Iraqi army soldiers display documents, left and right, found on suspected militant, Egyptian national al-Sayed Mansour Abdul-Ghani, centre, who was arrested during a raid in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib neighborhood, Sunday June 5, 2005. Both documents are Egyptian passports which Iraqi authorities claim could be fake. (AP Photo/Mohammed Uraibi)
Iraqi army soldiers hold Khalid al-Alwani who was arrested on suspicion of making car bombs duing a raid in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib neighborhood, Sunday June 5, 2005. According to the Iraqi army Al-Alwani was also a member of Saddam Hussein's special guard. (AP Photo/Mohammed Uraibi)
U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Chris Catalano of Union, New Jersey, left, supervises a team from the Iraqi Intervention Force while raiding a mosque in an undisclosed location in southern Baghdad, Iraq where Americans believed a top leader of the insurgency and close associated of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was hiding, Sunday, June 5, 2005. Although the insurgent leader was not found, Americans and soldiers from the Iraqi Intervention Force detained 15 people. (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)
U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Todd Sullivan of Brattleboro, Vermont inspects the hands of Iraqi men for tattoos that he thinks will identify insurgents at an undisclosed location south of Baghdad, Iraq, where Americans believed a top leader of the insurgency and close associated of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was hiding, Sunday, June 5, 2005. Although the insurgent leader was not found, Americans and soldiers from the Iraqi Intervention Force detained 15 people. (AP Photo / Jacob Silberberg)
LATIFIYAH January 2005
LATIFIYAH, Iraq (Feb. 1, 2005) – Spc. Nathan Woodruff (left), from Tucson, Ariz., digs for hidden weapons caches when a metal detector held by Sgt. Marko Palzcewski, hits something metallic. Sgt. Joe Shultz (right), a scout section leader, Sgt. 1st Class Jerry Helton, the scout platoon sergeant, and Spc. Russell Sears, from Covington, Ga., look on. The team didn?t find any caches in this spot, but another hit further up in a farmers field lead them to unearth a cache of hand grenades and mortars. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Andy Miller, 122nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment.
LATIFIYAH January 2005
LATIFIYAH January 2005
Big Dig Takes a Bite Out of the Desert (Latifiyah last updated January 2005)
By Spc. Andy Miller 122nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment
LATIFIYAH, Iraq—After several weeks of collecting and destroying weapons caches in the Latifiyah area of north Babil, Task Force 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division, got a tip about a cache in the desert. What they found buried in man-made desert berms was a series of caches that resulted in the destruction of over 300 artillery rounds, hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, over 100 grenade rounds and an assortment of other munitions and armaments including surface-to-air rockets, surface-to-surface rockets and missiles, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
“It’s mundane any more to find 1000 crates of 14.5 mm. ammunition. It’s not big deal anymore. You’ve got to go for an SA-7 [surface-to-air rocket] or something else,” Maj. Chris Wilbeck, the Task Force operations officer, said after the third day of Operation Big Dig. The operation meant a lot to the Soldiers of the Task Force, who have been in theater for 14 months, and are scheduled to redeploy early February. It’s the biggest weapons cache they’ve found during their tour, which included turns in Abu Ghraib, Fallujah and most recently Latifiyah.
“It’s been really great to end on this note,” Wilbeck said. “Unfortunately I don’t think we will be able to find everything before we leave, so we’re going to have to hand this off to the unit that relieves us, and it will give them plenty to do. I think they’ll be digging this kind of stuff for weeks. “So it’s been really good, and I think what we’re doing here has a direct impact. This is like the warehouse where people would go to, to get IEDs and explosives to use in Baghdad and elsewhere. So we’ve taken away their wholesaler,” Wilbeck continued.
Many of the armaments were found by Soldiers of the Task Force’s attached Estonian, ‘Stone’, platoon and Iraqi Army platoon. On the second day, Jan. 24, of the operation, Estonian Soldiers found one of the operations more impressive caches using metal detectors and shovels; seven of nine Frog-7b 1000 kg. warheads. They found the first two on day one.
“Wow, at first we didn’t’ know what they were. We weren’t sure if they were [missiles] or exactly what they were. It was pretty interesting,” Cpl. Chad Sowers, a Task Force radio operator who works with the Stone platoon, said of finding the Frog-7b warheads. By the second day of the operation the Task Force was finding so many caches that they hired a local Iraqi with a bucket loader to help them dig. In nine hours he had found nearly 700 cases of machine gun ammunition and over 150 spools of detonation cord. On the third day an engineer group came out with some heavy equipment. The finds continued.
“I’ve got a feeling those guys will be involved with this for at least a few more weeks after we leave,” Capt. Billy Meredith, the Task Force 2-12 Cav Company B commander said. “In addition to our taskings to help secure the area for the elections, this is our other big effort. [The operation] is denying the enemy’s ability to influence the elections by denying them the capability to build IEDs and to build [vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices] and things like that. I feel like we’ve made a sizeable dent.”
Such a dent that the Task Force’s explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team ran out of C-4 explosives, used to destroy the caches, on the second day of the operation. It’s impressive to see the EOD team use a month’s supply of C-4 in a matter of days, Wilbeck said. “We need our own warehouse of explosives to blow up the explosives,” he said. EOD’s supply of C-4 was replenished, and the controlled explosions continued until all found caches were destroyed.