The morning of the 25th, the Iraqi 46th MR Brigade arrived at King Khalid Military City, drove off a small security detachment, and occupied the place. It would soon be joined by the 47th MR Brigade, but neither showed any signs of moving down Highway 50 towards the interior of the Kingdom. (From there it was 425 kilometers, or about 263 miles to Riyadh.)
The Iraqi attack would instead come right down Highway 85 towards the Saudi defensive position near Al Wariyah reserve airstrip. That portion of the road had been designated as a highway landing strip, and it was always kept clear of blowing sand by troops that had been garrisoned at the nearby Fort Ulya to the southeast. A 1325 foot tall signal mast marked the location for pilots, and there was also a small pumping station there moving oil through the Trans-Arabian Pipeline. It was there that the Saudis had their 8th and 20 Mech Brigades waiting on defense.
The Iraqis opened the battle with desultory artillery fire at about 13:00 hours that early afternoon, but it was just harassing fire. They were bringing up three mech infantry brigades, 1st Dwaniya, 34th Nasirya, and 27th Kut. They also deployed their 6th MR Brigade well south of the highway to screen that flank, but they were waiting for the 48th Armor Brigade, which was still 50 kilometers behind.
At the same time, another strong column was coming down a secondary road from the north towards a series of escarpments around Hill 879, which was 20 kilometers north of Highway 85. That was the right flank of the Saudi position, where they had a lot of tanks from their 12th and 45th Brigades around those escarpments.
That force would soon be challenged by the 7th Andan and Al Faw Divisions of the Republican Guards, but the Iraqis would be all day getting deployed. Most of their strength, including the three stronger Republican Guard Divisions, was still in Kuwait, slowly moving south to the Saudi frontier. Two brigades of the Baghdad Division had crossed near the coast near Ras Al Khafji, but then stopped to wait for their comrades to come up in support. This slow advance, precipitated by traffic jams on the major roads and the difficult off road terrain in many places, gave the Saudi Army the precious time it needed to get their brigades north.
As darkness fell over the land, the Saudi and Kuwaiti troops could hear a continuous rumble to the north, as if the earth itself was groaning under the weight of heavy armored vehicles. Three hours after midnight those tanks the Iraqis had been waiting for arrived and tried to bull their way through the blocking positions. Their 48th Tank Brigade had 42 tanks, mostly T-80’s bought from the Chinese. They would run into the Saudi 4th Armored Brigade, and get a shock that augured well for the future security of the Kingdom. The Saudis had 48 US M1 tanks, and they just blew the Iraqi brigade to pieces, the big guns tracking, firing, and lighting up the darkness with their rapid fire.
The sharp firefight was so one sided that it left the Iraqis with just 8 tanks, the rest burned and smoking in the pre-dawn grey. So they fell back along the highway, and began heavy artillery bombardments to try and clear the road ahead. Put enough heavy 155mm rounds on a position, and you will either move or kill anything on the ground it was occupying.
As this was going on, the 7th Andan and Al Faw Divisions of the Republican Guards put in a strong attack ten kilometers north of the highway, near the high ground of Hill 928. Here they used their infantry dismounted, and with six brigades, they were able to swarm through the darkness, infiltrating through gaps in the Saudi lines.
Saudi Tanks from their 12th Armored brigade were up on the height of Hill 879, firing down on the Iraqi infantry. Their rocky nest was unassailable because of its steep escarpments, and it could only be approached from the east. Yet now the brigade found that more Iraqi infantry had flanked that hill behind them, and they were being cut off.
Brigade commanders were struggling in the darkness and confusion to learn what was happening, but the Saudis soon realized that the 11th Brigade of the Andan Division had infiltrated through their lines and had to be dealt with in order to extricate their 12th Armored Brigade. Any reserve units, the Turki Brigade, and the King Faisal Light Infantry, were sent to that sector to join the breakout attempt being mounted by the armor. They were able to drive a wedge into the Iraqi Infantry, forcing them back and clearing a route for the armor to get back down off the high ground.
Yet this Iraqi attack had been mounted as a feint. It was meant to force the Saudis to cover Highway 80 as they did, while the main attack would roll south from the Kuwaiti border, closer to the coast.
It was there that Iraqi General Kamel Ayad, his name roughly meaning “the perfect one with power,” launched a multi division assault, aimed mostly at the segment of the front that had been occupied by the retreating forces of Kuwait. Fifteen kilometers west of Khafji, the full weight of the Al-Medina Republican Guard Division fell on just two battalions of the Kuwati Royal Guards, who were really no more than light infantry forces in armored cars. All along that line, the Iraqis threw one brigade after another forward, in what became a massive wave of dismounted infantry backed by their tanks and APS’s. The Kuwaiti troops were the weakest point in the front, and they simply could not hold.
The battle began in the desert, then rippled east towards the coast where several Saudi brigades had set up positions around Khafji. That anchor held on the coast, with the Baghdad Division stopped and repulsed, but in the desert to the west, the Kuwaiti line collapsed, and that would fatally compromise any further defense of Khafji. Fighting went on all morning, the landscape shrouded with smoke from burning vehicles, but by noon it was clear that the sheer weight of the Iraqi Army was breaking through that front in the desert, and Khafji had to be abandoned.
Iraqi infantry swarmed over the few isolated companies of Kuwaiti tanks in the desert, clearing the way for the more mechanized Republican Guard units. It was a kind of scissors paper-rock fight. When the Iraqis had tried to use their armor as scissors to cut through the Saudi Line, the heavier Saudi armor brigades stood like rocks and smashed them.
So the Iraqis then dismounted their infantry and sent them forward like smothering paper, the anti-tanks teams bringing down the elephants by simply overrunning them and attacking the tanks from all sides. What was evident in all this was the fact that the Saudi Army, and even more so that of Kuwait, had no real idea of how to fight a real combined arms operation on the ground, and their inexperience showed. They were not protecting their tanks with infantry, but operating them independently. The Iraqis may not have been any better, but they just had massive numbers, particularly in infantry, and so they prevailed.
The breakthrough through the center took the Iraqis all the way to another small designated highway airstrip, Al Kibrit, this on a secondary road that ran east to Bandar al Mishab on the coast south of Khafji. The small settlement would give its name to that battle, the first feather in the Iraqi cap as they took the fight into Saudi Arabia. By mid-afternoon on the 26th, it was clear that the hastily built defensive front had been fatally compromised. The entire eastern half of the line began to retreat down the coast road toward Ras Tanajib. The Western segment, a more concentrated Saudi force, still held their ground around the Al Wariyah road strip and pump station, but it was clear that it would not be long before the Iraqis would cross the desert and reach Highway 85 behind them.
A general retreat was ordered, down that long highway as the last hours of November 27th faded away. The Saudi Army was rallying on a new line, this time south of Ras Tanajib on the coast, and bending southwest and across Highway 85 into the desert beyond.