3rd Infantry Seizes 3 Bridges in Fiercest Fighting So Far

WITH THE THIRD INFANTRY DIVISION, in Central Iraq, March 26 — The Army's 3rd Infantry Division encircled the city of Najaf early today after seizing three bridges across the Euphrates River in the division's fiercest clashes since the war began.

The fight around Najaf — which lasted more than 36 hours — has considerably slowed the division's march northwards, as have the swirling winds and sand. The storm continued relentlessly today, reducing visibility to a few hundred feet and casting an eerie burnt orange glow as the sun set.

Najaf, a city of more than 100,000 about 90 miles from Baghdad, had not been one of the division's military objectives, and commanders here said they did not intend to occupy it. But they were forced to encircle it as Iraqi forces repeatedly attacked American forces after they pushed across the escarpment to the west on Sunday.

"What I've done is surround the city and cut it off," the division's commander, Maj. Gen. Buford C. Blount 3rd, said in an interview today.

The Iraqi commander inside the city telephoned his superiors in Baghdad early today to say that he was surrounded, another American officer here said, but as many as 1,000 fighters, believed to belong to militia groups intensely loyal to Saddam Hussein, remained inside and continued to clash with United States Army soldiers arrayed around the town.

This morning and again this evening, the division's artillery batteries repeatedly struck Iraqi troops — some in tanks, most in troop transports — who tried to reinforce the city from the north and the south. Maj. Benjamin M. Matthews, artillery commander for the division's 1st Brigade, said the barrages, backed by air strikes, had destroyed more than two dozen Iraqi vehicles and killed scores of troops.

Iraq's military appears to have decided to make a stand at Najaf, though the forces fighting there are mostly militia fighters from Mr. Hussein's Baath Party and two other groups, Saddam Fedayeen and Al Quds.

General Blount said that he was surprised by the intensity of the Iraqi resistance — something that has forced changes in the Army's plans to press quickly towards the defenses of Baghdad, where Iraq's elite Republican Guard divisions are dug in.

The general added that it appeared, for now at least, that Mr. Hussein's government still maintained some control over its military.

"They're fighting fairly tenaciously," General Blount said. "They're organized, and some of them are fairly well equipped."

One soldier with the 3rd Infantry Division, a loader on a tank, was killed on Monday. Also two tanks and one Bradley fighting vehicle with the division's 3rd Regiment, 7th Cavalry Squadron were destroyed by anti-armored missiles. Officers here believe the missile may be a new Russian variant, known as a Cornet, purchased despite United Nations sanctions on arms sales to Iraq.

According to the division's estimates, as many as 1,000 Iraqi troops have been killed since the division swept into the scrub desert north of Najaf, essentially passing the city by. Hundreds more have been captured.

The situation inside Najaf itself — one of the holiest sites in the Shiite branch of Islam because it is the burial site of Ali, the cousin of the prophet Mohammed — remained unclear. Its population is predominantly Shiite, but the security and military forces loyal to Mr. Hussein still control it. Col. William F. Grimsley, commander of the 1st Brigade, described the city as "at least neutral and perhaps happy we're here."

General Blount said that American forces had been in contact with Shiite leaders and expected them to assume control once those loyal to Mr. Hussein, now cut off, surrender.

The battle around the city, the division's most intense in six says of fighting, began late Monday night when the 1st Brigade sent a tank company across a bridge north of the city, with the intent of blocking the main roads into it from the north. It was the first time the division's troops had crossed the Euphrates.

After three tanks passed, the Iraqis detonated explosives, buckling the bridge and cutting off the tanks. Engineers eventually made the bridge passable again, but fighting flared through the day on Tuesday.

The 3rd Regiment, 7th Cavalry, moving north from Samawah, captured a bridge south of the city late Tuesday, while the 1st Brigade seized another bridge north early today, effectively completing the encirclement.

The effort has distracted significant parts of the division, which had been consolidating its forces for what is expected to be a final assault on the Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad.

Despite the American foothold on the eastern side of the Euphrates, Iraqi forces continued to attack in what soldiers described as futile, almost fanatical assaults against M1-A1 tanks and Bradley armored fighting vehicles.

Cpl. Benjamin R. Richardson, who was among the engineers who went to the bridge, said he saw two civilian vehicles with armed Iraqis drive straight toward Americans. A tank drove simply over one of the vehicles without firing a shot, while a Bradley raked the other vehicle with gunfire.

">>>>which has a claimed ability to penetrate 1100 to 1200 millimeters of steel armor protected by explosive armor<<<<<

1100 mm of armor, works out to 43 inches and change (at 25.4 mm per inch). I sense some serious POO or Putin in the air here..."

hmm not impossible, the TOW II had the capability of penetrating 52 inches (+) of homogenious steel. That's the extent that I can tell you, the remainder of it is classified information. I was a TOW Critter in the Marines from 1975 to 1991 before I was medically retired. The Soviets had an equally impressive piece of Anti-Tank gear that worked very much like our TOW did. The Sagger however was the one they used most during the time I was in and it sadly lacked in it's targetting ability. Basically a Sagger was fired from a launch point while the gunner sat some distance away. He had to fly the missile into his sights and then match up the target and the missile manually in order to get it on target. Even so for a stationary target they could hit 60 to 80% of the time, moving 40 to 50% of the time (this was a well trained gunner). The TOW and the soviet version operated on quite a bit different level. The Optical Sight of the weapon actually sent signals to an MGS (Missile Guidance System), these signals were interpreted by the MGS which then sent signals down a wire to the missile control surfaces. The Signals told the missile to move left right up or down acccording to where the gunner had his crosshairs. We had a 98% first round hit capability regardless of moving or stationary.

Semper Fi

I understand HEAT has generally been replaced by other types of round, even in AT missles?

Had to. The reactive armor on Russian tanks has rendered "standard HEAT" ineffective, except for non-reacive armored tanks. Now, AT Missiles are like Javelin, or have two stage warheads (one for the box of explosives, and the second for the main armor); new TOW missiles use this.

Maybe the round attacks specific parts of the tank-like Javelin exploding above and sending its load downward through the lightest part of the tanks armour.

That's not what the article seemed to imply. The discussion seemed to be rated, tested performance through armor plate, not performance charateristics.

I do know that the improved TOW round, which has been copied with great success by the Russians and Chinese, can kill any tank in the world at a greater range than most main gun rounds. Maybe this Russian AT round is the result.

Possibly. I was just questioning the 43 inches. 110-120 mm worth of armor penetration, and defeating reactive armor would make a formidable enough AT system. It does sound like they still don't have the fire control systems available in the ITOW (thank God).

The Composite armor it had no problem with, basically the TOW II could punch right through that pretty easily. The Reactive presented somewhat more of a challenge. What they did was to attach a longer probe to the missiles nose cone and in that probe was a small explosive. It was designed to give a standoff capability to the missile that allowed it to detonate the reactive armor while still allowing the follow on shaped charge to deliver the killing blow to the tank itself. The TOW IV (I think, been 12 years since I retired), has a fly over shoot down capability now. It doesn't hit the tank itself, it flies over the top where the armor is thinnest and delivers it's shaped charge into the top of the vehicle. Quite effective and it also (from what I remember) has the ability to better set off ammo in the ammunition compartment thus completing the tanks destruction.

I was in Quantico for a Weapons Demo in early '87 where they had a new TOW (can't remember the designation) that they were working on. This one used fiber optics and was a vertical launch horizontal flight characteristic. Basically it operated somewhat like the Sagger did, but it had a 10,000 meter range (Tow II was 3800 meters). There was a small camera built into the nose of the missile. The gunner launched the missile and "flew it" like a video game out to it's target. The beauty of this weapon was you could fire it from almost anywhere, it launched vertically to 100 meters and then levelled out in a horizontal flight, the gunner could then fly the missile anywhere he chose just as if he was sitting on top of it telling it where to go. Don't know if they ever completed work on this thing but it damn sure looked impressive. I was an instructor with the Heavy Weapons Section at School of Infantry in Camp Pendleton when I retired. That's the best info that I have at the moment. I loved TOW's, still do, best damn anti-tank missile system the ground troops have ever seen.

Semper Fi

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