Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign

  The pain and suffering the troops endured during the early deployment was beyond belief. At some locations, there was triple bunking—three people sharing a single bed or cot in eight-hour shifts. Later, more people were added to the schedule by making room for sleeping under the bed. The Arab hosts in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman opened up their bases, schools, hangars, and homes to help out. Americans were being housed everywhere.

  Yet there was caution. After the 1983 murder of 241 Marines in Beirut by a suicide bomber, hotels were seen as risky (especially by General Schwarzkopf, who had a mania against hotels, because of his fear of terrorists). Often a person would arrive late at night, get bused to a beautiful hotel, enjoy the luxury of a bath with a fine meal and television in an air-conditioned room, only to get dumped in the desert the next day. There were thousands of stories like this.

  And there were many snafus—at customs checkpoints, for instance, where vital munitions convoys would be held up at a border by bureaucratic agents. Customs people in every country feel they work for nobody, and that everyone is a smuggler, but this is especially true in countries that forbid the drinking of alcohol and consider bra ads pornography. Better to be slow than to take any risks. A shipment of munitions? Those papers had better be in order.

  Then there were the communications shortfalls. Americans are used to telephones and communications access. Now a soldier was deployed to a nation where he needed permission for an international telephone line. He landed and went to the nearest telephone, perhaps a few miles away, so he could call home. But he couldn’t get an operator who knew who he was and where he was trying to call. His frustration level was instantly sky-high . . . even as he recalled what they’d told him when he’d boarded the aircraft about being ready to fight the minute he hit the ground.

  ★ One of the first deploying USAF units was a support group from the 363d Tactical Fighter Wing at Shaw AFB, South Carolina, who had been on alert to deploy since the crisis had begun. After their F-16s had roared off into the night, the maintenance teams had been loaded onto C-141s en route to who knew where. Hours later—all spent in the hold of a cramped, freezing cargo plane—they landed at midnight somewhere in the Arabian Gulf.

  As it happened, their F-16s were at Al Dhafra, and this C-14 had landed at the old military base in Abu Dhabi, about ten miles away, because the ramp at Al Dhafra was full and could not accept them. Nobody in the airplane knew that.

  Peering out the aircraft’s door, the thirty men and women from the 363d found only a dark, empty parking ramp, with hellishly hot desert air blasting them in the face. In the distance, they could see the lights of a city.

  They climbed down the boarding stairs, and somebody thrust bottled water at them. Not knowing what else to do, they stowed it somewhere, then turned their attention to unloading the equipment they carried on board—spare aircraft engines, toolboxes, weapons, and spare parts. Airpower, as the United States practices it, brings it all—enough for thirty days of fighting until the supply lifeline can be built.

  Meanwhile, all around them were guys in white robes and scarves over their heads: pleasant guys, as it happened, who spoke excellent English, though not the drawling southern dialect these folks from South Carolina were used to.

  Before long they learned that they’d landed in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and were to be bused to Al Dhafra, the military air base near Abu Dhabi, the capital of the emirate with that name. They were quickly packed into a small but clean bus. Then they headed out on a multilane freeway into the desert night—away from the city! Unaccustomed to the 110˚F nighttime heat (it was even hotter during the day, and more humid), they began to drink the bottled water that had been thrust at them earlier, grateful for the relief.

  The bus driver, a nice fellow, was from Ethiopia and spoke very little English. After a time, he turned off the highway and onto a dirt road that quickly became part of the vast desert. Up and down they bounced, over sand dunes and rock-strewn waste, until finally the bus came to a halt. “All out here,” the driver ordered. The miserable band, loaded down with duffel bags and personal weapons, straggled out of the bus and assembled somewhere in the hot desert nowhere. Then off went the bus.

  At that point, the lieutenant in charge, a young man named Tom Barth, took charge. Charge of what? Charge of whom? Where? Going where? It was pitch black, and the questions from the others started coming. But no answers were apparent.

  Soon wild desert dogs began to circle the group, attracted to the smell of food from a few MREs (Meals Ready to Eat—field rations of questionable taste) and leftover in-flight meals. The big question was who was most afraid of whom, but the people did a better job of bluffing, so the wild dogs kept their distance.

  Later, from the direction of the city lights they could still see over the horizon, a white cloud started to form. Was it a gas attack from invading Iraqi forces?

  Actually, no.

  Though this hearty band didn’t know it, they were in fact hundreds of miles south of Kuwait, just a few miles from the UAE coast, and they were observing the sea fog roll in. But just to be on the safe side, the lieutenant had everyone check their gas masks. Though their full chemical protection suits were loaded on the cargo pallets on the ramp next to the aircraft, they all carried a gas mask for just the threat that now seemed to be confronting them.

  The fog did not reach them, but in the distance a new terror appeared—the lights of an oncoming car, bouncing from dune to dune. Up drove a dark Mercedes with tinted windows. Terrorists? It stopped, and the electric window slid noiselessly down. Tom Barth, fully aware that it was his responsibility to keep this band alive, ordered security policemen in the group to be ready to shoot, but to aim for the legs, in case this visitor wasn’t really a terrorist. Gathering up all his courage, Barth stepped forward to the open window and peered in. There he found a swarthy man with a large black mustache and cold dark eyes, and wearing one of those white robes.

  The driver looked at him. “Are you Lieutenant Barth?” he asked politely.

  “Yes, I am. Why?” Barth answered, in his most manly manner, greatly relieved.

  The driver brushed off his questions and handed Barth a cellular phone.

  Composing himself, he spoke into it. “Hello, Lieutenant Barth.”

  Rapidly, an American on the other end replied, “Tom, where the hell are you?”

  Though Barth had no clue, he did his best to explain. Finally, it was decided. They would just stay put, and someone would come and get them in the morning. Without a word, the Arab (just somebody from the UAE who was told to find the lost Americans) retrieved the phone, closed the tinted window, and drove off into the night, never knowing how close he came to being kneecapped by a terrified American Air Force lieutenant.

  The next few hours passed slowly. There were complaints about how fucked up things were—and questions about where the women could go to the bathroom, because not all the bottled water turned into sweat. But then daybreak came, and all of a sudden, up drove the bus and the hugely smiling driver that had left them there the night before. He took the hearty band to a huge air base farther out in the desert, where they would spend the next few days sleeping on a hangar floor and eating MREs until Bill Rider could send tents and field kitchens to them.

  They had plenty to do, as the F-16s from Shaw AFB needed to be turned around for combat air patrols or put on alert with air-to-ground munitions.

  Everywhere it was the same—chaos—with everyone pitching in to help each other survive, build housing, and somehow come up with all the necessary comforts that Americans normally take for granted.

  In those early days, only the locals—such as the Ethiopian bus driver—seemed to know what they were doing, though their reasons often mystified the Americans. Faced with the end of a long day and a craving to go home, he’d simply dropped his passengers off in the desert where he knew they couldn’t get hurt or in trouble. When his duty day had ended—at midni
ght, in this case—he’d gone home to get a good night’s sleep, picked them up the next morning, and taken them to the air base as instructed. He really didn’t understand those strange Americans.

  ★ Most of the arriving troops came into Dhahran, a huge Saudi Air Force base on the eastern coast. Its commander, Brigadier General Turki bin Nassar, an RSAF F-15 fighter pilot, held a master’s degree in business administration from Troy State University, and was a graduate from the USAF Air University at Maxwell AFB. Prince Turki had hosted a small detachment of Chuck Horner’s people from CENTAF during ELF-1 and EARNEST WILL. Turki was also responsible for the air defense of Saudi Arabia’s vital eastern province, with its vast oil refineries, oil storage, and transshipment points. And then, in August 1990, he had a huge additional job dumped on him.

  The 1st Tactical Fighter Wing, commanded by Colonel (later Major General) “Boomer” McBroom, arrived first. Even before all of the forty-eight F-15C fighters had arrived, they were moving to help out Turki’s force of RSAF F-15Cs and Tornado F-2 Air Defense Variant (ADV) fighters in patrolling the skies along the Iraqi and Kuwaiti borders.

  Meanwhile, thousands of Army troops from the 82d Airborne Division’s alert brigade were also unloading at Dhahran. Turki’s men opened every facility they had in order to beddown and process the arriving troops as they streamed though the air base en route to their camps in the desert. British and French troops and aircraft also arrived, and Turki found them homes, too.

  He and McBroom formed quite a team. Since Turki was the host base commander, for most practical purposes McBroom worked for him, and together they solved a thousand problems every day: where to construct munitions storage areas, how to divide up ramp space, and the like. Cross support of RSAF and USAF F-15s became a daily occurrence, including the sharing of parts. Frequently, one would see USAF and RSAF repair teams helping one another, even if it meant that the two sergeants repairing the jet were a bearded Saudi and a fresh-faced American woman.

  Throughout the Kingdom, the emirates, and the other host nations of what was already becoming known as “the Coalition,” other examples of cooperation were going on—from generals and admirals, to sergeants and seamen. Day in, day out, trust, confidence, and cooperation grew as they all turned to defense of the Kingdom.

  While all of this was happening, Major General Tom Olsen formed up the Air Force’s Tactical Air Control Center (TACC) in the RSAF headquarters. The TACC was a vital part of what was to happen in the next nine months; the USAF could not have functioned without it. From there each day, Brigadier General Ahmed Sudairy and Colonel Jim Crigger and their staffs published an Air Tasking Order (ATO) for the growing Coalition air force. The ATO is the key document for running air operations in a theater—the sheet music that the aerial orchestra must use in order to play together. It covers everything from fighter and transport flights, to surface-to-air engagement envelopes and artillery fire. Anything that flies through the air needs to be in the ATO if it is to be safe, both for itself and others. In those early days, the ATOs out of the TACC were designed to execute the air defense of the Kingdom and the emirates, and to place aircraft on alert to repel a potential Iraqi invasion.

  LINE IN THE SAND

  The defense of the Kingdom was the other main driver during the “beddown of troops” period of Desert Shield. Every day, U.S. capabilities to defend Saudi Arabia against Iraqi aggression grew, which meant that new plans for that defense needed to be formed on an almost hour-to-hour basis.

  On one of their first nights in-country, Horner asked John Yeosock what he had that night to fight with if the Iraqis decided to attack into northern Saudi Arabia. Yeosock reached into his pocket, pulled out a penknife, and opened its two-inch blade. “That’s it,” he said.

  He wasn’t far from wrong.

  From the start, air defense was the first order of business. Fortunately, much of this defense was already in place, owing to some congressmen who had weathered criticism in order to support the sale of F-15s and E-3 AWACS to Saudi Arabia. These very aircraft now made possible the safe passage of the giant USAF transports vital to the rapid buildup of U.S. forces.

  The first deploying forces were USAF F-15 fighters and E-3 AWACS aircraft, to flesh out the Saudis who had been flying combat air patrols since the beginning of the crisis. Next came the U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, USS Independence and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, with their attendant battle groups. Then came the first USAF air-to-ground attack aircraft, F-16s from the 363d TFW at Shaw AFB in the States, and others from Europe. A-10 tank busters, known affectionately as “Warthogs,” arrived from England AFB, Louisiana, and Myrtle Beach AFB, South Carolina. All of this was designed to provide enough airpower to blunt an Iraqi thrust, and to devastate their supply lifelines. Horner told Schwarzkopf what air units he wanted in what order, though there were also units that had not been anticipated—such as the F-111s from Europe or the F-117s—since they were not apportioned to CENTAF in the war plans.

  Shortly after this, U.S. Marines aboard an Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) arrived offshore, followed by the larger and more powerful 7th MEB (Marine Expeditionary Battalion) from Twenty-nine Palms in California. These units drew their equipment from a just-arrived squadron of prepositioned ships based in the Indian Ocean at Diego Garcia. With them came a Marine air wing of fighters, attack aircraft, tankers, and helicopters to support their efforts. Then 82d Airborne Division began to land in Dhahran.

  All these forces deployed along the east coast, the high-speed avenue of attack, to protect the strategic assets there—the oil facilities and the desalinization plants, which supplied water to the interior as well as to the ports, towns, and airports in the eastern province. The forces were small and light, without much of the armored muscle that would be required to stop an Iraqi advance if it came.

  The fundamental job during this time was to find places to put all the people and equipment as they arrived, and to do it as fast as possible.

  The USAF units were bedded down by Bill Rider and the CENTAF staff, who set up shop in the RSAF headquarters, and were working the USAF beddown right from the start. At Horner’s direction, the F-15s and AWACS went side by side with their counterparts in the RSAF. The F-16s went to the UAE, because they had the range to cover Saudi Arabia, and this way they were based pretty much out of harm’s way from either ground, air, or missile attack. The A-10s went into Fahd Air Base, ten miles west of Dhahran, since they would be vital to stopping an Iraqi tank attack—though in all likelihood they would have had to fall back in the actual event of an Iraqi attack. The F-111s and U-2s went to Taif, near Mecca, and the F-117s went to Khamis Mushayt, south of Taif and about thirty miles north of the Yemen border.

  Grant Sharp did most of the Navy work. Since he already had a standing command afloat in the Gulf, the initial actions were to expand that command. Air tasking for the carriers would come out of the RSAF headquarters, while surface actions would come out of Rear Admiral Bill Fogerty (until Vice Admiral Hank Mauz arrived to take over at NAVCENT).

  John Yeosock was in charge of the land forces, with Lieutenant General Walt Boomer, the Marine commander, and Lieutenant General Gary Luck, the XVIIIth Airborne Corps commander, working together immediately under him.

  The 82d Airborne Division was the first on the ground, but there was no way to move them around except in the limited vehicles they had brought with them and the trucks and rental cars that could be scrounged from civilians. Owing to their lack of mobility, not much else could be done with them except to move them out from Dhahran into the desert near the air base, though some elements moved up toward the Kuwait border in position to fight delaying actions.

  Defenses were dreadfully thin.

  In those days, just in case, John Yeosock and Chuck Horner always kept their staff cars filled with gas, with a case of water in the trunk, and in the glove compartment a map of the road to Jeddah—if all else failed, the last-ditch fallback.

  Most of the direst predictions did not env
ision a retreat that far, instead projecting the loss of the east coast down to Qatar or the UAE borders. In that event, the plan was to take refuge in Bahrain by blowing the causeway to Dhahran, an island.

  There would eventually be bright spots, like the arrival of the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division with its M1A1 heavy tanks and M ⅔ Bradley fighting vehicles, or the rapid movement of the French ground forces from the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea across Saudi Arabia to the eastern province. But those events were weeks ahead, at the end of August and early September. For most of August, things were really hairy.

  In the event of an invasion, the plan was for the 82d Airborne to act as “speed bumps.” They’d move forward and blow the bridges through the sepkas and then fight until dislodged. Sepkas were swamplike low spots near the coast, where the salt water lay just under the desert crust, making them impassable for vehicles. The 82d would then melt into the desert, escape down the highway . . . or be captured or killed. They’d do this over and over.

  If the Iraqis tried an attack down the Wadi al Batin, the Saudi forces in King Khalid Military City would place a large roadblock across it and try to halt the invaders. If they failed, not much lay between the Iraqis and Riyadh, except some very difficult terrain and airpower.

  Such an attack remained unlikely, since the Iraqis’ best avenue of attack would have been to race down the coastal road in the east, then make a right turn at Dhahran and come east toward the capital. But again, distance worked against them: the farther they attacked, the closer they came to the U.S. air bases in Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and southwestern and western Saudi Arabia. Additionally, the Iraqis did not have the means to sweep the Arabian Gulf clear of the U.S. surface navy. Thus, the farther south they came, the more they exposed their flank to naval gunfire and air attack from the carriers. To cap it off, there was an aggressive disinformation campaign to inform the Iraqis of a planned U.S. amphibious landing in Kuwait City—the worst-kept secret since the story that D Day was going to take place at the Pas de Calais.