The Enemy in the Wind (IV)

(The previous entry in this series is here.)

Staff Sergeant Gerry Thompson then heard a welcome sound - an Air Force A10 aircraft overhead. "That's the most reassuring feeling," Thompson said, "having an A10 come through, and drop bombs, shoot the 30mm gun... once I heard that it kind of made me feel a little better about the situation."

General Michael Moseley, air component commander for the invasion of Iraq, told the Weather Channel that the sandstorm "offered no sanctuary to the Iraqi forces, because you could actually see them. In an interesting twist of irony, I had a much better picture of where the Iraqi forces were than the Iraqi commanders, so it was easy for us through that sandstorm to find them, fix them, and target them."

Rick Atkinson, In the Company of Soldiers:

Other munitions now falling on Iraq had been little more than a brainstorm in the early 1990s. A new generation of smart bombs, such as the relatively cheap and plentiful Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, used global positioning satellites to home in on targets. The dumb, unguided bombs that accounted for more than 90 percent of the tonnage dropped on Iraq in 1991 had been largely supplanted by twenty-two types of guided munitions, which would make up more than two-thirds of the 29,199 bombs that were to fall on Iraq in the next three weeks.

General Franks:

The big sandstorm was even worse than predicted. Reddish brown dust formed a high dome in the western desert and rolled over southern Iraq -- and over 170,000 coalition troops. Visibility dropped to 10 meters or less. Rain pounded down through the red dust, turning the air to mud.

Our long logistics convoys crawled ahead, however, eventually linking up with the armor and infantry units that were managing to creep forward during lulls in the sandstorm. And, as the troopers inched on, scouts and special forces reconnaissance teams infiltrated more Iraqi positions, identifying the precise GPS coordinates of enemy armor and artillery.

As the sandstorm rose in intensity and movement on the battlefield virtually stopped on March 25, Gene Renuart came to see me. He said he had been talking to Buzz Moseley, commander of Centcom's air component.

"Don't tell me, Gene." I held up my hand. "There's going to be an air force coup. My palace is surrounded."

"Not yet, boss. We've actually been discussing how to take advantage of this shitty weather."

Gene called for Jeff Kimmons, and the two of them spread a stack of reconnaissance pictures on the conference table.

"We can use the sandstorm to destroy the Republican Guard formations," Gene said, pointing to the orange blocks of the Medina and Hammurabi divisions spread out south of Baghdad.

"They started to maneuver a little when 3rd ID's scouts pushed north," Jeff explained. "Then the sandstorm blew up, and they decided not to move because we seemed to be bogged down."

"Where'd they get that idea?" I asked.

Gene pointed to the television on the wall. Some retired officer was holding forth, saying: "We are seeing what the military calls a 'pause'. The coalition has stopped to rearm and refit. They've sort of run out of steam . . ."

"The enemy formations haven't moved for 16 hours," Jeff said. "They're hunkered down. The old see no evil, hear no evil . . ."

What Gene and Jeff were suggesting was a tactic that might win this war, at a time that many were characterizing as our darkest hour.

That night B-52s, B-1s and a whole range of fighter-bombers flew above the dense ochre dome of the sandstorm, delivering precision-guided bombs through the zero-visibility, zero-ceiling weather. I was confident we were looking at the end of organized Iraqi resistance.

I sat alone in my office watching the air picture. Strike aircraft of all sizes were moving over a wide, curved kill zone that stretched from Al Kut in the Tigris Valley in the east to the Karbala gap in the west. The sand continued to blow. The Republican Guard units were hunkered down, and they were being destroyed piece by piece.

The bombardment, which lasted from the night of March 25 to the morning of March 27, was one of the fiercest and most effective in the history of warfare. Nobody in the international press understood what was happening. All the embedded reporters were with ground units, except for some with ships. There were no correspondents in the cockpits of our strike planes or in the targeting cells in the combined air operations center.

Jim Wilkinson didn't like the secrecy. "I'm taking a beating out there," he said, pointing toward the press center. "They're filing stories that we've lost the war."

"Good," I said. "We couldn't ask for a better deception."

"Damn, general," Jim said. "We should tell them something."

"Tell them we're riding out the weather by focusing on air-delivered weapons," I said. "That'll give them something to think about. The enemy already knows what we're doing."

"We were surprised when they [the U.S. pilots] discovered this place," said Khalidi, 28, a Republican Guard captain from a military family. It was late at night, a strong sandstorm was blowing, the vehicles were hidden under the trees, and the soldiers thought they were safe, he said. But two enormous bombs and a load of cluster bombs hit their targets on a tract of agricultural land in the Sabaa Abkar ("Seven Virgins") area of northern Baghdad, killing six members of Khalidi's unit and destroying much of their equipment.

"This affected the morale of the soldiers, because they were hiding and thought nobody could find them," he said. "Some soldiers left their positions and ran away. When the big bombs hit their target, some of the vehicles just melted.
<...>
One of those Republican Guard divisions, the Medina al Munawara, or Medina the Luminous, had been targeted for destruction by the 3rd Infantry. U.S. commanders planned to send the division's M1 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles sweeping west of Karbala, then east across the Euphrates River to engage the Medina Division from behind as it braced for an attack from the south.

The annihilation of the division that was supposedly Hussein's pride and joy, U.S. commanders thought, could trigger his downfall without the need for U.S. ground forces to fight their way into Baghdad.

But before elements of the 3rd Infantry got into position to launch their main assault, the Medina Division had disintegrated. Repeated heavy airstrikes, rocket barrages and an attack across the Euphrates by the 3rd Infantry's 1st Brigade had rendered it "combat ineffective."

By the 27th - as forecast - the skies above the road to Baghdad began to clear.