The Rangers entering the building found most of the passengers in the terminal waiting area—and no PDF. The building was dark. Power was knocked out by a grenade thrown into the terminal’s generator by the Rangers. The Rangers continued clearing operations wearing night-vision goggles.
Most of the doors on the first floor were locked, and the Ranger squad moved on until they found a steel door that opened. The lead clement stepped inside, somebody fired a shot, and a woman started screaming in English, “Don’t shoot!”
The Rangers pulled back to take stock. There were obviously hostages and PDF inside, but it was hard to tell how many.
A Ranger sergeant wearing night-vision goggles slipped back inside and saw what looked to be four hostages—two American women and a Panamanian woman and her baby—and maybe a dozen PDF soldiers.
The sergeant came out to report, just as the company commander was arriving, prepared to talk sense to the PDF, but when that didn’t work, he made an ultimatum, “Come out or you’ll all be killed,” at which point the PDF put down their weapons and came out. None of the hostages was hurt.
As the 3rd Platoon approached the terminal, PDF fired at them through a plateglass window. The platoon raced into the building and isolated the PDF in a men’s room. The squad leader moved inside to take a look, but PDF hiding in the stalls shot him three times. His troops dragged him out and tossed in two hand grenades, but the PDF were protected by the metal stall doors. The Rangers then made a concerted assault. As they entered the room, a PDF shot one of them three times in the head (his Kevlar helmet saved him); the Rangers then killed two PDF; another PDF soldier jumped out of a stall and tried to snatch a Ranger weapon; another Ranger shot him in the head and killed him; another PDF jumped out and grabbed a Ranger around the neck; they slammed each other up against the wall and fought hand to hand. The Ranger kicked the PDF through a window, and he landed one floor down in front of a Ranger private who had just taken up a firing position with an M-60 machine gun. Caught by surprise, he cut the PDF soldier in half as he tried to pull a pistol.
Two and a half hours after the jump, Torrijos Tocumen airport was secured.
Inside the terminal, the Rangers separated detainees—civilian passengers from the Brazilian airliner—from the prisoners, and flex-cuffed (using flexible plastic handcuffs) the prisoners. The detainces were asked to wait in the terminal until order was restored. When some of the children became hungry a few hours later, the Rangers arranged a meal with the restaurant manager and paid for it themselves.
AT 2:08 A.M., the first 82nd Airborne troopers began dropping on their drop zones—twenty-three minutes late because of the ice storm at Fort Bragg. The rest of the drop was also delayed by the storm, but the entire 82nd was finally on the ground by 5:15 A.M.
By 10:00 A.M., the 82nd had assumed responsibility for the security of the airfield.
LATER, it was learned from one of Noriega’s bodyguards that a Ranger roadblock near Torrijos-Tocumen had narrowly missed capturing the dictator—and saving the United States a lot of trouble. Here is how it happened:
The day before, after Noriega’s entourage from Colon had split and a decoy had gone on to the Comandancia, Noriega had been taken to the rest camp at Ceremi for a date with a prostitute. By the time he got there, he was reportedly in less than total control, having consumed about two fifths of scotch by then.
The first inklings that his country was being invaded came when he heard the AC-130 and attack helicopters firing on Torrijos-Tocumen, soon followed by the roar of transports dropping Rangers.
Moments after the firing started, Noriega ran out of the hotel, wearing nothing but his red bikini underwear, and jumped into the back of his car. “The Americans are after me!” he cried. “Let’s get out of here.”
Down the road, they ran into the Ranger roadblock.
“My God,” he screamed, “they know where I am! They dropped these guys right on top of me!”
When a car ahead of them hit the roadblock and began drawing fire from the Rangers, Noriega’s car made a quick 180-degree turnaround and took a back road into Panama City. Afterward, Noriega was so “shook,” it took a day to get him calmed down.
AT one time that first night, the JSOTF had 171 aircraft in the skies over Panama City. No one had a midair collision, and no one ran out of fuel. The AC-130 gunships kept twenty-four-hour coverage for ninety-six straight hours, using their sensors, weapons, and searchlights to intimidate the PDF and support the SF, Rangers, SEALs, and the conventional forces.
USAF special operations forces in Panama—the 1st Special Operations Wing (SOW)—were commanded by Colonel (later Major General) George Gray and composed of MH-53J Pave Low helos, AC-130 gunships, MH- 60G Blackhawks with refuel probes, MC-130 Combat Talon aircraft for air-drop and penetration of heavily defended airspace, and EC-130 aircraft used for PSYOPs, radio, and TV.
RIO HATO
While the 1st Ranger Battalion was parachuting down on Torrijos-Tocumen, the other two battalions of the 75th Regiment were making a parachute assault at Rio Hato, west of Panama City.
They had launched seven hours earlier from Fort Benning, Georgia, in seventeen C-130s of the 317th airlift wing, stationed at Pope Air Force Base. Each of the first fifteen aircraft was crammed with sixty-five Rangers (C-130s normally carried fifty-two fully loaded troops), jammed tighter than rush-hour subways. Forget about moving. Forget about walking down the aisle to a “toilet.” Five-gallon cans were passed around under people’s legs. Because there wasn’t room to rig, everyone had donned their equipment before boarding. Each Ranger carried on his lap a sixty-to-one-hundred-pound rucksack loaded with ammunition and supplies—including at least one 66mm light antitank weapon (LAW). As it turned out, the LAWs came in very handy.
At H-hour, F-117 stealth bombers dropped two 2,000-pound bombs, with time-delay fuses, 150 meters from the 6th and 7th Company barracks. For the next three minutes, Apache helicopters, AH-6 helicopter gunships, and an AC-130 gunship fired on antiaircraft weapons positions around the airfield.
At H+3 minutes, the lead C-130 crossed the drop zone at 500 feet, trailed immediately by the C-130s dropping the Rangers, followed shortly by two C-130s dropping four jeeps and four motorcycles.
As the Rangers started their descent, they could see green machine gun tracers crossing the drop zone—or worse, whizzing up toward them. Thirteen of the fifteen C-130s received multiple hits. And a few Rangers were also hit as they descended. The bombs and the preparatory fire had had an effect—two hundred cadets were later found hiding under their bunks—but not enough. Most of the PDF 6th and 7th Companies had managed to deploy around the airfield, and were coming at the landing Rangers in CG-150 armored cars and other military vehicles with machine guns blasting; a .50-caliber machine gun on the rock archway at the main gate raked the drop zone.
From all indications, they had been alerted before the attack, and they were good soldiers. They did what good soldiers do.
The Rangers did not take this quietly; Rangers arc as passive as blow-torches. As they slipped out of their chutes and assembled for their assaults, they fired at the PDF vehicles with their LAWs, and knocked several out even before moving on to their assigned assault objectives. They knocked out three trucks this way, one of them a fuel tanker that burned for hours.
In one of the stranger moments of that night, a Ranger’s parachute was snagged by a fleeing PDF two-and-a-half-ton truck, which dragged him across the drop zone, with the Ranger yelling for help. His call was answered when a comrade coolly put a LAW rocket into the truck cab at 150 meters—a long shot for a moving target.
While all this was happening, Colonel Buck Kernan, the Ranger regimental commander, was single-handedly shutting down power at the airfield—though not exactly on purpose.
During his descent, he’d passed through the field’s power lines. When he landed, his parachute was tangled in the lines and in flames. As he pulled the chute free, he dragged a light pole onto the power l
ines supplying the camp—shorting out the entire airfield complex. He quickly detached from his parachute harness, and found himself on the edge of the bullfighting ring in the center of the camp.
Meanwhile, the regimental sergeant major, Chief Sergeant Major Leon Guerrero, who had jumped after Kernan, was floating down above him watching all of this, worried that the colonel was badly injured. But when he saw Kernan climb out of the ring and had determined his boss was okay, the only thing he could do was break into laughter. Kernan instantly took charge and rallied his troops.
Colonel Kernan’s plan for the takedown for Rio Hato called for two AC- 130 gunships, one Army Apache, and two AH-6 helicopter gunships to be orbiting near Rio Hato before the troop-carrying C-130s arrived. At precisely 0100 hours, they engaged known antiaircraft weapons positions and other preselected targets in the Rio Hato complex, with great results. The Rangers started dropping at precisely 0103 hours.
Once on the ground, 2nd/75th Ranger Battalion had the mission of neutralizing the 6th and 7th PDF Companies, while 3rd/75th Ranger isolated the airfield, cleared the NCO Academy, the camp headquarters, the communications center, the motor pool, and the airfield operating complex.
Although the complex was defended by some of Noriega’s elite, these were no match for Rangers. Once on the ground, the Rangers attacking assigned objectives with platoon- and squad-size elements quickly overwhelmed the PDF, killing 34 and capturing 278, along with thousands of weapons.
After an hour and fifty-three minutes of tough, close-quarters fighting, Rio Hato was secured, resistance had ceased, and supply aircraft had started landing.
ONE Ranger mission was to search Noriega’s “Farralon” beach house on the airfield’s southern approach to the airfield. It was unoccupied. Rangers from Lieutenant Colonel Al Maestas’ 2d Ranger Battalion found the large double-glass door locked. The Rangers debated how to enter the luxurious home. Their solution? They backed off and shot a LAW rocket into the door, shattering it into nano-pieces. (Troops in the JSOTF later called LAWs “the Ranger key.”)
Again, vast quantities of pornography were found.
TURNING LAWs into an entry device is typical of Rangers. They are not subtle. Several days later, the Rangers moved into Panama City and began establishing checkpoints and traffic control.
About 10:30 one night, a Ranger squad was manning a major intersection. This checkpoint had been set up with typical Ranger efficiency, and in depth. The block was manned by three Rangers, supported in overwatch by a 90mm recoilless rifle and an M-60 machine gun.
A car approached, slowed, then accelerated and burst through the barriers.
No screwing around with the Rangers. The 90mm immediately engaged, the sedan exploded with a direct hit, and the M-60 hosed down the flaming wreck just to make sure. Inside were PDF soldiers, all dead, and several open bottles of whiskey. They’d been drunk when they ran the block.
The story quickly made the rounds of the JSOTF. Somebody drew a cartoon poster of a Ranger gunner destroying a sedan; its caption read: “RADD!—Rangers Against Drunk Drivers.”
TASK FORCE PACIFIC
Though the ice storm at Pope Air Force Base had taken its toll, the twenty heavy-drop and three CDS birds (C-141s) from Charleston were unaffected, and arrived at Torrijos-Tocumen on schedule at 1:45 A.M. carrying most of the equipment the 82nd would use in Panama: seventy-two HMMWVs, most of them equipped with .50-caliber machine guns; eight Sheridan M-551 armored assault vehicles; four 105mm artillery pieces; and several pieces of engineer equipment. Twenty-six minutes later, eight C-141s arrived with paratroopers. General Johnson, his Division Assault CP, and his brigade and battalion commanders flew in with the first eight birds. An hour after that, five more birds dropped. The last seven dropped at 0515 hours, completing the Division Ready Brigade of more than 2,000 paratroopers.
The first division objective was Panama Viejo in eastern Panama City. Stationed there were the PDF 1st Cavalry Squadron, primarily a ceremonial unit with approximately eighty horses, and a 170-man detachment from Noriega’s elite and fiercely loyal special operations antiterrorist unit (USEAT), equipped with V-300 armored assault vehicles and antiaircraft weapons. The job of taking this target had been given to the 2nd Battalion, 504th Infantry.
Since the entire DRB had been cross-loaded among the twenty C-141 personnel birds—normal practice in an airborne operation to spread the risk—and all the arrivals were staggered, the entire 2nd/504th did not assemble for the air assault until most of the personnel planes had dropped. And it was nearly daylight when the first lift of the 2nd/504th launched for Panama Viejo, with eleven Blackhawks carrying thirty-five troopers each, supported by two Cobra gunships and two Apaches. They landed relatively unopposed at 6:45 A.M., and quickly set about establishing a security perimeter around their landing zone.
The second lift landed just to their north, behind the barracks. As the Blackhawks approached the landing zone, they took heavy small-arms fire, and two lift ships were hit. Though the two ships made it back to the pickup zone at Torrijos-Tocumen, they were disabled and out of action. The troops on the lift were also quickly engaged by heavy small-arms fire after they hit the ground.
The third lift arrived without serious opposition and began to push outward.
A total of five hundred troops were now on the ground, and all met resistance—PDF and USEAT wearing civilian clothes, using hit-and-run tactics.
By 11:55 A.M., after suffering heavy casualties, the PDF had melted into the civilian population, and the battalion commander officially declared Panama Viejo secured; but sporadic fighting continued for the rest of the afternoon.
TINAJITAS
Tinajitas, the home of the two-hundred-man 1st Infantry Company, was located on a hilltop six miles north of Panama City and eight miles west of Torrijos-Tocumen, and was surrounded on three sides by the sprawling slum village of San Miguelito, the home of a Dignity Battalion. It was a tough target. Anti-helicopter obstacles had been set up in the garrison’s large courtyard; adjacent to the compound were four 120mm mortars, six 81 mm mortars, three 60mm mortars, and a ZPU-4 antiaircraft gun. An AC- 130 had engaged the dug-in position three times during the night.
There was only one way to effectively attack Tinajitas, and that was by landing on a ridgeline 700 meters down the hill. The landing zone would be clearly within the range of the mortars, and the fight would be uphill all the way.
The 1st Battalion, 504th Airborne Infantry, lifted off from Torrijos-Tocumen at 8:00 A.M., preceded by two Apaches and an OH-58 helicopter to overwatch the landing zone. During their initial survey of the area, the fire support element took no ground fire, but as they broke off to lead the approaching lift ships to the LZ, they crossed over San Miguelito and received heavy and effective ground fire. Rather than risk collateral damage to civilians, they did not return the fire, but reported it to the air assault task force commander, then flew to Howard Air Force Base to check the damage.
An escort Apache immediately flew to San Miguelito, located the enemy position, and received permission to engage the target, which was neutralized by salvos of 30mm fire from a distance of 2,800 meters, leaving ten dead PDF soldiers.
The landing zone at Tinajitas turned out to be the hottest encountered by 82nd units. The delay brought on by the ice storm had given the PDF time to set up defenses and inflict casualties. (One Blackhawk took twenty-eight hits but still remained airborne, thanks to its redundant systems.)
As they approached the LZ, the first lift came under automatic-weapons and 81 mm mortar fire from PDF soldiers positioned in buildings to their west and southwest. After landing, as they were deploying in their attack formation, the paratroopers came again under heavy fire, this time from the hilltop and the surrounding barrio. These troops, supported by fire from the two Apaches, attacked the PDF position; heavy fire continued as the second and third lifts came in.
The battalion then fought up the hill, but when they reached the top, the garrison turned out to
be abandoned. The PDF had left a stay-behind element to counter the attack, while the rest of the company had withdrawn into the barrio to fight alongside the Dignity Battalion. The stay-behinds slipped away before the paratroopers reached the top.
The battalion later moved into the barrio and neutralized organized resistance.
The battalion commander declared the position secure at 2:30 P.M.
FORT CIMARRON
As of noon on D Day, only one major target remained to be taken—Battalion 2000. But with three companies, eight V-300 armored cars, fourteen mortars, and four 107mm rocket launchers (somewhat attrited during the attempt to cross the Pacora River bridge the night before), it was one of the most demanding targets of the twenty-seven.
At 12:05 P.M., Lieutenant Colonel John Vines, Commander of 4th Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, departed for Fort Cimarron in eleven Blackhawks, escorted by Cobra gunships. The assault required two lifts.
After landing, paratroops fanned out into the villages outside the encampment, where they encountered heavy PDF resistance (another consequence of the ice storm delay); five PDF soldiers were killed in the resulting firefights.
When they reached Fort Cimarron, the battalion PSYOPs team broadcast a surrender message; in reply, the PDF inside the cuartel fired on the paratroopers. The battalion commander directed an AC-130 gunship attack on the barracks complex. The gunship fired at the barracks area almost continuously for four hours.
At daylight, when the paratroopers conducted a sweep through the garrison compound, they found it empty. They prepared for a counterattack, but it never came. The survivors of Battalion 2000 had abandoned the garrison, put on their Levi’s, and made their way into the city.