Posted on 02/27/2020 3:13:17 AM PST by Rummyfan
Twenty nine years ago today, on February 26, 1991, units of the American Second Armored Cavalry Regiment engaged the armor of the Iraqi Republican Guard Tawakalna Division in the Battle of 73 Easting.
The furious action lasted twenty-three minutes. The troop stopped when there was nothing left to shoot. Sporadic contact ranged from nuisance machine gun fire to one company-sized counterattack of T-72s and BMP armored personnel carriers. Tanks and Bradleys destroyed enemy vehicles at long range from the dominating position on the ridge. Three Bradleys from first platoon, led by Lieutenant Michael Petschek, encountered and destroyed four T-72s as they moved north to reestablish physical contact with G Troop. Medics treated and evacuated enemy wounded. Crews cross-leveled ammunition. Mortars suppressed enemy infantry further to the east as our fire support officer, Lieutenant Dan Davis, called in devastating artillery strikes on enemy logistical bases. Scouts and a team under the control of First Sergeant Bill Virrill cleared bunkers using grenades and satchel charges, and then led a much-needed resupply convoy through minefields to our rear. A psychological operations team broadcasted surrender appeals forward of the troop and the troop took the first of hundreds of prisoners including the brigade commander
(Excerpt) Read more at battleswarmblog.com ...
I remember hearing a bunch of Soviet Generals committed suicide.
I think G Troop was commanded by a man named McMaster. The very same one fired by Trump in the White House.
I think that entire war was eye opening for everyone including people like Putin who saw their Russian Equipment get decimated....
Think back to before the war started, many in the media were telling us that the Iraqi Army was battled tested and how our equipment wouldn’t work the desert......
You saw stories of thousands of body bags being ordered to send home dead Americans....
Right from the first night when our planes flew thru Iraqi Airspace against little to no opposition....
It was the first time we saw stealth aircraft being used in combat along with precision guided bombs....it was an oh shit moment for Russia, China and our other enemies...
He should have stuck with the Cavalry.
1: to select by lot and kill every tenth man of
decimate a regiment
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate
1a: to cause to cease to exist : to do away with entirely so that nothing remains
b: to destroy a considerable part of
Bombs annihilated the city.
The enemy troops were annihilated.
c: to defeat overwhelmingly : ROUT
annihilated the visitors 56–0
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/annihilate
In the days leading up to Desert Storm, I was hearing that the Russian military was telling their junior officers that Sadaam, armed with Soviet gear and trained according to Soviet doctrine, was going to give the Americans a bloody nose.
The actual result, I think, thoroughly shocked the Soviet military. Especially the junior officers who would be going against the US in Germany if the Soviets ever went to war through the Fulda Gap.
Of course, these were the same geniuses who had previously advised that the days of the mass tactical airborne operation were also a thing of the past, until Operation Just Cause demonstrated they still had their utility as well.
Here’s McMaster’s account. Worth reading if you haven’t.
https://www.scribd.com/document/340089952/The-Battle-of-73-Easting-CPT-H-R-McMaster-pdf
Thanks for posting this...
I read it years ago. A good read and worth reading.
I recall hearing through the Seventies and Eighties how the Abrams was a lemon, a boondoggle, too unreliable, could never operate in the desert, and so on.
The talking head experts.
Also worth reading:
Why Arabs Lose Wars
https://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars
tl:dr - Face cultures can’t maintain and operate modern military hardware and carry out complex combined arms operations. Truth culture > face culture.
“..All throughout the 70s and early 1980s, various media outlets talked about how much better Soviet military equipment was than American equipment. (I remember a 60 Minutes episode that talked about Soviet equipment being better “all across the board.”)...”
I do remember all that. The media was positively salivating at the thought of US vs Soviet equipment matchup.
Media wound up with Egg on the face... then, as now.
Thanks for posting, that video was awesome.........
Yes, and the same group of idiots who took machine guns and cannon off of fighters. And then hurriedly put them back on when dogfighting N. Vietnamese MIGs.
“Right from the first night when our planes flew thru Iraqi Airspace against little to no opposition....”
The Smithsonian channel had a great series called Air Warriors.
One of the shows was about the plane, I can’t remember which one, that accompanied the bombers and took out the SAM radar stations just as the bombers were getting into range.
Without the radar the SAM was just very expensive dead weight that was easily disposed of.
Yes, that’s a cultural thing I’ve been aware of for a long time. In Arab cultures, Manual labor is looked down upon. It’s obviously not universal, but it’s pretty pervasive.
A few years back I read where the Air Force almost had the Pentagon convinced there was no longer a use for the Navy.
There’s always one of those geniuses out there. More recently in the last few years I think they wanted to dispose of the Warthog.
I had just gotten out of the Army when the Gulf war happened. I told my relatives it would be over in five days. They were all worried by CNN’s reports, etc. I shook my head and told them what I thought would happen; which did (it was obvious to me, knowing some of our technology at the time). Most people think war is like WW1 or maybe WW2, and I think that’s the way Saddam’s army tried to fight, and using Soviet tactics and equipment.
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