escaped later ran into the Rangers and the 82nd Airborne Division at the airport.
During interrogations, it was learned that the convoy had been transporting more than fifty soldiers from Battalion 2000's heavy weapons company, led by the company executive officer, and armed with 81 mm mortars, 90mm recoilless weapons, and 30-caliber machine guns. According to the executive officer, they were on their way to Panama City to put down 'some sort of civil disturbance.'
Later that morning, a two-and-a-half-ton truck flying a white flag arrived from Fort Cimarron to claim their dead.
At 3:45 P.M., a scout platoon from the 82nd Airborne Division on the way to Fort Cimarron linked up with Higgins and his men.
At 5:30 P.M., Higgins and his twenty-four Green Berets and twenty POWs were extracted by helicopter back to Albrook Air Force Base. Mission accomplished.
Jake Jacobelly's Special Forces teams from Task Force Black conducted three other essential H-hour missions or follow-on activities:
Tinajitas Recon for the 82nd Airborne: At 7:00 P.M. the previous evening, a four-man reconnaissance team had started cross-country on foot to place eyes on the Tinajitas Cuartel (Barracks), the 1st Infantry company, and the nest of sixteen mortars near Tinajitas. The team was in position by 1:00 A.M., and reported their findings to General Kinser at the 82nd command post for relay to Jim Johnson as he approached his airdrop. They passed reports on the mortars directly to Stiner's headquarters.
Cimarron Cuartel: At 9:00 P.M. the previous evening, another four-man reconnaissance team had been inserted by Blackhawk five kilometers outside the Cimarron Cuartel to report on Battalion 2000. This team reported the convoy movement toward the Pacora River bridge.
Cerro Azul TV 11 Antennae: The jamming and override broadcast beginning at 12:45 A.M. had successfully overridden all but one TV station — TV Station II, Noriega's primary media outlet. When attempts to jam it proved unsuccessful, an eighteen-man SF team was deployed just after H-hour to disable it temporarily.
The obvious way to disable a TV station is to knock down the antenna tower, but Stiner's people only wanted the station off the air for days, not months. For that reason, the team fast-roped from helicopters onto the station compound and removed a critical electronics module.
TASK FORCE ATLANTIC
Task Force Atlantic, on the Caribbean side of the Canal, was commanded by Colonel Keith Kellogg, and consisted of two infantry battalions, a two-hundred-man aviation section with Huey helos and Cobra gunships, a Vulcan air defense weapons section, an MP company, and an engineer company. One of the battalions — the 3rd Battalion, 504th Infantry — was actually from the 82nd Airborne Division. It had arrived on December 10 to attend the Jungle Operations Training Center as part of a normal training rotation, which it was scheduled to complete before Christmas. The battalion was not aware that its graduation exercise would involve combat.
Task Force Atlantic had several complex missions, to: isolate and clear Colon; neutralize the PDF 8th Infantry Company, stationed at Fort Espinar in Colon; neutralize the PDF 1st Marine Battalion at the Coco Solo Naval Station, cast of Colon; disable the multiengine aircraft on France Field, just south of Coco Solo; capture the PDF patrol boats at the ports; protect the Madden Dam; seize the electrical distribution center at Cerro Tigrc; secure the vital Gatun Locks; and free political prisoners, including Americans, now held in El Renacer prison, midway across the isthmus.
None of these was easy. Fort Espinar and Coco Solo were both joint-use facilities, with U.S. military dependents living next to PDF soldiers. Coco Solo had once housed the School of the Americas and was a particularly complex target, because the Cristobal High School and the Coco Solo Hospital were also located there. The PDF force at Coco Solo, the Panamanian Naval Infantry Battalion, was noted for arrogance.
At H-hour, loudspeakers from C Company, 4th Battalion, 17th Infantry broadcast surrender messages to the PDF Naval Infantry Battalion at Coco Solo; the offer was refused, and the PDF countered with a heavy volume of fire from their barracks area. Their defiance did not last long. After they were given the chance to observe the total destruction of their headquarters buildings by the Vulcan weapons systems and realized their barracks was next, the white flag began waving.
After this demonstration of U.S. firepower, clearing Colon turned out to be far easier than expected. Instead of stiff resistance, the 3rd Brigade entered the city of 60,000 on December 22 with the majority of its two battalions and was met by thousands of cheering Panamanians. Four hundred PDF soldiers, mainly from the 8th Infantry Company, surrendered during the clearing operation.
The Renacer prison, located on a peninsula in the Canal, consisted of an outer layer of buildings, guard towers, and Cyclone fences; and an inner layer — the actual prison — consisting of two large concrete block buildings within an inner fence. This was guarded by twenty to twenty-five troops from Battalion 2000, intermixed with the prisoners and living in the same buildings — which made the prisoner rescue even more difficult.
The rescue mission was assigned to C Company of the 82nd's 3rd Battalion, 504th Infantry: An amphibious force of two rifle platoons would come down the Canal in a pair of Army landing craft — a two-hour ride from Fort Sherman, near Colon — and neutralize the prison's outer ring of defense and provide fire support for the platoon that was to be landed inside the prison compound. Cobra helicopters would take out the guard towers, while another rifle platoon in Huey helicopters landed inside the prison compound.
Although the plan worked perfectly, it was not easy. The defenders put up a strong fight, using CS (tear) gas as well as light weapons, but by 6:00 A.M., the prison was in U.S. hands, and the prisoners — two American journalists, five political prisoners from the March '88 coup attempt, and fifty-seven actual criminals — were unharmed.
Task Force Atlantic now controlled all its assigned objectives. Elements of the Task Force handled their other assignments as planned.
TASK FORCE SEMPER FI
Task Force Semper Fi, under Colonel Charles E. Richardson, had a very broad mission, all in the areas just west of the Canal, to: secure and protect Howard Air Force Base, the U.S. Navy ammunition depot, Rodman Naval Station, and the Arraijan tank farm; secure and defend the Bridge of the Americas; block PDF reinforcements from the southwest, and neutralize the PDF and Dignity Battalions in zone; capture the PDF stations at Vera Cruz and Arraijan; and neutralize the headquarters of the 10th Military Zone in La Chorrera, fifteen miles west of Panama City. The task force accomplished all its missions.
TORRIJOS-TOCUMEN AIRPORT
On the military — Torrijos — side of the airfield were stationed approximately two hundred soldiers of the PDF 2nd Rifle Company, armed with three.50-caliber machine guns and a ZPU-4 antiaircraft gun, 150 men of the Panamanian Air Force, and thirty airport security guards.
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Wagner and the 1st Battalion, 75th Rangers, had the mission to neutralize these forces and secure the Ceremi PDF military recreation center at the La Siesta Military Resort hotel, a quarter mile away. Meanwhile, C Company of the 3rd Ranger Battalion would secure the civilian terminal. Because the 82nd Airborne Division brigade was jumping forty-five minutes behind them, and Battalion 2000 was only forty-live minutes up the road (if they could successfully cross the Pacora River bridge), the Rangers had a very brief time window. They had to work fast.
