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Day 31 : Friday 15 February 1991

  • An A-10A scores its second kill of the war, when Todd "Shanghai" Sheehy shoots down an Mi-8
  • A-10s vs Republican Guard
    A-10A 78-0722 was shot down in combat by AAA ground fire 60 miles NW of Kuwait city while attacking Republican Guard targets. Pilot Lt James Sweet ejected and captured.
    A-10A 79-0130 was shot down in combat, hit by ground fire approx 60 miles NW of Kuwait city while attacking Republican Guard targets. The pilot, Capt. Steve Phyllis, died while protecting his downed wingman, 1st Lt. Robert James Sweet.
    More A-10s are damaged in the attack, and the high loss rate of aircraft against an adversary with air defenses comparatively lighter than those of strategic targets results in the A-10s being re-tasked to other missions. B-52s are assigned to attack Republican Guard infantry and armored units and their fortifications, dropping up to 455 tons of bombs on the Republican Guard a day.
  • Iraq says it is prepared to withdraw from Kuwait, but adds conditions, including Israeli pullout from occupied Arab territories, forgiveness of Iraqi debts and allied payment of costs of rebuilding Iraq. President Bush dismisses Iraqi offer as “cruel hoax.” – Allied forces continue moving supplies toward front in preparation for launch of ground war

Edited by Trigger
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Day 31 : Friday 15 February 1991

[*]A-10s vs Republican Guard

A-10A 78-0722 was shot down in combat by AAA ground fire 60 miles NW of Kuwait city while attacking Republican Guard targets. Pilot Lt James Sweet ejected and captured.

A-10A 79-0130 was shot down in combat, hit by ground fire approx 60 miles NW of Kuwait city while attacking Republican Guard targets. The pilot, Capt. Steve Phyllis, died while protecting his downed wingman, 1st Lt. Robert James Sweet.

More A-10s are damaged in the attack, and the high loss rate of aircraft against an adversary with air defenses comparatively lighter than those of strategic targets results in the A-10s being re-tasked to other missions.

Lt "Sweetness" Sweet was Shot down by a SA-13 "Gopher" I watched him giving a briefing about his POW experiences two weeks ago. They went into a trap set up by the Iraqis. The found an assembly of trucks and other stuff not seeing any craters around them. Wondering why it hasn't been hit (since at this time he said you would find craters around every possible target) they rolled in. SOP was setting up a wheel, the guy rolling in not using flares for not being seen and only flaring during pull out. He was hit into the right wing just as is flight lead called for a Sam launch. No time to pull out and go somewhere. His lead was hit by the same system since he tried to average his wing men's shoot down.

Lesson learned from "Sweetness"

1. Don't underestimate your enemy

2. Never assume the enemy does not see you - he will, so flare early

3. A green aircraft camouflage does not help you in blue skies

4. Never go for a re-attack

At the time of the shoot down he was the top sortie flyer of his squadron. He was supposed to be tasked a few days of CSAR alert, which he was happy to be changed, so he could go on a regular mission. Well, after that he was surpassed by his squadron mates, he said with a smile on his lips.

The A-10s where tasked at the time with standard air interdiction at the time of the shoot down, way too far away from the border. This was changed after the losses.

Regards

Scout

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Lt "Sweetness" Sweet was Shot down by a SA-13 "Gopher" I watched him giving a briefing about his POW experiences two weeks ago. They went into a trap set up by the Iraqis. The found an assembly of trucks and other stuff not seeing any craters around them. Wondering why it hasn't been hit (since at this time he said you would find craters around every possible target) they rolled in. SOP was setting up a wheel, the guy rolling in not using flares for not being seen and only flaring during pull out. He was hit into the right wing just as is flight lead called for a Sam launch. No time to pull out and go somewhere. His lead was hit by the same system since he tried to average his wing men's shoot down.

Lesson learned from "Sweetness"

1. Don't underestimate your enemy

2. Never assume the enemy does not see you - he will, so flare early

3. A green aircraft camouflage does not help you in blue skies

4. Never go for a re-attack

At the time of the shoot down he was the top sortie flyer of his squadron. He was supposed to be tasked a few days of CSAR alert, which he was happy to be changed, so he could go on a regular mission. Well, after that he was surpassed by his squadron mates, he said with a smile on his lips.

The A-10s where tasked at the time with standard air interdiction at the time of the shoot down, way too far away from the border. This was changed after the losses.

Regards

Scout

Thanks for the update and input. :thumbsup:

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Day 32 : Saturday 16 February 1991

  • U.S. attack helicopters make first nighttime raids on Iraqi positions.
  • Iraqi authorities claim 130 civilians were killed by British Tornado jet strikes.
  • Iraq fires two Scuds at Israel, hitting southern part of country for first time; no injuries.
  • Iraq’s ambassador to U.N., Abdul Amir al-Anbari, says Iraq will use weapons of mass destruction if U.S. bombing continues.
  • Pentagon says Iraq deliberately staged damage of civilian areas as propaganda.

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Day 33 : Sunday 17 February 1991

  • U.S. and Iraqi troops clash in seven incidents along Saudi-Kuwait border; 20 Iraqis surrender to Apache helicopter fire. In an incident of friendly fire, a U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicle (Bradley) and an M113 Armored Personnel Carrier (M113) were destroyed by two Hellfire missiles fired from an U.S. Apache helicopter commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Hayles, killing two U.S. soldiers and injuring six others.
  • Iraq’s foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, arrives in Moscow for talks with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. He is quoted en route as saying it’s up to allies to act on Iraq’s peace proposal.
  • U.S. military, intelligence officials estimate 15% of Iraq’s fighting forces in Kuwait area have been killed or wounded.
  • President Bush says Iraq’s takeover of Kuwait will end “very, very soon.”

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Day 34 : Monday 18 February 1991

  • Floating mines strike two U.S. warships in gulf. USS Tripoli and USS Princeton damaged but still operational.
  • F-16C 84-1218 develops an engine fire over Iraq. The pilot, Capt Scott “Spike” Thomas ejects and is rescued by a USAF CSAR helicopter roughly 40 miles north of the Saudi border.

Didn't realize CSAR was so busy!

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Day 34 : Monday 18 February 1991

  • Floating mines strike two U.S. warships in gulf. USS Tripoli and USS Princeton damaged but still operational.
  • F-16C 84-1218 develops an engine fire coming off a target over Iraq. The pilot, Capt Scott “Spike” Thomas ejects and is rescued by a USAF CSAR helicopter roughly 40 miles north of the Saudi border.

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Day 35 : Tuesday 19 February 1991

  • OA-10A 76-0543 is shot down by an SA-9 62 nm North West of Kuwait city. The pilot, Lt Col Jeffery Fox was injured as he ejected, captured as POW and released Mar 5, 1991.
  • Baghdad Radio reports Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz has returned to Baghdad with Soviet peace proposal. President Bush says Soviet proposal falls “well short” of what’s needed to end war.
  • Iranian newspaper cites Iraqi official as saying Iraq has suffered 20,000 dead, 60,000 wounded.
  • U.S. Marines bombard Iraqi targets inside Kuwait with heavy artillery fire for second consecutive day.
  • Saudi officials say gulf oil slick is smaller than originally feared – 60 million gallons, not 400 million.

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During the first 6 months of Operation Desert Shield, 1st Marine Division spent a great deal of time scrutinizing the 8-year Iran-Iraq war. Planners learned that Iraqi artillery was very effective in trapping Iranian soldiers in confined areas called firesacks, where thousands of Iranians perished. The firesack, like our engagement area, is an area along an enemy avenue of approach intended to contain and destroy an enemy force with the massed fires of all available weapons.

Studies of the two obstacle belts in Kuwait and the positioning of more than 1,200 Iraqi artillery pieces behind those obstacle belts indicated that when the Marines attacked, the Iraqis meant to trap them in at least two firesacks. Marine planners also recognized that their available aviation ordnance was not sufficient to destroy the Iraqi artillery during the first phase of Operation Desert Storm. Therefore, planners designed a series of combined-arms raids to defeat the Iraqis’ plan before they even attacked into Kuwait.

On January 19th, Marine aircraft conducted their first raid. Coalition forces were going to move an artillery battery, escorted by a light armored infantry company, close to the Kuwaiti border at night. A Marine EA-6B Prowler EW aircraft was to be stationed inside Saudi airspace to jam the Iraqis’ radars until after the entire artillery battery had fired on a designated target. As the artillery battery started to withdraw, EA-6B aircraft would stop jamming just long enough for the Iraqis to detect the battery’s movement before it began jamming again. The intent was to cause the Iraqi artillery to respond to Marine indirect fires. Once the Iraqis began firing, a Marine forward air controller (airborne) (FAC[A]) in a Marine F/A-18 Hornet detected the Iraqis’ muzzle flashes and directed a flight of Marine F/A-18s to roll in on the firing Iraqi artillery. The plan’s goal was to convince Iraqi artillerymen not to man their artillery pieces for fear that every time they did so Marine aircraft would attack them.

By the third week in February, after a series of these raids, the plan’s goal was achieved. UAVs showed Iraqi artillerymen abandoning their howitzers as Marine aircraft began attacking their positions. These successful raids at the tactical level had dramatic effect at the operational level. The fear of an attack from aviation assets made Iraqi artillery ineffective in the final phase of the war. This undoubtedly saved many lives and contributed to the strategic success of Operation Desert Storm.

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Day 36 : Wednesday 20 February 1991

  • One American killed, seven wounded in fighting along Saudi border. U.S. helicopters destroy Iraqi bunker complex; up to 500 Iraqis taken prisoner.
  • U.S. planes attack 300 Iraqi vehicles 60 miles into Kuwait, destroying 28 tanks.
  • Baghdad Radio says Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz will travel to Moscow “soon” with Saddam Hussein’s reply to Soviet peace proposal.
  • Allied commander Norman Schwarzkopf is quoted as saying Iraq’s military is on “verge of collapse.”
  • U.S. officials want Iraq to announce specific timetable for withdrawing from Kuwait as condition for peace settlement.

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Speaking of artillery, I remember a story a professor of mine told about when he was working intel in the Pentagon during ODS. He was called in by the air force to do a bomb damage assessment of a B-52 strike on an Iraqi artillery battery. According to him, on the post strike photos, the sticks of bombs from the BUFFs had drawn three lines cleanly through the position, but did not intersect with a single gun. My professor asked his air force colleagues if they had close-ups of the guns so he could see if they had maybe at least been damaged by fragments from the bombs, but the air force had no such close-ups. The Air Force wanted to write the strike off as a success since the bombs had hit the correct geographical location, even though the arty was intact. Needless to say that my professor was rather incredulous.

(Disclaimer: This is all based off a personal account that I cannot verify by other means, and is also subject to my poor memory)

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Day 37 : Thursday 21 February 1991

  • Soviet spokesman Vitaly Ignatenko announces Iraq, Soviet Union have agreed on plan that could lead to Iraqi withdrawal.
  • Saddam Hussein declares Iraq remains ready to fight ground war.
  • Defense Secretary Dick Cheney says allies are preparing “one of the largest land assaults of modern times.”
  • Seven U.S. soldiers killed in helicopter crash – war’s deadliest non- combat accident to date. At approximately 0300 on 21 February, four pilots and crew from the 160th SOAR and three Delta operators were killed when an MH-60 helicopter crashed into a sand dune during zero-visibility weather conditions near the Ar Ar airfield. The ground team was reportedly conducting counterforce operations when one of the team was injured in a fall from a cliff and required medevac, to which the 160th responded.

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Speaking of artillery, I remember a story a professor of mine told about when he was working intel in the Pentagon during ODS. He was called in by the air force to do a bomb damage assessment of a B-52 strike on an Iraqi artillery battery. According to him, on the post strike photos, the sticks of bombs from the BUFFs had drawn three lines cleanly through the position, but did not intersect with a single gun. My professor asked his air force colleagues if they had close-ups of the guns so he could see if they had maybe at least been damaged by fragments from the bombs, but the air force had no such close-ups. The Air Force wanted to write the strike off as a success since the bombs had hit the correct geographical location, even though the arty was intact. Needless to say that my professor was rather incredulous.

(Disclaimer: This is all based off a personal account that I cannot verify by other means, and is also subject to my poor memory)

The BDA from the 1991 war was absolutely nightmarish. They has a hellacious time trying to figure out what was and wasn't hit. This is one of the reasons why the JSF program for example has such emphasis on ISR, and why UAVs are so popular. Schwartzkopf once crushed a subordinate who said an Iraqi division was 65 percent effective "Are you sure its not 66 percent?! or 64?!" and in the end you really couldn't know. It was very hard to tell if the Airpower was killing 60 tanks every night or rekilling the same tanks again that had been hit last week. maybe half were hit last week so only 30 tanks were actually newly hit and destroyed, but 60 Targets hit. It was really really tough to tell, and of course we couldn't tell if we were killing equipment long since abandoned, or if the Iraqis (keeping in mind all the US military leadership were Vietnam vets) the Iraqis had deceptive targets and violent determination. Even after the war, exactly how much enemy equipment, infrastructure and deaths was much debated and never solved.

Interesting interview, touches on some of the tactical problems with assessment and targeting, along with the build up to the Ground war, which if you are paying a attention is only a few days away.

Interview with Lieutenant General Calvin Waller, Deputy Commander of Central Command (CENTCOM)

Q: You caused a rumpus when you said in no uncertain terms that the army needed more time to build up. Did the politicians in the White House understand the scale of the logistics that was required?

Waller: You know, there was an enormous upheaval in early December when I made the comment that the ground forces would not be ready for combat on January the 15th, so let me try to reconstruct for you precisely what went through my mind and what was happening and why I said what I said. I knew precisely what the war plan was all about and how it was going to take place, I knew that we had an air plan that was designed to go on for weeks and then the ground plan would come to fruition and we would launch the ground attack, but I certainly wasn't going to tell Saddam Hussein what our plan was, so in early December I was doing an interview with some reporters who had come over on the plane with Secretary Cheney and they kept pressing me about the magic January the 15th date, which was a date that had been established, which I kept asking where did this date come from, who established January 15 as this critical date - I couldn't really find anyone who could tell me why it was so critical other than it had been a date that had been sort of plucked out of thin air as a date we wanted Saddam to be out of Kuwait or we were going to do something, so when the reporters asked me about January the 15th I told them that, yes, the air force would be ready, yes, the Marines would be ready, I said, yes, I think the Marines will be ready, because the Marines had been there early on and were in position. They asked me if the ground combat forces would be ready to attack on January the 15th and I said, no, they will not be.

Now that was the truth and the reason it was the truth, because at that time we only had 18th Airborne Corps in the country and 18th Airborne Corps, except for the 24th Division, was basically a light infantry division - you don't send light infantry divisions and one heavy division against what we were told were thousands of forces. Now if the President of the United States had made a decision to bring in VII Corps and over 130,000 forces in that Corps from Europe, then it must have been important for them to be on the ground, in their attack positions, with their equipment fully uploaded, with all of the ammunition needed to fight a war. Now I knew that that was not going to happen until mid-February sometime, so I couldn't fathom how anyone could think that we would be ready for a ground attack on January the 15th when the VII Corps was still being shipped over via ships and their ammunition as well as many of their tanks and other combat equipment hadn't even arrived in the country, so the people who castigated me and the people who said that I didn't know what I was talking about, they're the ones in my opinion who did not understand modern warfare. You can't ask a corps to fight a war if it isn't in its positions, if they don't have the people there, if they don't have their weapons ready, and if they aren't prepared to fight.

Q: But the people in the White House and Brent Scowcroft in particular, still feel to this day that if he hadn't hurried things along, General Schwarzkopf would still be out there in the desert waiting for one more battalion. What would have happened if the White House had said, 'hey, you've got enough forces, the Soviets are causing us problems, we want the land war to start on January the 15th?'

Waller: Let me tell you about one of my greatest concerns about that January the 15th date was I knew that if we started the air war on January the 15th, which we did, and we were perfectly capable of doing it because we had an outstanding air war plan, my greatest fear was that after using all of these marvellous airmen and doing all of these great things in the first 10 days of the war, that someone would say, okay, enough of this air attacks and enough of all of this bombing these people, let's go in on the ground and punish them or root them out and send 'em home from Kuwait, and that goes back to what I was saying a bit earlier, how are you going to do that if you only have the 18th Airborne Corps in place, you can't do it, it would have been .. it would have been .. an analogy would have been like sending sheep or lambs to the slaughter, you can't expect one corps which is basically a light corps made up of America's finest airborne paratroopers, made up of the 101st Air Assault Division, and the 24th Division, only one heavy division, the rest of 'em are basically light infantry divisions.

Q: But you and General Schwarzkopf were worried that the White House would say to you, 'go now.' What would you guys have done?

Waller: I was very concerned about whether or not some political figure would make a decision and would press to start the ground war before the VII Corps was in place in their attack positions ready to start the war, that was one of my gravest concerns. I did not want to see a bunch of young Americans or other coalition forces lose their lives because we had not taken the time to put the people in position that was there. I asked General Schwarzkopf, what happens if after 9 days, 10 days of bombing, someone says from the White House or from the Department of Defence, alright, enough of this, go in on the ground, and he says I will resign and I said, well, then what does that mean, and he says, well then probably you'll be in charge, and I said if I resign that means they keep going down the line till they find somebody who will do it and then we will suffer a lot of casualties in my opinion needlessly, so it was of the utmost concern to both Norman Schwarzkopf and myself that someone might pressure to start the ground attack before we had VII Corps in position.

Q: The atmospherics that you were getting through Colin Powell, I mean you must have been well aware of all the General McClellan jibes --were you aware that all this stuff was going on behind your backs in the White House?

Waller: One of our greatest concerns was although that the Civil War series was on back in the States at the time, was well done, it made instant military experts out of a lot of people in the White House and across America, because then all of a sudden watching the Civil War series, some 14 hours of it, decided they wanted to liken Norman Schwarzkopf to General McClellan and me to someone else and maybe every commander they tried to line up and said, you know, that's Jeb Stewart or that's McClellan or that is Longstreet, so forth and so on, and that was a grave disservice to us I believe, that it happened to be on that particular time, because these instant military experts would say, well, these guys are like McClellan, they want to have all of the troops that they can possibly get, and to an extent that is true, if we made a decision to bring 'em in and the decision was made, then in my opinion it is folly not to wait until they get on the ground and are prepared to fight, so all I said and I think Norman Schwarzkopf agreed with me was let's wait until our forces that have been designated to get here are here and ready to fight before we launch some premature ground attack.

Q: Was there any specific conversation or incident that you recall linked to this conversation with Norman Schwarzkopf which made you think, hey, there really is a head of steam building up in the White House to do this earlier?

Waller: Yes, because he talked to General Colin Powell sometimes 3 or 4 times a day and, you know, on some occasions even more frequent than that that he talked to him and of course Colin Powell knew about what was happening in the political halls of the White House and the Pentagon about people wanting to draw an analogy between McClellan and General Schwarzkopf, so I think on several occasions he mentioned this to Norman Schwarzkopf, he being Colin Powell, mentioned it to Norman Schwarzkopf that, hey, people back here think that you don't want to really do this, don't have the stomach for it, you know, just heads up, be alert to this particular point and of course General Schwarzkopf was upset by those kind of remarks, being an astute military historian he didn't particularly take kindly to someone calling him a McClellan.

Q: Can you recall for me the day when Norman Schwarzkopf was told that people in the White House were saying he was like General McClellan?

Waller: Yes, as I recall it was one of the early afternoon calls that General Powell made and mentioned to Norman Schwarzkopf that we should get on with things and get it organised and get it done because General Schwarzkopf was being referred to as another McClellan - after that telephone conversation was over with, I think Norman Schwarzkopf broke a pencil, probably took another one and chewed off the head of the .. the eraser off of the pencil and then related to me that there were individuals somewhere in the White House who were referring to him as another McClellan and needless to say that was not a good day to be in the Riyadh headquarters of the CENTCOM because Norman Schwarzkopf was bitterly opposed to being referred to as another McClellan and after that particular comment we made sure we renewed every effort to get on with doing what needed to be done as expeditiously as possible, in spite of the fact that we were doing everything that we could in the first place, but Norman Schwarzkopf did not want to be referred to as another McClellan.

Q: Just how big a force was VII Corps, I mean people have said to me it was the army that was going to fight the Third World War.

Waller: When you look at the total size of this force and when you want to compare the size of it, it's 130,000 souls, men and women in that Corps, that's larger than many of our cities in the United States. I mean when you look at the number of divisions that it brought with it, with the artillery groups, with the air defence group, with the battalions of support, with the engineering battalions, with the artillery battalions, with all of the things that must support this entire Corps, you're talking about moving the equivalent of a city of 130,000 people, and let's just take a city of 130,000 people in the United States and say pick it up and move everything that's in that city, lock stock and barrel, 7,000 miles away, or 4,000 miles over the ocean I would say, less than what it was from the United States to Saudi Arabia, but that's the equivalent of what we had to do, move 130,000 people that belonged to VII Corps from Europe to the desert in Saudi Arabia, house them, feed them, clothe them, outfit them with everything that they needed from a toothbrush to a toilet or to a shower or what have you, an enormous undertaking logistically to do such a thing.

Q: Did the guys in the White House understand this?

Waller: Many people have said did the politicians understand what it took to move a force of 130,000 people from NATO to the desert, I don't think people had a clue as to what it takes to do that. Most people have difficulty in moving their household goods from one place to another, but if you could just imagine, and I would like for politicians to understand when they talk about moving an army corps of 130,000, plus or minus a few, from one continent to another and from one side of the world to another side of the world, across the ocean, and say do that, just imagine it would be like moving the equivalent of 100,000 furniture vans from one place to another, and if you can imagine doing that, everybody moving at one time, imagine having a city of 100,000, all of a sudden everybody leaving that city at one time or within days of each other - an enormous undertaking and task, and a lot of politicians don't have a clue, had no appreciation for what it would take in order to make that happen.

Q: Of course Brent Scowcroft's a general, he must understand.

Waller: I think if you checked this distinguished gentleman's background, you will find that most of his time was spent in the Air Force, not in tactical units, not knowing what the Army is all about and what it takes to move the Army from point A to point B - it's a bit different from moving an aircraft squadron or a wing that can basically get into its airplane, fly the wing where it needs to be and then put the supporting equipment on various kinds of box cars, or other.......most of those people can get into their aircrafts and fly and be at point A within 12 to 15 hours. Now the other equipment has to come along behind them but when you're talking about a 130,000 man Corps, that's a big difference than moving an aircraft squadron or wing from point A to point B.

Q: When did you actually know that there would be an air war?

Waller: I realised that we were going to have an air war in December, when Secretary of Defence Cheney, along with General Powell, their advisers, came to Riyadh to receive an updated briefing from us there in the Central Command headquarters, about where we were, where we had to go and what was needed in order to launch the campaign. It was clear to me after we finished that series of briefing, in December, that the will of Secretary of Defence, as well as the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, that we were committed to go into some form of warfare and I knew that we were going to at least launch the air campaign. I wasn't sure whether or not we would have to launch the ground campaign but I knew after those series of briefings that at least we were going to enter into the air campaign.

Q: What was giving you the clue?

Waller: I received several clues from that visit, where the resolve of the Secretary of Defence, the very pointed questions, the resolve of the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Powell, was such that you knew that obviously they had talked with the President and the President's advisers and that the message, through body language, through the way that they conveyed their messages and so forth, that they were very serious about getting Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and therefore I felt that we were going to at least launch the air campaign, which we did.

Q: And how did it come about that the air campaign was launched on January the 16th at that specific moment?

Waller: Well, after the December briefing and then the Secretary of Defence and the chairman departed Riyadh, they went back to the United States, to Camp David specifically, to brief President Bush about their trip to Riyadh. Shortly after their briefing to President Bush and President Bush's advisers, we received word in Riyadh, through General Powell, to General Schwarzkopf, that the .. at least the air campaign had been approved and that we would launch that on January the 15th, which was January the 16th our time at zero zero one, so that we set about to launch the air campaign precisely on the date that had been established and set.

Q: Can you describe that meeting where you went into Schwarzkopf's office and heard there was going to be an air war?

Waller: Well, you know, obviously this is a very top secret type of conversation that took place so we made sure that we were in a very secure setting when General Schwarzkopf decided to tell the key individuals there at Riyadh about the decision that had been made, so there must have been ten of us or who huddled in a room as I recall and we got the word from General Schwarzkopf that he had just received confirmation from General Powell that the President of the United States had approved the launching of the air campaign on January the 15th, United States time, January the 16th our time, so it was a pretty sombre period, we sat around and reflected on precisely what that meant, we reflected on the things that we needed to do between that day and the start of affairs, of the launch of the air campaign, and everyone went about his business in a very professional way and left there with the feeling of an enormous sense of responsibility and a very heavy weight on your shoulders, that this decision was going to possibly cause the loss of lives of a lot of great young Americans and other coalition warriors. So I don't think anyone took it lightly and, you know, everyone took it very seriously and people went back to their offices and to their respective places of duty to reflect on that and then to do the things that needed to be done in order to prepare.

Q: There wasn't a sense of euphoria?

Waller: I do not ever recall any sense of euphoria that we are now going to go kick some butt, this is what we all have been training for, are ready to do, I don't ever recall anyone giving any sort of--this is it, let's go do it and make it happen, it was a very very somber moment and I think most of the people who received that message from General Schwarzkopf were very reflective on their responsibilities and what they needed to do in order to make a success of what it was we were about to accomplish and do.

Q: Did General Schwarzkopf discuss with you his worries about the air campaign and his worries about the casualties? ...

Waller: No, General Schwarzkopf never reflected with me about the launch of the air campaign, about what was going to happen. Once that decision was made and he had announced it, I think he resigned himself to the fact that this is destiny, the handwriting is on the wall, there's not a lot that needs to be said about it or there's nothing much we can do to change it so we went our separate ways so to speak and we never really sat down and reflected on that at all, once that decision was made, there was just too much work to be done to really sit around and reflect, because that meant we had an awful lot of other things that we needed to accomplish and to get in place as a follow-on to the air campaign.

Q: That first night of the war, can you describe for me how General Schwarzkopf made his entrance and what happened?

Waller: Well, the first night of the war was really a unique sort of experience. Most of us, those people who had seats in the war room, were there long before the designated hour, and as I recall, at a few minutes before the first aircraft was to be launched and to hit its target, the door popped open and the announcement was made, ladies and gentlemen, the commanding chief of Central Command, and General Schwarzkopf came through the door, moved to his place at a table, and he turned to his right where the chaplain was standing and he asked the chaplain to say a prayer, and the chaplain said that prayer, and after the prayer was over his senior military executive, Colonel Bell, had a tape recorder and walked to the table, put the tape recorder on the war room table, punched a button and Lee Greenwood's song, "God Bless The USA" came bursting from the radio and we all stood there at rigid attention and listened at Lee Greenwood sing his song, and when that song was over with we took our seats at the table and then it was a matter of waiting and praying that those airplanes that had been launched, for which there was probably no recall at this particular time, that they would get to their targets safely and that we wouldn't lose nearly as many aircraft as we expected that we were going to lose.

Q: Jack Leide told me he didn't think there was a dry eye in the house, was it a very emotional moment?

Waller: I would say to you that it's one of the most emotional moments I've ever experienced, here was a senior leadership of the Central Command, responsible for the lead of most of the coalition forces, all of us feeling an enormous sense of responsibility, not knowing what to expect, very emotional to be there and to not be able to accomplish or to do anything except wait for the telephone to ring, for someone to tell you that we have lost X number of planes or we have X number of planes that have returned and we lost no planes or we lost no lives, and the wait was excruciating, agonising, to sit there and to be able to do nothing but just to wait to see what was going to happen ... so yes, it was very emotional.

Q: What were you thinking as an individual, not as a general but as an individual.

Waller: My thought process ran something along these lines, I have been a soldier for a long period of time, I have done everything in my power to prepare these great Americans and other coalition forces for this particular moment, I hope that we are successful and that we will lose as few lives as humanly possible, because I was so concerned about the enormous projection that had been made about how many planes we might lose, about the kind of air defence that Saddam Hussein had around Baghdad, I was just so concerned that those planes would roll in to Baghdad and that many of them would never ever return to their bases or to their ships, and I was thinking about .. most of them were young people and I was thinking about most of those pilots who were flying those planes were young enough to be my sons and I was thinking about my two sons and how I would feel as a parent if they were going over Baghdad and so forth and I knew that a lot of their parents had no idea that their sons or daughters were en route to this sort of thing, so I just tried to put myself in the kind of mood and situation where I looked upon it as a loving parent, that I'd done the best I possibly could and now hopefully their skills would bring them through it.

Q: And when this music was being played, can you describe General Schwarzkopf, what did he look like?

Waller: I glanced over to see how Norman Schwarzkopf was sort of taking what was going on with Lee Greenwood's song and he like everybody else had a tear in his eye, very emotional, somber, and probably thinking much along the same lines that I think I was and that was that we had done our very best and there was not a lot we could do at this time, that they were on their own and God help them.

Q: What else do you remember about that night, . I mean do you recall the moment the television went off the air, for example?

Waller: Well, oddly enough that particular night there were several things that will always remain with me. The first thing that I remember was getting a report that the first aircraft that was supposed to make the first attack was successful, which had opened a hole in the line.

Q: When you heard the news it was successful, I mean what did you think?

Waller: It was an enormous amount of elation when you heard that the first aircraft was successful in knocking out its target so that we could breach the air defence line and hopefully the rest of the aircraft or many of the aircraft could go through that particular breach in that air defence line and...

Q: What were you saying to each other, I mean you were next to General Schwarzkopf?

Waller: Well, it was sort of like being in a football game where a touchdown is scored, because there was a lot of pounding the table saying that's super, that's great, that is .. it was, you know, a moment of elation, it was very very .. very very good news when the report came in that the aircraft had been successful in doing that so, you know, it was the first taste of shall I say victory, it was the first in a series of many good things that happened that particular evening, and then as time wore on, of course you know we had some journalists in Baghdad and of course they were on CNN live, talking about various things, what was happening and so forth, and when the word came from these journalists that the aircraft were over Baghdad, we were again elated that they had made it to Baghdad but then when their success was so evident, because then all of a sudden the journalists who were there were scrambling to find some safety and when they were knocked off of the air because one of the major targets that we had put to our air campaign was to get those television stations and towers and so forth, when they went off the air we knew that at least we'd been successful in stopping some of the transmissions from Baghdad.

Q: How did you learn, did you have a television there or someone came and told you?

Waller: Yes, we had a television in the war room and it was in the corner of the war room and we could all, you know, glance to our right and look up a bit and we could see what was happening on the television in the war room, and we also had targeted the power stations in Baghdad and when the power went out and everyone said it was darkness, total darkness over in Baghdad, then again we knew we had been successful in at least reaching those targets.

Q: What did General Schwarzkopf say, you were sitting next to him ...

Waller: I was sitting next to Norman Schwarzkopf and as I recall he turned to me and he says, at least we have reached Baghdad, at least we have accomplished hitting some major targets and maybe it's going to be okay.

Q: What else do you recall from that night?

Waller: I guess the most elated feeling that I have or that I can ever recall from that particular night was that after the first wave of aircraft finished their first runs and as I recall all of them returned to their bases or to their ships and I think we only had one that did not return, so it was an overwhelming feeling of success because I mean we had .. we had a prediction of losing anywhere between 20 and 50 aircraft that night and as bad as it was to lose one, it was just such a good feeling to have the vast majority of them return safely, so that was just a overwhelming feeling of success.

Q: And then the Scuds came and there was enormous political pressure to do something, to stop the Scuds. How was this pressure to do something transmitted to you guys?

Waller: Once Saddam Hussein launched those Scuds, it was one of the most non-productive times that I think that we had during the conflict. Why do I say that? I say that because we had to divert an enormous amount of time, energy, combat resources into trying to find these mobile launch Scuds, we had a great appreciation for what was happening in Israel and how the people in Riyadh and other parts of Saudi Arabia felt about the Scuds being launched in their directions and so forth, and I don't want to diminish for one minute how these people felt, but on the other hand I would like for people to understand and appreciate that our primary mission was to bring Saddam Hussein and his military machinery to their knees and to do what the United Nations had asked us to do and that was to get him out of the sovereign state of Kuwait and here we were devoting an awful lot of our energies and time and combat power to looking for these Scud missiles.

Q: Was General Schwarzkopf getting frustrated that the politicians didn't understand this?

Waller: There was frustration on the part of everybody, there was frustration on the part of the air forces, the coalition air forces, having to divert a lot of time and energy to that, there was frustration on the part of our staff who didn't have a sense of how we could find these mobile Scud missiles, there was a frustration that we didn't know precisely how many of these things that Saddam had, it was just an overwhelming sense of helplessness - here we had this tremendous machinery of combat power and that these sort of insignificant, inaccurate Scuds which was basically a area weapon, a terrace type weapon, was causing us such an enormous problem from the standpoint of diversion of critical resources to trying to find these things.

Q: Do you recall any specific moments when General Schwarzkopf came to you and said ... you know, the guys in Washington just don't understand!

Waller: Almost on a daily basis General Schwarzkopf was receiving an enormous amount of help from politicians and from General Powell as to what might be done or how it might be done in finding these Scud missiles and those people who didn't have the responsibility always seemed to have an easy answer, just go out there and find them, go out there and cordon off this whole area and stop it, and as I recall, I remember discussing with Norman Schwarzkopf that this is like looking for a truck in the state of Maine, because the area where these things were coming from was about the size of the state of Maine, so if you could imagine having a truck moving around the forests of Maine and someone trying to find it with aircraft or an overhead or whatever, and remember that most of those aircraft were flying at some 500 plus miles an hour, to find this truck in Maine it would be rather difficult, and for those people who said just send some forces out there to have them to .. you know, scurry around the area and to find them, did not have an appreciation for how far this force would be away from their base and just what an enormous task it is to try to be on foot and cover an area the size of Maine.

Q: And what did General Schwarzkopf say to you about the people who came up with neat easy answers?

Waller: Well, needless to say, General Schwarzkopf was a bit taken aback by how so many people seemed to be offering so many easy answers but yet didn't understand the enormous task that was at hand, so I think he had a few choice words for some of those individuals ...He called them pony-headed politicians who had never fought their way out of a wet paper bag, here they are trying to tell, you know, this enormous collection of military experts how to accomplish this task of finding and destroying these Scuds.

Q: Your conversation with Norman Schwarzkopf about Scuds -- what did he do as a result of it?

Waller: Well for days we were scratching our head and worrying about what it was we were going to do to solve this problem of finding these Scuds in this place the size of Maine and I said to General Schwarzkopf, I said, do you know, we're wasting a lot of manpower, a lot of energy, a lot of time, a lot of resources looking for these things when the actual danger of one of these Scuds is about as much danger of being killed by a Scud as it is by being hit by lightning in a Georgia storm. Now Norman Schwarzkopf took that statement and went on national TV and used this analogy in a Press conference and needless to say it did not go over very well when the people of Israel heard this and when many other people around the country heard it, because they thought it was a bit insensitive on his part, and the telephone rang and he got a call from the chairman saying we'd better lighten up on using analogies about Georgia lightning and comparing that to what's happening with the people of Israel, so Norman Schwarzkopf was quite concerned and never used those kind of analogies again.

Q: And he launched a few more missions ... what did he do after that?

Waller: Well we continued to dedicate aircraft to looking for Scuds, we brought in some highly skilled forces to try to find those Scuds and to prevent them from going into their favourite places to launch those Scuds into Israel.

Q: What were the Army guys saying to you as the air campaign went on?

Waller: As the air campaign went on past the two or three week mark and it was obvious to everyone that the Air Force had suppressed the enemy air, that there were no planes being launched against it, that it had pretty much free rein to fly anywhere they wanted to over the battlefield and so forth, the ground forces and especially the ground forces commanders were very concerned that we should start shaping the battlefield and shaping the battlefield in military language means you want to destroy those targets that are in front of the ground forces, that can have a direct influence or impact on what your mission is, so the ground forces commanders were very concerned that the targets out to their immediate front were not being hit with the frequency that they felt that would soften up or destroy these targets so it would make their job easier to breach the enemy lines and to reach their objectives, so I started receiving a lot of phone calls from commanders saying when are we going to do more to shape the battlefield and so then I had to go to General Schwarzkopf and tell him that we weren't doing enough to shape the battlefield and that caused a large problem with the Air Force in accomplishing what we needed to accomplish in shaping the battlefield.

Q: So how did you solve this?

Waller: Well, in order to solve this problem I had to have several different meetings with different people. I met with the commanders of the ground forces and they told me in no uncertain terms that they were not happy with the results of what was happening and so forth, so then I had to meet with the Air Force, we had a single air component commander who all air forces reported to him, which was General Horner, so I met with General Horner and his people to discuss what was taking place and how the ground commanders felt.

Q: Chuck Horner says he met with you and that he was hitting these targets. It was just that Army intelligence was too slow, didn't understand, and anyway he was going to get round to them in the end, it was all a fuss over nothing.

Waller: Well, General Horner thought that maybe it was a fuss over nothing, that he would get around to these targets when he .. when he had time to, but what General Horner evidently didn't appreciate was that when you have to launch your division or your battalion or your brigade across those lines and you see day in and day out that there are thousands of other targets being hit and the ones that are right out in front of you are still there and not being hit, then you keep asking yourself, why do they continue to hit all of those targets in Baghdad when I have hundreds of targets right out in front of me that should be hit but nobody's hitting 'em.

Q: That's because you Army guys don't understand that air power's changed and it's strategic and that they could win the war by hitting these targets.

Waller: Well, there are many commanders who felt that it was absolutely of the utmost importance if they were going to have a ground attack that that battlefield should be shaped and it should be shaped forthwith, rather than to continue to hit strategic targets. Now those people who are into strategic targets may believe and feel that it is more important to hit strategic targets than it is to shape the battlefield but I can guarantee you that when you're on the ground and you're faced with fighting for your life and for your men's lives, that you're going to be far more concerned with what's out in front of you than you are with what's happening in downtown Baghdad.

Q: Buster Glosson was good at giving the hard sell to Norman Schwarzkopf, can you describe what Buster Glosson used to do? . Waller: You know, when you try to set the stage about what was really going on with the Air Force, now this is Cal Waller's opinion, I really believe that Buster Glosson really believed in his own mind that if he could just have a few more days and hit a few more targets, that there wouldn't be a need for a ground war. Now hardly anybody else believed that but I think in Buster's own mind he believed it, so he wanted to use every asset, every resource, to pound those strategic targets that would ultimately bring Saddam Hussein and his leaders or forces to their knees and they would cry ...... and give up, so when I took it upon myself with the blessing of General Schwarzkopf to become the head of the targeting group so to speak and set the priorities for what targets would be hit, it was incumbent upon me to make sure that we were doing an adequate job of hitting those targets in front of the ground forces where the commanders felt that they were most vulnerable.

So every evening at the evening brief, the 7 o'clock follies it was called, when it was time for General Glosson to get up and brief General Schwarzkopf on what targets were going to be hit the next day, Buster Glosson would use an approach that I could draw an analogy to as sort of a snake oil salesman - he would put up his little chart and point so quickly that if you weren't really attuned to what was going on, you might miss what targets were supposed to be hit, and then he would tell General Schwarzkopf in sort of hushed tones so that only General Schwarzkopf and maybe the three or four people who were right there at the table leaning forward straining could hear him say why it was so important to hit these targets that he had hit, and in many cases they were strategic targets and didn't have much to do with shaping the battlefield, so ..

Q: How would he describe them?

Waller: Well, he would say that this is the Didiwad Didibelin, this is where all of the leaders of the political party of Saddam Hussein will be holding their meetings and if we can just destroy this building, you know, it's going to bring everything in Baghdad to a standstill, or he would show some bridge and say that everything that must go anywhere comes over this bridge and this is the single most important bridge in the world, he'd say we've got to hit this one and knock it out and, you know, General Schwarzkopf would say okay and he would show some other building, how important it was, because this is where all of the things are being made that will cause the little .. Republican Guards to materialise and so forth and so on, it was unbelievable as to how he would give this briefing to General Schwarzkopf, and then he would go out and those resources that had been targeted for shaping the battlefield or to solve some of the commanders problems, I think if the weather looked bad, if it looked like there was going to be a cloud over that area, anything that he could do to refrag. or to change that target, he would divert the aircraft from doing it. So after several days of this, I said to General Glosson, Buster, if you change one more target without my approval I'm going to choke your tongue out, so that was pretty graphic but I wanted to make sure he understood the message and that was let's shape the battlefield prior to sending another 10 aircraft to hit the Basra party headquarters which was already in rubble.

Q: Buster Glosson says --if he could carried on hitting the strategic targets, Saddam would have waved the white flag...

Waller: Anyone who says that if they had been allowed just a few more days of strategic bombing that there wouldn't have been a need for a ground attack, I think is absolutely smoking something or is on some form of drugs that is not having he or she deal in reality. We had 41 days of bombing, so how many more days do you need to bring 'em to their knees? We were being severely criticised in the Press here at home and around the world for the Highway of Death, I mean let's get real, how much more rubble could we cause, how much more hitting of strategic targets in Baghdad would have caused Saddam Hussein to move his forces out of the desert? I have never seen a strategic air campaign yet that moved one enemy soldier off of a piece of terrain. Ultimately if you want to gain Kuwait back and if you want to do what the United Nations charged us to do, you've got to go on the ground and take it back. Saddam Hussein was not going to vacate the trenches in the area where he was without someone going in on the ground kicking him out. We had over a month, a month and a third if you want to be more precise, to try to win that war with strategic air and I don't think strategic air would have caused Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait.

Q: Once you started your job and started to get them to hit these targets, you discovered they were diverting to other things. What were they doing and what did you do about it?

Waller: Well, one of the things that I found after trying to prioritise where the aircraft would go, especially to shape the battlefield, I found that they would put the strike aircraft up that were supposed to go to shape the battlefield and then for the most ridiculous excuse they would divert those aircraft to go hit some strategic target and when I asked the question, why didn't they hit X or Y or Z or B or X-ray target, I was told, well the weather was bad, there was a cloud or .. you know, something, some minor excuse for diverting the aircraft to another target, so I distinctly remember telling Buster Glosson one day, Buster, if you divert another flight of aircraft without my approval, I'm going to choke your tongue out, and I think he got the message after that because he found out that I was serious, and we had less diversion of aircraft and we had more servicing of the targets that the ground commanders cared so much about.

Q: In your early conversations, I've seen in Rick Atkinson's book, you realised that hitting artillery, tanks was a difficult job, it needed to be done from the beginning and you gave some analogy involving a wild cat and spaghetti.....

Waller: Well, it is an enormous task to go out using high performance aircraft, trying to hit floating targets, much like the Scuds, much like trying to find a tank that's moving around or an artillery piece that's moving around, or mobile divisions or mobile units and so forth who can pick up and move from the time you launch an aircraft to the time it gets over the target, it may have moved, it may not be there any more, so it is hard to find, and as I .. as I said to the guys out there using the analogy of the wild cat, it's like poking spaghetti up a wild cat's behind, you don't get much accomplished but you get a heck of a lot of scratch marks on your arm, so while you don't accomplish too much in finding these fleeing targets, the ones that can move, and you don't have the satisfaction of being able to watch all of these Smart bombs go down an air shaft and rubble a building or something, nevertheless if and when you do find them and you can destroy 'em, it makes that infantryman or that Marine or that Egyptian or that other coalition force so much happier that they don't have to deal with those forces hand to hand or machine gun to machine gun or rifle to rifle.

Q: Was there any consideration of relieving General Glosson at that point?

Waller: No, nobody would have .. Nobody was ever even interested in relieving him because he really had the .. Schwarzkopf's, number and he was telling Schwarzkopf what he wanted to hear and he'd come in and weave a story about how important what he was doing was and so forth and Schwarzkopf believed him.

Q: How important was the invention of 'tank blinking?'

Waller: Well, we had enormous problems with trying to shape that battlefield and after telling and showing and pleading and cajoling and threatening Buster and his other band of merry men to make sure that we were giving the ground commanders what they needed and wanted, some smart young air force people came up with the idea, hey, why don't we use our thermal sights in some of the aircraft we have to view through those thermal sights which will cause a warmed up tank, by the sun being on it in the daytime and so forth, it will still be enormously hot at night, so at night under darkness we can go out, use our thermal sights to find these things that will be like a big night-light shining out in the desert and then we can destroy 'em, so the term was called tank blinking or finding tanks that had been camouflaged, many of them had been covered with sand so that they would blend in with the desert, but still that tank or other metal object, whether it was an artillery piece or tank or whatever, would still give off this enormous heat signature and through the thermal sight you could see it and then you could kill it.

Q: What did you feel--'Hey, we're finally getting somewhere now?' ..

Waller: Well, after the invention of what I call good common senses to determine where these vehicles were and we started to have success with them, I was elated because I said now finally we are providing the ground commanders with something that they sorely need to reduce the number of tanks that they're going to be faced with or reduce the number of artillery pieces that will be bringing fire upon them as they cross the desert or try to breach those areas, so everyone was happy, not only me but the ground commanders were elated and we were just thrilled that something was now being done about this problem we had.

Q: You must have wondered why it wasn't done a lot earlier.

Waller: Absolutely, I was wondering why didn't we think about this weeks ago, why didn't we think about it when it first happened, why did it take us this long.

Q: What's the answer?

Waller: ... to come up with this idea. The answer I think is that we were too concerned about the strategic targets, to really concentrate on shaping the battlefield for those ground commanders.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/waller/1.html

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A few days before the ground war commenced in February 1991, General Schwarzkopf met with his subordinate commanders to discuss the land offensive.

General Horner explained his Push CAS modus of flowing airplanes to the battlefield twenty-four hours a day (rather than keeping them idle while sitting alert). When General Frederick Franks ignored what Horner had said and demanded that VII Corps be allotted hundreds of CAS sorties per day (whether needed or not), the airman angrily disputed the allocation of air power in that manner and reiterated his Push CAS procedures.

Horner believed it important for unity of command to let his anger show as he vehemently rejected Franks’s claim for so much unfocused air power. He remembered his outburst having no effect: “Everyone looked at me and said, ‘Well, he fell on his sword; isn’t that quaint.’”

General Walt Boomer jumped in and requested as many dedicated sorties for his Marines, and General Gary Luck joined the “run on the bank” and demanded as many CAS flights for his XVIII Corps.

The ground commanders argued for their sorties, but after a while Schwarzkopf called a halt to the debate, reminding all present, “You people don’t understand. It’s all my air, and I’ll use it any way I please.”

“That ended the argument,” Horner recalled, “and we maintained centralized command.” The CINCCENT [commander in chief of Central Command] depended upon his JFACC to ensure that all the ground commanders received adequate air support.

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Day 38 : Friday 22 February 1991

  • A-10 79-0181 was destroyed in a wheels up, hard stick landing after being hit by a SAM. The CLSS team stripped it of parts, some send to King Fahd International Airport (KFIA), Main Operating Base (MOB) for use on other birds, and then buried the rest of the airframe in the desert.
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  • Iraq sets ablaze one-sixth of Kuwait’s 950 oil wells.
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  • Soviet Union announces eight-point withdrawal plan.
  • U.S. President George H. W. Bush rejects the Soviet peace plan, deplores Iraq’s “scorched- earth” destruction of Kuwaiti oil fields. He issues a 24-hour ultimatum: Iraq must withdraw from Kuwait to avoid start of a ground war.
  • Iraqi information official brands U.S. position “shameful ultimatum.”

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Day 39 : Saturday 23 February 1991

  • AV-8B Harrier II 161573 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. The pilot (Captain James N. Wilbourn) was killed.
  • U.S. officials say Iraqi soldiers are rounding up Kuwaitis to torture, execute.
  • At least 200 oil wells and facilities are ablaze in Kuwait.
  • Allies’ ground offensive begins at 8 p.m. EST (4 a.m. Feb. 24 Saudi time). Operation Desert Sabre, a massive allied ground offensive, is launched northward from northeastern Saudi Arabia into Kuwait and southern Iraq. Ground war begins when U.S.-led Coalition forces invaded Iraq and Kuwait at around 4 a.m. Baghdad time. British Special Air Service was the first to enter Iraqi territory.
    When ground operations started in earnest, coalition forces were poised along a line that stretched from the Persian Gulf westward 300 miles into the desert. Two corps covered about two-thirds of the line occupied by the huge multinational force.
    1. The XVIII Airborne Corps, under Lt. Gen. Gary E. Luck, held the left, or western, flank and consisted of the 82d Airborne Division, the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized), the French 6th Light Armored Division, the 3d Armored Cavalry, and the 12th and 18th Aviation Brigades.
    2. The Vll Corps, under Lt. Gen. Frederick M. Franks, Jr., was deployed to the right of the XVIII Airborne Corps and consisted of the 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized), the 1st Cavalry Division (Armored), the 1st and 3d Armored Divisions, the British 1st Armored Division, the 2d Armored Cavalry, and the 11th Aviation Brigade.

    Three commands held the eastern one-third of the front.

    1. Joint Forces Command North, made up of formations from Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia and led by His Royal Highness Lt. Gen. Prince Khalid ibn Sultan, held the portion of the line east of Vll Corps.
    2. To the right of these allied forces stood Lt. Gen. Walter E. Boomer's I Marine Expeditionary Force, which had the 1st (or Tiger) Brigade of the Army's 2d Armored Division as well as the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions.
    3. Joint Forces Command East on the extreme right, or eastern, flank anchored the line at the Persian Gulf. This organization consisted of units from all six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Like Joint Forces Command North, it was under General Khalid's command.

    General Schwarzkopf unleashed all-out attacks against Iraqi forces very early on 24 February at three points along the allied line. The main attack was designed to avoid most fixed defenses, drive deep into Iraq, envelop Iraqi forces from the west and attack and destroy Saddam Hussein's strategic reserve - Republican Guard armored and mechanized infantry divisions augmented by several other Iraqi Army heavy divisions. This wide left sweep was sometimes referred to as the " Hail Mary" plan.

    1. XVIII Airborne Corps attacked in the west and deep into Iraq to control the east-west lines of communication along Highway 8 and cut off Iraqi forces in the Kuwait Theater of Operations. In the far west the French 6th Light Armored and the 101st Airborne Divisions started the massive western envelopment with a ground assault to secure the allied left flank and an air assault to establish forward support bases deep in Iraqi territory. In XVIII Corps' mission of envelopment, the 24th Infantry Division had the central role of blocking the Euphrates River valley to prevent the escape north of Iraqi forces in Kuwait and then attacking east in coordination with VII Corps to defeat the armor-heavy divisions of the Republican Guard Forces Command.
    2. In the approximate center of the allied line, along the Wadi al Batin, Maj. Gen. John H. Tilelli, Jr.'s 1st Cavalry Division attacked north into a concentration of Iraqi divisions, whose commanders remained convinced that the coalition would use that and several other wadies as avenues of attack. VII Corps would conduct the main Coalition effort, attacking east of XVIII Airborne Corps and west of Wadi Al-Batin, driving to the north and then east to find, attack, and destroy the heart of President Saddam Hussein's ground forces, the armor-heavy Republican Guard divisions.
    3. In the east two Marine divisions, with the Army's Tiger Brigade, and coalition forces under Saudi command attacked north into Kuwait. These forces held the enemy's tactical and operational forces in place by breaching Iraqi defenses in Kuwait and encircling Iraqi forces in the heel of Kuwait and Kuwait City. Once Kuwait City was encircled and Iraqi forces were ejected or defeated, Arab-Islamic forces would liberate Kuwait City.

    [*]Iraqi forces, often isolated in static defenses for long periods, had been steadily demoralized by air and psychological operations along with the harsh conditions. Accordingly, many Iraqis lost the will to resist by the time the ground operation began.

    [*]Defense Secretary Dick Cheney halts news briefings on war.

    [*]At 10:02 p.m. EST, President Bush tells nation, “The liberation of Kuwait has entered the final phase.” Bush authorizes commander Norman Schwarzkopf to “use all forces available, including ground forces, to expel the Iraqi army from Kuwait.”

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Day 40 : Sunday 24 February 1991

  • Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf hails first day of allied ground offensive as “dramatic success.” Allied casualties are very light; more than 5,500 Iraqis are captured.
  • Saddam Hussein urges troops to kill “with all your might” in radio speech.
  • More than 300 attack and supply helicopters strike more than 50 miles into Iraq, largest such assault in military history.
  • Queen Elizabeth II, in first wartime broadcast of 39-year reign, tells her country she has prayed for victory.
  • Iraq fires two Scuds into Israel with no injuries and a second Scud attack on Riyadh

    t 2:02 in the video you see the first Patriot Missile explode shortly after launch. This missile was sent a destruct command from the ground due to a malfunction. A second is launched. The videographer thinks the second also missed the inbound SCUD.
    The journal sheet cataloging the launch says:
    Subject: Follow-up on SCUD launch. At approx 241825Z 1 SCUD was launched inbound for Riyadh. F/3-43 engaged and fired 2 PAT missiles. 1 PAT missile malfunctioned and was given "command Destruct" command. Second PAT missile recorded 1 mission kill. The SCUD warhead landed in Riyadh without exploding. No coordinates were given.

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Day 41 : Monday 25 February 1991

  • An Iraqi SCUD missile hits U.S. barracks in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 U.S. troops and wounding 90 more
  • Baghdad Radio reports Saddam Hussein has ordered troops to withdraw from Kuwait in accordance with Soviet peace proposal.
  • Says White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater: “The war goes on.”
  • On Kuwait’s Independence Day, allied forces are reported on outskirts of Kuwait City, poised to liberate capital as more reports surface of Iraqi killings of civilians and torching of buildings.
  • U.S. officials report four U.S. soldiers killed, 21 wounded in first two days of allied ground assault; nearly 20,000 Iraqis taken prisoner; 270 tanks destroyed.
  • Iraqi-launched Silkworm anti-ship missile shot down by allied warships.
  • A large column of Iraqi tanks was moving south from areas controlled by the Republican Guard and two A-10s belonging to the 76th TFS/23rd TFW were scrambled to destroy them.
    The two A-10s, flown by Captain Eric Solomonson and Lieutenant John Marks, were led to the target area by an OA-10 FAC. Solomonson and Marks noted that some Iraqi tanks had scattered and tried to hide in prepositioned revetments while some others were pulling off from both side of the road. However there were enough targets for both infrared AGM-65 Maverick missiles and the GAU-8/A Avengers of the two Warthogs. In a matter of ten minutes six tanks were destroyed by the Mavericks and two were killed by the GAU-8.
    The A-10s landed at FOL to be refueled and reloaded of weapons and take off again to help the Marines near Kuwait City. A “Fast FAC” F/A-18 Hornet directed Solomonson and Marks in the area where two AV-8B Harriers had been hit. One of the two Harrier pilots had to eject and so the Solomonson and Marks had to cover the rescue mission for the Harrier pilot.
    Once on the target area, the two A-10s killed eight more tanks, six by using the Mavericks and two with the cannon. By the end of their third sortie, Solomonson and Marks 'killed' 23 tanks - 17 with the AGM-65 ("huge explosion", "turret blew completely off", "spinning through air" ), but only 6 kills with the gun ("not quite as big a boom", just "see flashes", "usually a little bit of a delay if it does light off")

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Day 42 : Tuesday 26 February 1991

  • Saddam Hussein ordered the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait.
  • Brig. Gen. Richard Neal in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, says Iraqi forces are in “full retreat” with allied forces pursuing; Iraqi POWs number 30,000-plus, number to climb to 63,000.
  • U.S. Marines, Saudi, and Kuwaiti troops enter Kuwait City.
  • U.S. Marines in Kuwait City says U.S. Embassy is back under U.S. control.
  • Residents of Kuwait City celebrate end to occupation. Resistance groups set up headquarters to control city.
  • About 10,000 retreating Iraqi troops were killed when Coalition aircraft bombed their stolen civilian and military vehicles. This is called the Highway of Death.
    Officially known as Highway 80, it runs from Kuwait City to the border town of Safwan in Iraq and then on to the Iraqi city of Basra. The road had been used by Iraqi armored divisions for the 1990 Invasion of Kuwait. It was used by U.S. and British forces in the initial stages of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
    Between 1,400 and 2,000 vehicles were hit or abandoned on the main Highway 80 north of Al Jahra (the "actual" Highway of Death). Several hundred more littered the lesser known Highway 8 to the major southern Iraq military stronghold of Basra.
    The scenes of devastation on the road are some of the most recognizable images of the war, and were publicly cited as a factor in President George H. W. Bush's decision to declare a cessation of hostilities the next day.
    Many Iraqi forces, however, successfully escaped across the Euphrates river, and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that upwards of 70,000 to 80,000 troops from defeated divisions in Kuwait might have fled into Basra, evading capture.

The 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing's A-6 Intruder aircraft blocked Highway 80, bombarding a massive vehicle column of mostly Iraqi Regular Army forces with Mk-20 Rockeye II cluster bombs, effectively boxing in the Iraqi forces in an enormous traffic jam of sitting targets for subsequent airstrikes. Over the next 10 hours, scores of U.S. Marine and U.S. Air Force aircraft and U.S. Navy pilots from USS Ranger (CV/CVA-61) attacked the convoy using a variety of ordnance. Vehicles surviving the air attacks were later engaged by arriving coalition ground units, while most of the vehicles that managed to evade the traffic jam and continued to drive on the road north were targeted individually. The road bottle-neck near the Mutla Ridge police station was reduced to a long uninterrupted line of more than 300 stuck and abandoned vehicles sometimes called the Mile of Death. The wreckage found on the highway consisted of at least 28 tanks and other armored vehicles with many more commandeered civilian cars and buses filled with stolen Kuwaiti property.
    The death toll from the attack remains unknown and controversial. British journalist Robert Fisk said he "lost count of the Iraqi corpses crammed into the smouldering wreckage or slumped face down in the sand" at the main site and to see hundreds of corpses strewn up the road all the way to the Iraqi border. American journalist Bob Drogin reported seeing "scores" of dead soldiers "in and around the vehicles, mangled and bloated in the drifting desert sands." Some independent estimates go as high as 10,000 or more casualties. A 2003 study by the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA) estimated fewer than 10,000 people rode in the cut-off main caravan; and when the bombing started most simply left their vehicles to escape through the desert or into the nearby swamps where some died from their wounds and some were later taken prisoner. According to PDA, the often repeated low estimate of the numbers killed in the attack is 200–300 reported by journalist Michael Kelly (who personally counted 37 bodies), but a minimum death toll of at least 500–600 seems more plausible.
    In 1993, The Washington Post interviewed an Iraqi survivor of the attacks:
    There were hundreds of cars destroyed, soldiers screaming. [...] It was nighttime as the bombs fell, lighting up charred cars, bodies on the side of the road and soldiers sprawled on the ground, hit by cluster bombs as they tried to escape from their vehicles. I saw hundreds of soldiers like this, but my main target was to reach Basra. We arrived on foot.
    Iraqi forces including the elite Iraqi Republican Guard's 1st Armored Division Hammurabi were trying to either redeploy or escape on and near Highway 8 east of Highway 80. They were engaged over a much larger area in smaller groups by U.S. artillery units and a battalion of AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships operating under the command of General Barry McCaffrey. Hundreds of predominantly military Iraqi vehicles grouped in defensive formations of approximately a dozen vehicles were then systematically destroyed along a 50-mile stretch of the highway and nearby desert.
    This engagement was not publicly known until almost two weeks later and remains relatively obscure; although most of the graphic images of scorched corpses considered among the iconic images of the war, and attributed to the Highway of Death, were actually taken on Highway 8 rather than Highway 80. The PDA estimated the number killed there to be in the range of 300-400 or more, bringing the likely total number of fatalities along both highways to at least 800 or 1,000. A large column composed of remnants of the Hammurabi Division attempting to withdraw to safety in Baghdad were also engaged and obliterated deep inside Iraqi territory by Gen. McCaffrey's forces a few days later on March 2 in a controversial post-war "turkey shoot"-style incident known as Battle of Rumaila.
    General Norman Schwarzkopf stated in 1995:
    The first reason why we bombed the highway coming north out of Kuwait is because there was a great deal of military equipment on that highway, and I had given orders to all my commanders that I wanted every piece of Iraqi equipment that we possibly could destroy. Secondly, this was not a bunch of innocent people just trying to make their way back across the border to Iraq. This was a bunch of rapists, murderers and thugs who had raped and pillaged downtown Kuwait City and now were trying to get out of the country before they were caught.

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Day 43 : Wednesday 27 February 1991

  • OA-10A 77-0197, 23rd TASS/602nd TACW crashed killing pilot Lt Patrick Olson (posthumously promoted to Captain) after a reconnaissance mission over Kuwait. Aircraft had been hit by surface-to-air missile and was attempting a landing at KKMC FOL in Manual Reversion after loosing all its hydraulics, in extreme weather conditions and with only one engine. On landing aircraft hit a little short, on the soft overrun where the gear sunk into the ground and sheared off. The aircraft started sliding and turned a little sideways when the left wing started gaining lift and the aircraft became airborne again, almost 50 feet airborne. The left wing kept getting lift and the plane rolled inverted until it cart wheeled wingtip over wingtip flipped over on to its back killing the pilot. With the aircraft inverted there was no chance of ejection. There was nothing left of the aircraft. The remains of the aircraft were buried at the FOL.
  • F-16C 84-1390 was shot down by an Igla-1 (SA-16) MANPADS. The pilot (Captain William Andrews) was captured. He was released on March 6
  • F-16C 88-0495 is damaged by an SA-8 exploding near the left external tank. Fragments from the SAM hit the lower left side of the intake, including right through the intake. The left wing had a 2x3 inch hole and the main wing root had damage underneath. Stabilizers were peppered as well as the exhaust tail feathers. Part of the radome was also sheared off, but that damage was done during the crash landing at Rafha, Saudi Arabia when the nose gear would not extend. Major Ed 'Spot' Schumacher was a pilot who was visiting from the Fighter Weapons School and had deployed to Desert Storm with the 4th TFS.
  • AV-8B Harrier II 162740 was shot down by AAA. The pilot (Captain Reginald Underwood) was killed.
  • Two AH-64A Apaches are shot down
  • U.S. Army then engaged the Iraqi Republican Guard in several tank battles in Iraq, also known as the Battle of Medina Ridge, southwest of Basra, Iraq. This was one of the few battles during Desert Storm in which American forces encountered significant Iraqi resistance and found it extremely difficult to advance. The Iraqi forces were well-deployed such that they could not be seen by American forces advancing until after they had cleared the top of the ridgeline. This defilade (aka reverse slope) position was intended to give the Iraqis protection from the powerful long-range direct fire of the M1 Abrams tanks and the M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.
    During the battle the American forces destroyed 186 Iraqi tanks (mostly export model T-72Ms, Asad Babils and obsolete Type 69s) and 127 armored vehicles. Only four Abrams tanks were hit by direct fire. Evidence suggests that they were all hit by Iraqi T-72 fire. Ballistics reports have further confirmed this as well as physical evidence such as obvious sabot holes. All four were lost. Thirty-eight of the Iraqi tanks were destroyed by AH-64 Apaches and A-10s. The 75th Field Artillery Brigade and Battery B, 25th Field Artillery, the division's target acquisition battery, conducted counter-artillery fire missions and destroyed two Medina Field Artillery battalions in the process. The 2nd Battalion, 1st Field Artillery Regiment also eventually participated in these counter-battery missions.
    Although the Iraqis used a correct defensive tactic by deploying their armor behind the ridge, this was not properly repeated through the rest of the war. In one incident, an Iraqi commander attempted to repeat what had been done at Medina but mistakenly deployed his armor too far from the ridgeline. This gave the American units the upper hand, as the Abrams tanks specialize in long-distance kills; their Chobham armor is extremely resistant to long-range fire. The American height advantage also reduced the effective range of the Iraqi tanks and presented the Iraqi gunners with a targeting situation for which they were under-trained.
    Nevertheless, the Iraqis had fought hard, killing 4 M1A1s and shooting down the two Apaches and an A-10, and causing much confusion among the attackers that forced the US commander to order all his armored battalions to withdraw to a safe distance towards the end of the fighting.
    In early April 1991, Colonel Montgomery Meigs, the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, paid his respects to his former enemy's Medina Division reporting that, "These guys stayed and fought." The same newspaper articles notes that, "The Americans had more than 100 battle tanks on hand, about the same as the total number of tanks in the Iraqi force. But the Americans had some noteworthy advantages over the Iraqis like attack helicopters and planes. The Iraqis had no support aircraft."
    US Casualties:
    2 killed
    30 wounded
    4 tanks destroyed/damaged
    2 IFVs
    1 ambulance
    1 HEMTT fueler
    2 Apache helicopters
    4 Humvees
    1 A-10 aircraft
    Iraqi Casualties
    Heavy manpower losses
    839 soldiers captured
    186 tanks destroyed
    127 IFVs destroyed
    72 artillery pieces destroyed[12]
    118 trucks destroyed
    5 air defense systems destroyed

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