battle.
To the east, Battle One got under way when the lead elements of the Iraqi main force (an armored and a mechanized division) entered Al-Khafji.
The problem faced by the Eastern Area commander, General Sultan, was figuring out how to engage and defeat this unknown-size second battle force (and recall that the Iraqi Army had been often portrayed as battle- tested, hard, and experienced, while his own modest force had never experienced combat).
Meanwhile, Battle Three had already started when Jim Crigger, on his own hook, started diverting air into Kuwait. Since the Iraqis would move only at night, this battle had to be conducted at night; and since the weather started to close in on the twenty-ninth, our air attacks had to be conducted at low altitude under the clouds rather than at the far-preferred medium altitudes.
On the ground, close support of EAC forces became the responsibility of the USMC Direct Air Support Center at Walt Boomer’s headquarters, while in the air, the C-130 Airborne Direct Air Support Center command-and-control aircraft was used for this purpose. The TACC flowed or diverted air to the DASC or into Kuwait as fast as it could be targeted. The pace of the air battle was once again dictated by the pace of the tactical air control system’s management of the air.
Later that night, the USMC launched a night-capable TV-equipped drone. As the unmanned aircraft crossed the border, it transmitted pictures of dozens of Iraqi armored personnel carriers lined up behind the earthen berm that marked the border between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
When the pictures showed up in my headquarters, I began to understand the warnings we had been receiving during the past few days.
Next, a team of B-52s and A-10s were tasked to bomb the “Kuwaiti National Forest” just north of the Kuwait border. The B-52 strike (filmed by the A-10s) went in first. As the bombs walked through the rows of trees, armored vehicles moved in all directions, fleeing for their lives. Moments later, the A-10s began their attack, carefully picking which target to destroy.
Later, as I watched the film, I noted that the A-10 guys preferred to lock onto and destroy the tanks and APCs that continued to move. Perhaps, I mused, the Warthog drivers thought that was the sporting thing to do — to shoot fleeing vehicles rather than the sitting ducks whose crews had fled on foot. But then I noticed more A-10s arriving to clean up the sitting ducks, and that theory flew out the window. Blazing fuel and exploding ammunitions turned night into day.
Early in the morning of 30 January, Major General Sultan took a force of Saudi and Qatari armored vehicles to the west side of Khafji. When he found Iraqi armor there, he engaged it, destroying some tanks and APCs and capturing an Iraqi officer and several dozen troops (even then the Iraqis were anxious to surrender). Questioning of the captives revealed that two Iraqi battalions were in the town. This information, coupled with earlier reports that more than fifty armored vehicles were also heading toward Khafji, led General Sultan to withdraw until close air support could be secured and a more comprehensive plan of attack could be drawn up.
As daylight broke, the pace of all three battles slowed down. The Iraqis stopped moving; the Saudis withdrew; the USMC began to convoy forces into the desert to the west of Khafji; and our air attacks in Kuwait, while hardly slow or routine, lacked the intensity that occurred every night when the F-117s hit Baghdad, and the Scud hunt and Scud-launching heated up.
Late that afternoon, I was in the TACC with Lieutenant General Ahmed Al Behery, the Royal Saudi Air Force commander, watching the battle over Kuwait unfold. The phone was handed to Behery, who said a few words on channel two (Arabic), then handed the phone to me: “Chuck, it’s Khaled.”
“Khaled, hello, where are you?” I asked.
“Chuck, this is Khaled,” he answered; and then, forcefully, “I’m at Khafji. And I need air.”
“Khaled, how in the hell did you get to Khafji?”
“Chuck,” he replied, “we have a battle up here, and I need air, lots of air. I need B-52s.”
When a ground general says he needs B-52s, you know he’s in trouble. You know he wants an instant solution to a severe problem. As he spoke those words, I glanced up at the AWACS display, which showed flight after flight heading toward southern Kuwait.
“You’re going to get lots of air, Khaled,” I replied in my best bedside manner.
“No, Chuck, you don’t understand. I need
I whipped out the line airmen have used for decades. “Trust me, Khaled, you’re going to get more air than you ever knew existed.”
“No, Chuck, I need
As a matter of fact, his anxiety had more behind it than I thought. He did need air.
Though it was true that all available air was being funneled to defeat the Iraqi attack, I was unaware that we had no way to control close air support sorties at Al-Khafji, since, as I learned later, the Marine air controllers who should have been doing that were just then trapped and hiding in the town. The USMC had two ANGLICO (air and naval gunfire liaison company — Marine for forward air controller) teams of five men whose job was to contact the USMC DASC and coordinate and control CAS or artillery fire. These two teams were hiding on a rooftop in Al- Khafji.
Hundreds of sorties were arriving over Khafji, but when they were unable to contact any controlling agency or forward air controller, they just moved north a few miles and continued to pummel the Iraqi forces trying to reinforce the lead elements in Saudi Arabia.
The Marines’ inability to control close air support at Khafji did not please Khaled. Other Marines to the west could have been sent east to handle that. But this did not happen, in Khaled’s view, for the following reasons:
1. The Marines feared they’d hit the Saudi forces — liaison between Marines and Saudis being at best limited.
2. They felt their air was best employed as a combined arms element with their own ground forces and should not be deployed to the east where few of their organic forces were engaged.
3. And anyhow, they were in a big fight out to the west against a mechanized division, and needed all the air they could get.
While I’m sure all of these to some small extent guided Walt Boomer’s decision, the single most important factor remained: the Marines assigned to provide command and control for close air support to the Saudis were just then surrounded by hundreds of armed Iraqis.
I am absolutely certain that Walt Boomer would have given Khaled all the CAS his team could use; unfortunately, the means for Khaled to request and execute close air support was at that time avoiding capture.
After I had once again assured Khaled that he would get more air support than he could imagine, I learned how he’d come to be in Khafji in the first place. When word of the Iraqi invasion broke, he was on his way to Dhahran to give a medal to Captain Shamrani, the RSAF F-15 pilot who’d shot down the two Iraqi Mirages. He’d immediately had his aircraft diverted and joined Major General Sultan.
As he was speaking, other thoughts were running through my mind.
From early August, Khaled had been emphasizing his long-held resolve that when it came down to the crunch, Saudi blood must be the first spilled in the defense of the Kingdom. It was a matter of honor that Saudi military forces do more than their share in defense of their land. Yes, he appreciated the support of the Coalition. Yes, he appreciated the almost overwhelming force from the United States. But when the war was over, it must be clear to all that the Saudis had performed on the battlefield in a manner that brought honor and pride to King and country. Until the Iraqi invasion of the Kingdom at the end of January, the war had been all airpower, and the blood spilled had been U.S., Italian, and British blood — which is not to say that the RSAF had proved wanting. The RSAF had performed magnificently, but no Saudi aircraft had yet been lost. Now it looked as though Khaled’s long-held resolve was about to be fulfilled, and if he wasn’t careful, it might well be his own royal blood.
I wanted to tell Khaled to be careful; he was far more important as a live leader then a dead hero. But there was also a sixteen-year-old kid in me that couldn’t resist adding to my promises of air support:
“Oh, Khaled,” I said just before we said goodbye.
“Yes, Chuck.”
“Just keep one thing in mind. I’m asking you to trust me while my ass is in a bunker in Riyadh and yours is
