Behind Iraqi Lines. Shaun Clarke

Чтение книги онлайн.

       3

      On 19 January, five days before the planned date, the Squadron was kitted out with weapons, survival equipment and battle clothes especially modified for desert conditions, before being flown from the FOB to a landing zone (LZ) somewhere deep in Iraq.

      Since the briefing in early January, they had all undergone special training and weapons testing in the Empty Quarter, a vast, uninhabited region some distance from Al Jubail, with an emphasis on desert driving, survival in dust, sand, fierce heat and freezing cold, the protection of weapons from the same, and direction-finding by the moon and stars in case of compass failure. They were also trained in the use of laser designators for marking targets. All were looking forward to finishing the training and being airlifted to the LZ on the twenty-second.

      They were therefore taken by surprise when, at 0001 hours Zulu – one minute past three local time, or one minute past midnight Greenwich Mean Time – on Thursday 17 January, two days after the deadline given for Saddam’s withdrawal from Kuwait – which he ignored – eight US Apaches of the 101st Airborne Division, equipped with laser spot trackers and range-finders, attacked Iraqi radars with Hell-fire missiles, rockets and 30mm cannon shells, destroying two command centres and their Soviet radars, Tall Spoon and King Rest, thereby creating a safe corridor for Allied aircraft.

      Simultaneously, Tomahawk Cruise missiles from the Coalition aircraft-carriers in the Gulf rained down on Baghdad while British Tornadoes skimmed at low level across the desert at 800kph, also heading north for Baghdad. These were followed almost instantly by another wave of ‘jammer’ aircraft intent on suppressing enemy defences, top-cover fighters, more Tornado bombers, reconnaissance planes, AWACS early-warning, intelligence-gathering and target-identification aircraft, and the deadly, delta-winged F-117A Stealth fighter-bombers. The latter, invisible to enemy radar and often mistaken for UFOs, were likened by many to ‘ghost’ planes.

      In no time at all, nocturnal Baghdad was illuminated by the greatest fireworks display in history and covered by an enormous umbrella of turbulent black smoke.

      In the first 24 hours of this incredibly complex, computer-controlled war, over a thousand sorties were flown and over a hundred missiles launched against 158 targets, including communications centres and Scud launching sites, with as many as twelve combat aircraft being refuelled in-flight simultaneously by tankers stacked six deep in the air.

      During the day, the first Allied casualty was the loss of a single Tornado. During the night of the seventeenth, however, from Iraqi airfields and secret bases in the west of the country, Saddam’s military commanders unleashed a volley of eight Scud missiles at Israel. Two landed in Haifa and four in Tel Aviv. They were followed immediately by more Scud attacks on Riyadh, where the War Room and main communications of the Coalition effort were located.

      Even as the citizens of Haifa, Tel Aviv and Riyadh were donning NBC suits, designed for use during nuclear, biological or chemical attack, or placing gas masks over their heads, Patriot anti-missile missiles were taking off with a deafening cacophony. These were followed rapidly by an equally loud din overhead as the incoming Scuds were hit and exploded, filling the sky with great flashes of silvery light, mushrooms of black smoke and spectacular webs of crimson tracers and downward-curving streams of dazzling white, yellow and blood-red flame.

      By the second day of the war, RAF aircrews were attempting to trap Iraqi aircraft hidden in hardened aircraft shelters, or HASs, by bombing the access tracks and taxiways leading from the shelters to the runways. At the same time, US giant B52s were carrying out round-the-clock, high-altitude attritional bombing raids designed to demoralize, exhaust and daze the Iraqi troops by denying them sleep, when not actually killing them.

      By Day Three, however, it had become clear that the major threat to the Coalition was the Scuds, particularly those on mobile launchers.

      ‘Which is where we come in,’ Major Hailsham told his assembled troopers outside his tent in the FOB in Al Jubail. ‘The difficulty in tracking mobile Scud launchers is complicated by Saddam’s use of dummy rockets that look realistic from the air and contain fuel that explodes when hit by a bomb, thereby encouraging our pilots to report more strikes than they’ve actually made. They also use dummy mobile launchers with real crews and they, too, look genuine from the air.’

      ‘You mean the crews of the dummy mobile launchers have to drive around the desert, deliberately trying to be spotted, in order to misdirect the fire from our aircraft?’

      ‘Correct,’ Hailsham said.

      ‘Some job!’ Geordie exclaimed. ‘Rather them than me! Driving around just to be picked off by any passing aircraft and become another statistic on their kill counts. No, thanks. Not my cup of tea!’

      ‘As if those Air Force bastards don’t already come out with enough bullshit when they’re doing their sums,’ Andrew said, flashing his perfect teeth. ‘The day I find an honest Air Force kill count I’ll eat my own cock.’

      ‘If you can find it,’ Geordie said, СКАЧАТЬ