GOING DEEP
As the Allied Command prepared for the ground war, Special Forces units prepared special reconnaissance (SR) missions to coincide with the attack. These were classic SF operations, providing mission commanders with information about enemy movements and capabilities.
And in at least one case, enemy dirt.
Two teams went into Iraq in the area through which Lieutenant General Fred Franks, the VII Corps commander, intended to sweep, testing soil conditions and analyzing the terrain in order to determine whether the desert soil would be able to support tanks and other heavy vehicles.
Inserted by Pave Lows, the teams included engineers who tested the soil with penetrometers. They also used still and video cameras to give commanders a visual record of what they'd be facing once they crossed into Iraq.
The overall thrust of the allied plan depended on a wide maneuver, or "left hook" — the famous "Hail Mary" that sent American troops racing north into Iraq before turning back east in the direction of Kuwait. While the strike would hit the Iraqis on their flank, the maneuvering American troops would themselves be vulnerable on their flanks. Real-time intelligence on the ground beyond the flanks was critical for both the XVIII Airborne Corps and VII Corps, the two allied groups charged with the forming the hook.
The XVIII Airborne Corps, which included the American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions, started farther west and would charge to the Euphrates before turning cast. The VII Corps would head roughly toward Al Busayyah and then swing right for Kuwait.
SF teams were assigned to each Corps to provide intelligence. Team members spent roughly a month prior to their jump-off occupied with training and developing techniques for the mission. The general game plan for each team was similar. They'd be inserted by helicopter at night, then hand-dig large holes, called "hide sites," where they would stay during the day. The missions usually broke down to six or eight men, split into two hide sites. The two elements might locate several miles from each other, or they might be close together, depending on the particular circumstances. (There were at least six teams.) The teams were equipped with a variety of communications gear and armed with MP-5 submachine guns, grenade launchers, a variety of other light weapons, and a variety of communications gear.
The sites themselves, in areas as much as 165 miles inside enemy territory, were to be located near highways the Iraqis were expected to use to move troops, and the plan called for the SF teams to observe and radio back information day and night. Teams spotting armored concentrations and Scud missiles were to call in immediately: otherwise they would call at regular intervals. Generally the plans called for the units to stay in place until "picked up" by approaching ground troops.
The SF SR teams were sent out on the evening of February 23.
It turned out that many were plagued by bad luck — and far worse, lousy intelligence. Information provided to the teams indicated that most of the areas into which they were to be dropped were sparsely populated; several teams found this wasn't the case. Additional snafus, including delays that upset mission timing, caused severe complications.
Two of the SR missions supporting the VII Corps remained undetected and provided important intelligence until they were joined by elements of the I st Cavalry Division on February 27. A third team had to be exfiltrated early because of the presence of Iraqi forces.
But things proved to be much more difficult in the XVIII Airborne area, where three missions ran into problems.
On one, the operators discovered their target site was a Bedouin camp. As they scouted for another site in their helicopter, they came under attack from antiaircraft artillery and SAMs and had to abort the mission.
SR 008B, a three-man team drawn from 5th SFG A-Detachment 523 and led by Master Sergeant Jeffrey Sims, was infiltrated by Blackhawk to a location near Qawam am Hamzal, where they would monitor vehicles for the XVIII Airborne Corps. Though the approach of the helicopters set local dogs barking, Sims and his men, Sergeant First Class Ronald Torbett and Staff Sergeant Roy Tabron, ignored them, and moved quickly to their hide site four kilometers away. Each man packed about 175 pounds; besides food, ammunition, weapons, communication gear, and equipment to construct their hide site, the Green Berets carried ten quarts of water apiece. Though they were armed with a variety of weapons, their ammunition stocks were relatively light. Their job was to stay out of sight, not shoot people.
The next morning, Bedouins appeared in the field where the Green Berets were hidden. The team lay low, hoping they might somehow be overlooked. No such luck: Around midday a little girl and her father stuck their heads into the rear exit hole of the hide site. The shocked Iraqis quickly backed away. As a pair of team members moved to grab them. they saw about twenty other Bedouins nearby. Loath to harm the civilians, the three SF operators grabbed their essential gear and moved down the drainage ditch.
The Bedouins closed in, perhaps believing they might earn the reward the Iraqi government had posted for captured pilots. Several began firing small arms. The SF team called in air support and asked to be extracted.
A long firefight followed. At one point, an F-16 pilot had to back the Iraqis off by dropping a thousand-pound bomb and CBUs. But such measures proved temporary; the team was trapped in the relatively open terrain. Buildings near the highway provided Iraqis a vantage to pin them down, while others tried to flank them. Despite efforts to conserve their ammunition, their small stock quickly dwindled.
About an hour and a half after the firefight began, another F-16 managed to hold off the attackers with another bomb strike, then circled above while a Special Forces Blackhawk rushed in to try a broad daylight rescue. Enemy troops were now closing in. Disregarding his flight plan, Warrant Officer "James" blew right over an Iraqi division, leaving the startled Iraqis un-shouldering their rifles.
On the ground, Sims and his men grimly thought about the grenades they'd clipped to their belts as last-resort weapons. The grenades were meant for themselves.
Suddenly, Sims heard a helicopter approaching. "He was screaming down the road, going around 140 knots, on one side of the power line, six feet off the deck," Sims remembers. The team popped a small white flare to mark their position. The helicopter pitched its nose up, swung around in a circle, and then slapped down nearly on top of them.
Team member Sergeant First Class Ronald Torbett's mouth dropped. He thought the helicopter had been hit by the fusillade of rifle fire from the Iraqis — not an unreasonable assumption, given the hail of bullets from the enemy troops nearby. But he was wrong. The difficult maneuver had been controlled, a piece of master aircraft driving between power lines and Iraqi gunfire. As the helo's door gunner laid down suppressing fire, the three Green Berets jumped inside. The Iraqis continued to rake the helicopter; miraculously, no one inside was seriously hurt, and the pilot managed to repeat his aerobatics, dodging bullets and power lines to get away. Flying at top speed no more than twenty feet off the ground, the Blackhawk barreled back toward coalition lines.
It made it home safely, but was so badly damaged it didn't fly again during the war.
DECEPTION ON KUWAIT BEACHES
Even though the main allied ground attack came from the west, General Schwarzkopf's plan included a direct attack on southern Kuwait, a mission tasked to the Marine Corps 1st and 2nd Divisions, along with Kuwaiti and Arab units. This attack would tie down Iraqis as the "hook" was launched; it would also aim to eventually capture Japer airfield, Kuwait International Airport, and Kuwait City, all strategically and symbolically important.
One option that was also seriously considered was a Marine amphibious landing on Kuwait.