I was serving as a NAVSEA missile test officer at the time of the attack.
Immediately after the attack, my Captain was assigned to the board of inquiry. He assembled a team and flew to the Gulf. He was an engineering duty officer at the time and the head missileer at our shore base in California. After he returned, he and I sat down and he told me all the gory details over a cup of coffee.
Stark was not in a condition of readiness to prevent the attack. One of her fire control operators left his station...IIRC to wake up the next watch. Until just a few minutes before the attack, the CO was heavily involved in Operational Propulsion Plant Exam preps. See...we used to catch the OPPE team and do the exam upon outchop from the Gulf, before reporting back to C6F OPCON. In those days, engineering failures could easily get you fired.
The CO had not instilled in his crew the necessary warrior ethic. They, like many ships had become somewhat lax in their AAW readiness, figuring that nobody in their right mind would attack a United States warship. Most folks, including our own naval officers are poor students of history. You mention Chicago, Vincennes, Astoria, Quincy, or Canberra or Sydney to them (In a naval context.) and most of the time you get a blank stare. The CO was in his head washing his hands when his ship was hit.
The Mk-15 CIWS was not in the required readiness state. It never would have engaged the aircraft, but it might have taken a shot at one or both of the Exocets if it had been operational and in AAW Auto mode and had the OOD/TAO turned the ship about 30degs to starboard to unmask the mount.
The Standard Missile I AAW system was not ready. The fire control radar operators were not ready. The ship never put an FCS on the aircraft until it was too late...after the pilot had already fired his two Exocets. At that point, the ship was toast.
The ship did track the incoming Iraqi Mirage F1EQ5 aircraft. They failed to properly challenge him however...either by voice, or with a fire control radar illuminator with a "bird on the rail". In almost every case (and there were many) like this, as soon as the missile ship lit the bastard up, he turned away quickly. His radar warning receiver will tell him when he's about to be dead.
The aircraft turned away as soon as the ship lit him up with the FC radar...too late.
The first indication that they were under attack was when the lookout saw the rocket exhaust from the incoming missiles.
The first Exocet struck the ship as indicated in the pictures, just forward and below the bridge. As it traveled across the ship, the unexpended rocket fuel burned out the entire large crews' berthing forward, killing all of the personnel. The warhead did not detonate and ended up in the starboard passageway where firefighters proceeded to kick it around out of the way for a while, not understanding what it was until a bright sailor checked it out.
EOD took it away much later.
The second Exocet did hit very close to the first, and the warhead detonated.
The sailor in the RICER electronic spaces died of smoke inhalation.
The fire main was broken. The design was proven to have some vital weaknesses as a result of this fire. Alterations were made to all of the FFGs after that.
The missile magazine/launcher lost its flooding system (no firemain). A brave young E-4 stayed topside and played a hose on the missile launcher for many hours, keeping the damn thing cool so it would not detonate the Standard and Harpoon missiles inside.
Some members of the crew lost it.
The huge amount of free water sloshing around in the large passageways and burned out compartments darn near capsized the ship. The crew got a cutting torch and cut holes in the side to let the water out.
Even if the ship had been at GQ...condition 1 readiness, with all systems ready, she might not have been able to defeat the missile threat. We made serious alterations to the systems to help them successfully engage the very low cruise missiles...but that class of ship and the SM-1 missiles all had a very tough time with small low fliers.
And yes...I suspect Saddam knew exactly what was happening that night.