No one has been blamed for a series of misjudgments in which fifteen sailors and marines were seized by Iran in the Gulf in March and were later freed to tell, and in two cases sell, their stories to the media.

The affair that became known as the Iran sailor fiasco, exposed a number of serious “shortcomings” in military judgments that led to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard taking 14 men and one woman hostage, according to a brief published summary of a classified report drawn up by a former Commandant General of the Royal Marines.

Lieutenant-General Sir Rob Fulton was asked by Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, to review what went wrong in the Gulf on March 23 when a boarding party from HMS Cornwall, a Type 22 frigate, inspected a cargo vessel in the narrow international waterway less than two miles from the Iranian coast and were suddenly surrounded by heavily armed Iranian gunboats.

The 15 members of the boarding party who were armed only with SA80 rifles did not open fire and were then seized and taken to Tehran. It was the second time in three years that the Royal Navy had suffered such a fate at the hands of the Iranians. In June 2004 six Royal Marines and two sailors, also involved in a boarding raid, were captured by Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

After the incident, questions were raised about why the boarding party was not protected by HMS Cornwall’s Lynx helicopter, why the frigate was so far away from the boarding incident and why its radar failed to detect the six patrol boats approaching at speed from the Iranian coast.

Mr Browne said that General Fulton’s report would have to remain classified because it contained operational details, but he has handed a copy in confidence to the Commons Defence Committee, and yesterday in his statement to the House he outlined the general criticisms arising from the Fulton review.

Mr Browne said that there were national shortcomings, including a failure to assess all the risks of operating in such a complex environment.

It emerged that each individual member of the boarding party had trained to carry out such operations in the Gulf but they had not been trained as a team. Mr Browne said that he had accepted General Fulton’s recommendation that the Royal Navy should deploy “specialist rather than composite” teams for boarding operations. General Fulton, now retired, also highlighted the need for improvements in the handling of intelligence, and in communications and doctrine.

Admiral Sir Jonathon Band, the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff yesterday admitted that it had been “a bad day in the Royal Navy’s 400-year history”. But no one was blaming the 15 boarding-party members for surrendering to the Iranians.

General Fulton concluded that the events of March 23 were “not the result of a single gross failing or individual human error, but of the coming together of a series of vulnerabilities” which had placed the British personnel “in a position that could be exploited through a deliberate act by an unpredictable foreign power”.

Mr Browne said that General Fulton’s conclusions suggested that there was no case for disciplinary action against any of the individuals involved. “But his report does emphasise that many of those individuals could have done more to prevent what happened,” he told the Commons.

Admiral Band went further. Speaking at a press conference at the Ministry of Defence, he said that an internal inquiry was now under way to establish whether there were any grounds for taking “administrative action” against any of the people involved in the incident. Internal action of this kind can lead to a reprimand or a black mark against an individual’s career or even dismissal.

Security measures have already been taken in the Gulf to allow boarding operations to be restarted last month. They were temporarily suspended after the incident. All 15 members of the boarding party are also back on board HMS Cornwall, still patrolling the Gulf.

Mr Browne said that the Fulton report had made it clear that the incident was not the result of equipment or resources issues. He said that it had been a “coalition operation”, some faults had been identified and were being addressed.

Main points

Findings of report by former Royal Marines Lieutenant-General Sir Rob Fulton into the sailors’ capture:

— Many could have done more to prevent what happened

— Sailors’ capture was not the result of a lack of equipment or resources

— No case for disciplinary action against any individuals

— Need for improved intelligence handling, communications, doctrine and training

— Findings of report by Tony Hall, former BBC director of news, into the sale of the sailors’ stories:

— MoD, not individual services, should be responsible for media relations

— Call for larger and more proactive press office

— Clearer policy on when to name or not to name captured servicemen and women

— More thorough debriefings of servicemen before any are placed before media

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