distance from the waterline.
If the crew of the Japanese tanker noticed drones flying about, they could have been a distraction or they could have just been doing damage assessment of the limpet mines effectiveness. Results might have been used to decide whether further action would be required or if a limpet mine that failed to explode would require removal.
It seems to me that underwater mines could prove to be problematic to remove if they failed to explode, hence the more easily removed above-waterline limpet mines. They would also be less of an "act of war" than suddenly sinking a ship with the crew aboard.
The shape of the holes does not suggest a high speed projectile, which to me means a round hole. It seems to my inexperienced eye the kind of damage a limpet mine or above-waterline bomb might produce.
The symmetry of the damage to both the Norwegian tanker and the Japanese tanker suggest hand placement of the limpet mines.
Of course, if Iran could do this, so could the US. But this feels more like how the Iranians would handle this than what the US would do to try to fake it.