19 to 27 January

Photograph courtesy of BGen Granville Amos The OV-10 Bronco’s last combat service with the Marine Corps was in the Gulf War. Two Bronco squadrons deployed to the Gulf, and each squadron had one of its aircraft shot down during the conflict.

combat mission of the war in an OV-10 Bronco over Kuwait, Lieutenant Colonel Clifford M. Acree, squadron commander of Marine Observation Squadron 2, and his aerial observer, Chief Warrant Officer-4 Guy L. Hunter Jr., were looking for Iraqi artillery when they spotted a rocket launcher battery. As they banked above the Iraqis, Colonel Acree saw “a horrifying sight: glinting metal followed by an incredibly fast gray-white vapor trail snaking toward us. A heatseeking surface-to-air missile had locked on to our aircraft and was tracking us. The missile, pointed right at my face, was coming fast to blow us out of the sky. With less than 6,000 feet of altitude, I had no more than a second warning to dodge the missile streaking toward us. . . . It’s the same feeling you get in a car crash when you’ve hit the brakes hard and so has the other guy. You know the impact is coming all the same.”

22

Initially, the aircrew was believed to have been killed. As Colonel Bioty remembered, “We did not know that they were alive until we saw them on TV. . . . [The aircraft going down] was really a shocker and that squadron took a real significant hard swallow, . . . because there was a lot of leadership and experience in that airplane and here it got hit on the second day of the war.” Acree and Hunter were captured by the Iraqis, the first of five Marines eventually taken prisoner. Like the others they would be beaten, mistreated, and used as human shields until after the war.

23

The third day of the air campaign, 19 January, marked the end of the preplanned, initial air tasking order. The 3d Marine Aircraft Wing flew two successful major missions to complete the preplanned missions: one against bridges at Basrah and the other against Republican Guard units. Other Hornets and Intruders joined the wing’s Harriers in attacking Iraqi units in Kuwait, continuing to concentrate on artillery.24

Now Marine air began to focus more heavily on targets in Kuwait of concern to the Marines, steadily flying fewer joint missions each day. Each morning Major General Royal Moore held a 0600 breakfast meeting with the four Marines who commanded

Daily Marine Corps Sorties by Mission, 1/17/91 to 1/28/91

Data culled from A Statistical Compendium and Chronology—Gulf War Air Power Survey, vol. 5 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993), pp. 260–268 Air Interdiction (AI): missions to delay, divert, disrupt, or destroy the enemy’s military potential beyond the fire support coordination line. Close Air Support (CAS): missions requested by a ground commander for support of, and close to, friendly ground forces. Offensive Counter Air (OCA): missions to destroy or neutralize enemy air power. In the Gulf War these included, for Marines, air-to-surface attacks on enemy airfields and attacks to destroy or disrupt enemy surface-toair defenses or integrated air defense systems. A sortie is an individual aircraft mission from takeoff to landing.

watches in the wing’s tactical air control center: assistant wing commander Brigadier General Granville Amos, chief of staff Colonel William A. Forney, Colonel William D. Can Jr., and Colonel Melvin W. DeMars Jr. General Amos later recalled, “We would meet every morning at seven to kind of go through the day’s evolution. Then, at 1300 we would meet with the plans side of G-3 [operations division] to look at the next 12-, 24-, 48-, 72-hour plan, and that is where General Moore made his input into changing . . . the frag[mentary order] process.”

25

As can be seen on the chart detailing Marine Corps sorties from 17 January to 28 January, the number of sorties dipped dramatically on 20 and 21 January, when poor weather forced the cancellation of many missions. Intruders from the all-weather attack squadrons did manage to launch, however, striking Iraqi multiple rocket launchers that were firing toward Mishab.

26

As the weather improved, the number of sorties increased exponentially, and the targets of the Marines continued to shift. Fewer Marine strikes were launched against power plants or airfields (the “offensive counter air” sorties on the chart), and a larger percentage of Marine strikes were aimed at interdiction. In some cases, this meant strikes on bridges or Republican Guard units, but it also meant strikes on Iraqi units in Kuwait. Air Force A10 Warthogs and General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcons also launched strikes at Iraqi units inside Kuwait proper. Close air support missions were flown in small numbers as Marine Harriers and helicopters supported the Marines manning the observation posts along the border.

27

There were some internal difficulties with command and control for Marine air, specifically a struggle for control between the wing’s tactical air control center and the direct air support center located with

the I Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters in Safaniya. As Colonel Manfred Rietsch later explained, “The DASC [direct air support center] wasn’t used in its doctrinal role. . . . The MEF [Marine expeditionary force] absorbed the DASC and it became almost a competition between the TACC [tactical air control center] and the DASC as to who was going to control airplanes and the flow of airplanes. . . . They [the DASC] attempted to control airplanes where their job was really coordination, not control, and a couple of times they actually put some airplanes into some situations that they shouldn’t have been. Telling them to go after some ridiculous target in a dangerous situation. It didn’t work the way it was intended.” By the end of the first two weeks of combat, the conflict had been resolved.

28

The Marine air campaign continued steadily after the bad weather of 20 and 21 January, and the war began to become routine. Colonel Donald A. Beaufait, executive officer of Marine Aircraft Group 11, described typical missions for F/A-18 Hornet pilots flying into Iraq:

The very first ones obviously took a lot of detailed planning because we had, first of all, to gather the intelligence on where the defenses were. We always wanted to avoid them as much as possible; if we couldn’t avoid them we would come up with a detailed plan to suppress them and then we’d have a strike leader who would coordinate all of the suppression efforts along with the detailed bomb aim points for each of the airplanes on a strategic target. Then they’d sit down probably three hours before the mission and then start briefing it so they could brief the overall concept of how it’s going to work, with an intelligence brief and that type of thing.

Then each of the elements whether they were the strike airplanes or the suppression airplanes or the combat air patrol elements would then break down further and brief their section or their element, division, on what the plan was. And then pretty much everyone would go out and we’d get started up and take off. They’d have a tanker plan, they would go and refuel. We had huge numbers of airplanes, both Marine Corps and Air Force tankers, KC10s [McDonnell Douglas KC-10 Extenders] and

An F/A-18C Hornet strike-fighter aircraft of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232 taxis on the runway before takeoff for a mission in support of Operation Desert Storm.

Photo by Sgt Jeff Wright. Defense Imagery DA-ST-92-07701

those types of airplanes, KC-135s [Boeing KC135 Stratotankers], C-130s. Refuel the airplanes prior to going across the border into either Iraq or into Kuwait so they had a full combat load of fuel. Then execute the mission, come back out, and normally there would be another tanker waiting as soon as we got back into Saudi Arabian airspace to be able to refuel airplanes in case we had any combat damage. We’d also have an element of airplanes which would be designated as a rescue combat air patrol in order if we had to pick up some pilots that were downed somewhere along the mission. Then we’d land, we had hot refueling pits that were set up with fuelling stations at Shaikh Isa [Bahrain]. Come back and refuel the airplanes and then they’d go back, park the jets, go through maintenance control, and come back and have a major debrief with the intelligence on what happened.

29

Lieutenant Colonel William R. Jones commanded Marine Attack Squadron 231, an AV-8B squadron operating out of King Abdul Aziz airfield in Saudi Arabia. In an interview, he described a typical mission in Kuwait during this period:

A lot of the delivery was roll-in at 18/20,000 feet; get your nose on the target; use the angle rate bombing system, which is a magnified TV camera in the nose so you could lock on to a dot with the TV camera and then call the TV display in the cockpit and you could look at it and see is that a shadow or is that a truck. . . . We’re dropping at 550 [knots] in a 45 to 60 degree dive and of course the sensation in the cockpit once you got even past 45, but certainly at 60, you feel like you’re actually kind of coming out of your seat. You do and you’re still at 1.0G. That’s what the meter tells you on the airplane, but it sure doesn’t feel that way.

This Kuwaiti police post, which was opposite Observation Post 4, was occupied by Iraqi forces. It was destroyed by Marine Harrier attack aircraft on 27 January 1991.

Photo courtesy of MGySgt Gregory L. Gillispie