Washington.
Unfortunately for Saddam’s brilliant strategy, things didn’t work out the way he planned.
The war started and the air came, but the air did not cease (as Saddam said it would), and the ground forces failed to take the bait. Unexpectedly, the Iraqi Army was being destroyed from the air. They were totally naked to Chuck Horner’s armada and had no clue about how to fight back.
Saddam had to do something to regain the initiative and resurrect his failing strategy. Otherwise his defeat would be absolute, and his regime might be lost.
? The first such attempt occurred during the mad rush of Iraqi jets to sanctuary in Iran toward the end of January.
One day, enemy fighters took to the air out of an airfield in eastern Iraq, and AWACS controllers vectored nearby USAF F-15s in CAP orbit toward the fleeing Iraqis. Nothing unusual. But as the air-to-air jets screamed north, a pair of bomb-laden Iraqi Mirage aircraft took off and headed south. Though the AWACS crew spotted this new threat, they could not recall the F-15s, who had their hands full chasing their prey to the north.
Next in line were two F-14s at a CAP point in the northern part of the Arabian Gulf. Because the F-14s were controlled by a Navy Aegis cruiser that would not release them to AWACS (possibly because the Aegis controller feared leaving the Navy naked to the Iraqi bombers that were headed in their general direction), the AWACS controller was unable to vector these interceptors onto the Mirages.
Meanwhile, the Mirages were now flying down the coast of Saudi Arabia, approaching the huge oil refinery south of Dhahran. Saddam surely hoped that by bombing the oil fields, he would bring pain to Saudi Arabia, the same way Coalition air was bringing pain to him. For example, the pumping stations in the refineries have huge one-of-a-kind valves that would take years to obtain. If the Mirages had been able to hit the maze of pipes in the refinery, they could have put the refinery out of action for a very long time.
Unfortunately for the Iraqis, the airborne shield protecting the Saudis was both thicker and tougher than they’d imagined. Waiting next in line to shoot them down were two Royal Saudi Air Force F-15s, USMC Hawk anti- aircraft missile sites, Royal Saudi Air Defense Hawk missile sites, and U.S. Army Patriot missile sites. All of them were closely following AWACS data, and waiting for orders to engage the bandits.
The first of these was Captain Shamrani, the RSAF flight leader. Shamrani took a single vector from the AWACS controller, selected afterburner, and threw his jet into a hard, descending right-hand turn. This screaming dive ended in a roll-out over the water just off the coast. Now headed south, he quickly spotted the Iraqi Mirages racing desperately toward their target. Then training took over, and he locked onto the Iraqi wingman, selected the middle position on his weapons switch, and listened to the warbling tone of his AIM-9L heat-seeking missile, which told him that the IR seeker in the missile had seen the target and was locked on. In scarcely a second, he identified the Mirage to AWACS and received permission to fire. His voice was excited but clear when he sent “Fox Two, kill” over the radio.
After easily avoiding the Mirage blowing up ahead of him, Shamrani rolled his jet sharply to the right to line up on the Iraqi leader.
Seemingly unaware of his wingman’s demise or of the deadly threat behind him, the Iraqi leader drove on toward his target. This time there was no need to identify the target or request clearance to fire. Once he had his missile tone, Shamrani pressed the red button on top of his control stick and hit the toggle switch on the throttle to tell his wingman, AWACS, and anyone else listening in, “Fox Two, kill.”
Scratch one Iraqi hope.
But they were not finished yet. Far from it.
Saddam’s most impressive attempt to regain the initiative and make his strategy work occurred late in January 1991, when he invaded Saudi Arabia.
His thinking was this: Air was killing him; and Coalition ground forces were surprisingly reluctant to impale themselves on his defenses.
The downside for Saddam was to continue to be destroyed from the air and certain defeat. His next decision was a no-brainer.
? As a side note: because Saddam’s hopes for his invasion of Saudi Arabia were so resoundingly dashed, several commentators have imagined that the Iraqis could not have been
For their “probe,” they used three divisions, one armor and two mechanized infantry, including their 5th Mechanized division, one of their finest armor units (it was considered just below the Republican Guard).[65] Though exact numbers are not available, in all probability these three divisions contained something in the neighborhood of 20,000 troops (and perhaps as many as 40,000), a sizable force.
Meanwhile, Saddam himself thought the probe — or invasion — was of no small importance. After learning that his troops had entered the town, he announced that the attack was “the beginning and omen of the thundering storm that will blow on the Arabian Desert.”
Chuck Horner will take up the story from here.
AL-KHAFJI
The town of Al-Khafji lies on the coast of the Arabian Gulf in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, approximately ten kilometers south of the Kuwaiti border on the highway connecting Dhahran and Kuwait City. With no more than ten to fifteen thousand inhabitants, it can’t be called big; nor does it have any real reason for existence other than as home for civil administration and a place to buy supplies. In this respect, it is not unlike many small rural towns in our own desert Southwest. On the north side of town, there is a modest desalinization plant. On the south is a modest oil-storage area. If you want a
Though the battle of Al-Khafji started in the late afternoon of 29 January 1991 and ended midday on the thirty-first, the lead-up to the battle started several months earlier.
Late one night in early August, Prince Khaled, John Yeosock, and I were having a war council. It had been a terrible day of rumors and fears — twenty-seven Iraqi divisions were poised on the border, and we had no means to stop them. Our discussion involved strategies for using the 82d Airborne Division, the Saudi National Guard, and airpower to stem the Iraqi attack, should it occur. During the meeting, Khaled kept making the point that his orders from the King were to make certain that no part — not one inch — of Saudi soil would fall to the invader. That included the town of Al-Khafji.
Unfortunately, not only was the town well within the range of Iraqi artillery, but we did not have the means to prevent its capture. Fortunately, Khaled sensibly realized that the town was a liability; and it was agreed that it should be evacuated. In that way, we would be able to create the free-fire zone that would allow us to attack the Iraqi invaders with air and artillery without the extensive coordination needed to protect friendly civilians and military. It was a tough decision, for Khaled, in effect, had to reject the guidance he had received.
He did the right thing, and from that time on, Al-Khafji became little more than a ghost town.
Not totally, however.
