A few moments later, Wayne Downing called Stiner on the hot line. 'We got our man,' Downing said, 'but the helicopter may have been shot down as it was lifting off the roof.'
'When you get it sorted out, let me know what the situation is.'
Downing called back in less than five minutes. 'Don't know whether the helicopter was shot down or whether it just had too much weight to lift off the building. It appears that it sort of fell off the building and came down on the street. I am arranging a rescue operation now, and will keep you posted.'
Downing had been both an armor brigade and a Ranger Regiment Commander, and brought some unique skills to the mission. As a Ranger, he emphasized surprise, agility, and cunning, but he also appreciated the speed and overwhelming firepower of armor. During the planning, he'd been assigned the mechanized infantry battalion for the assault on the Comandancia and Carcelo Modelo, and for that mission received the platoon of Sheridan light tanks and the Marine Corps LAVs. From this force, he tailored a quick-reaction element; LAVs and armored personnel carriers would carry his highly trained special mission forces — some of whom had never been in an armored vehicle. No problem, they were Special Forces and adaptable. Major Howard Humble, a former mechanized infantry company commander in Germany, and now an SF officer, got the force organized and moving into the streets of Panama City that night and led them with distinction for the next five days.
Downing called this force his 'Panzer Gruppe' and positioned it as a reaction force at various places in the city. It could go faster than helicopters, hit places they couldn't, and could be broken up into several elements for greater flexibility (to find their way around Panama City, they used a map they got from a gas station). The APCs'.50-caliber and 20mm machine guns were small beer in a major war, but in fights against lightly armed forces inside a city, they provided tremendous firepower.
One of the Panzer Gruppe elements was sent to rescue Muse and his rescuers. Once they'd picked them up, they first took them to a junior high school for transloading to a helicopter, and then on to the field hospital at Howard Air Force Base for treatment. Here it was learned what had happened: The helicopter carrying Muse and his rescuers had been overloaded and caught a skid on a power line, causing it to crash in the street. Once down, the pilot had been able to move the helo to a parking lot, from where he'd attempted to take off. The hclo had gotten about thirty feet off the ground when it was shot down, landing on its side. Three operators had been injured in the crash, including one already shot in the leg. The'd formed a perimeter to protect Muse and had been engaged in an intense firefight until they'd been rescued.
At about the same time all this was happening, heavy fire at the Comandancia brought down a second special operations helicopter, which crash-landed inside the compound and slid up against the security fence surrounding the Comandancia headquarters. Though neither pilot was injured, they knew they couldn't last long in the withering fire. They jumped out of what was left of the aircraft, threw their flight vests on the fence, climbed over, and crawled beneath a portico that covered an entranceway.
As they huddled there, a PDF soldier — perhaps the first prisoner of the war — came crawling out of the grass with his hands over his head. 'I want to go with you,' he called out in broken English. They took him in.
A Panzer Gruppe squad rescued all three.
The following morning, a third light observation helicopter was shot down and went into the Canal on the Atlantic side. Unfortunately the crew was lost.
At H-hour, the four Sheridan tanks and an AC-130 pounded the Comandancia's main headquarters and the PDF barracks, while the lead hattalion of the 193rd Brigade moved down Fourth of July Avenue, turned left into a street dominated by high-rise buildings, and began its assault into the compound. The way ahead of them was blocked by heavy trucks and other obstacles, and most of the PDF they could see were wearing civilian clothes — mainly Levis. It was clear they'd been alerted in advance — they planned to fight for a while and then fade into the populace in civilian clothes when the going got tough.
Some of the heaviest fighting of the operation followed.
The lead battalion pushing through with their APCs instantly came under very heavy fire from windows, ledges, and rooftops, and from civilian vehicles sandbagged as fighting positions. For the next two hours, heavy fighting continued. By 3:00 A.M., the Comandancia was on fire, with smoke so thick the Sheridans could not see their targets, but the 193rd had formed a cordon around the compound and begun operations to clear each building.
As a result of a PSYOPs broadcast that designated a local street for safe passage, six truckloads of PDF had surrendered; but the three security companies remaining inside the compound were still putting up stiff resistance.
Since he had no idea what to expect once his troops got inside the Comandancia, Stiner decided to bring in a Ranger company the following afternoon to do the detailed search of the building. The company was from 3rd Ranger Battalion and had jumped the night before with the 1st Ranger Battalion for the H-hour assault on Torrijos- Tocumen International Airport.
As PDF and Dignity Battalions fled the area outside the cordoned compound, they set fire to the nearby slum of Chorillo to slow the advance of the U.S. troops.
At H-hour, another Task Force Bayonet battalion, the 1st Battalion, 508th airborne infantry, launched an assault against Fort Amador less than two miles away, with the aim of neutralizing the PDF's 5th Infantry Company. Since Fort Amador was a treaty-designated 'joint use' post — with both Panamanians and Americans living or working there — this would be a delicate operation. The PDF occupied all the buildings on the south side of the facility, near the Canal, while American military families lived directly across the golf course fairway — among them, Marc Cisneros and his family. Cisneros was well-known and respected by most Panamanians, and for this reason Noriega hated him. Cisneros played a large part in the coming action.
'This was the first time in my military career,' Carl Stiner recalls, 'that family members of U.S. servicemen would find themselves without warning right in the middle of a combat environment.'
Because it was the Christmas holiday season, the PDF had set up life-size nativity scenes near their barracks — but nativity scenes with a difference, with machine-gun positions established directly beneath each of them. The guns pointed directly across the fairway at the quarters of the U.S. military families.
The battalion commander's attack plan called for infiltrating most of his headquarters company onto the installation before H-hour. At H-hour, two rifle companies, augmented by a 105mm howitzer, would conduct an air assault directly behind the quarters area occupied by U.S. families. As they landed, they would immediately establish a security perimeter around the U.S. housing area and then attack the PDF barracks less than a hundred yards away, one company from the north, and the other from the south.
OPERATION JUST CAUSE
20 DECEMBER 1989-31 JANUARY 1990
Another company from the battalion would secure the Balboa Yacht Club on the south side of the peninsula and directly behind the PDF barracks. The Club was a frequent gathering place for PDF officers, and several boats of the PDF Navy were usually docked nearby.
Once the assault troops were in position, and the families warned to take cover, the battalion commander was ready to launch his operation. He decided to hold off on building-clearing operations, however, until he'd tried PSYOPs. From time to time, he fired the howitzer on vacant buildings — to make sure the PDF knew he was there and meant business — while his broadcast teams sent out a surrender message. At first light, building-clearing operations would police up anyone left.
It didn't take much persuasion. Moments after the howitzer started firing, PDF were bolting out of their buildings and down to the water, throwing in their weapons. A total of 140 PDF surrendered or were captured. Moments after that, the night was quiet — except for the broadcasts and the occasional firing of the howitzer.
The next day, clearing proceeded, punctuated by sporadic sniping. That ended at 3:00 P.M., when Marc Cisneros talked the last sixteen holdouts in the gymnasium into surrendering. Fort Amador was secure.
During interrogations, it was learned that most PDF officers had abandoned their troops even before H-hour and left them to defend themselves. On the whole, PDF officers were a bad lot. Most were on the take and
