U.S. aircraft attack Fallujah (AC130 deployed)

Fallujah, Iraq - A U.S. AC-130 gunship raked Iraqi insurgents Friday night after hundreds of women and children fled the besieged city Fallujah during a U.S.-declared pause in the marine offensive.

On the anniversary of the fall of captive Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's regime, Baghdad and parts of central Iraq were chaotic.

At a square in the capital where Saddam's statue was toppled a year ago, soldiers took down a new icon: pictures of the radical Shiite Muslim cleric whose followers have risen up against coalition forces in the south.

Gunmen running rampant on Baghdad's western edge attacked a fuel convoy, killing a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi driver and causing a fiery explosion. Two U.S. soldiers and an unknown number of civilians were missing after the attack and 12 people were injured, Pentagon officials said. Another U.S. soldier was killed in an attack on a base elsewhere in the capital and large groups of insurgents battled U.S. troops in two cities to the north, Baqouba and Muqdadiyah.

One marine was killed in Fallujah and another wounded in exchanges of fire after U.S. forces called a halt to offensive operations in the city, a spokesman said.

The death - along with those of three marines a day earlier announced Friday - brought the toll of U.S. troops killed across Iraq this week to 46. The fighting has killed more than 460 Iraqis - including more than 280 in Fallujah, a hospital official said. At least 647 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr denied Friday his militia was involved in the kidnapping of three Japanese and threats to burn them alive.

The three Japanese captives were among at least five foreigners being held by militants in unknown locations around the country.

The others were two humanitarian aid workers, including a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, Fadi Ihsan Fadel, 33, and an Arab resident of Jerusalem. A Briton was also reported missing.

Mr. Fadel, whose parents live in Montreal, worked for the New York City-based International Rescue Committee, a non-governmental organization, was abducted early Wednesday morning from the IRC residence in Najaf.

For the first time, U.S. troops moved in strength into the heartland of the rebellion by al-Sadr's militia. More than 1,000 troops backed by tanks pushed into the southern city Kut, retaking police stations and government buildings seized this week by Shiite gunmen.

Elsewhere, fighting with al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army militia diminished. Coalition forces largely left gunmen in firm control in three cities of south-central Iraq and farther south, coalition troops have largely succeeded in taming the uprising, though Italian troops still saw light fighting in Nasiriyah.

In Fallujah, marines halted their assault on insurgents to allow U.S.-picked Iraqi leaders — angry at the United States over the bloodshed from five days of heavy fighting — to hold talks with city leaders about how to reduce the violence.

Throughout the afternoon, fighting was reduced to sporadic gunfire. But when night fell, heavy explosions resumed as an AC-130 gunship strafed targets and soldiers and insurgents engaged in a mortar battle.

The AC-130 hit a cave near Fallujah where insurgents took refuge after attacking marines. A laser-guided bomb also struck the cave, said spokesman 1st Lieut. Eric Knapp.

Iraq's top U.S. administrator, Paul Bremer, said the unilateral pause was also aimed at allowing humanitarian aid to enter the city and Fallujah residents to tend to their dead.

Many families, emerging from their homes for the first time in days, buried slain relatives in the city football stadium.

A stream of hundreds of cars carrying women, children and elderly headed out of the city after Marines announced they would be allowed to leave. Families pleaded to be allowed to take out men, and when Marines refused, some entire families turned back.

The heavy fighting in Fallujah - during which mosques have been damaged and buildings demolished - has made the city of 200,000 a symbol of resistance for some Iraqis and threatens to divide the Iraqi Governing Council and the U.S. administration that appointed it.

Military hesitation over the halt in fighting was clear. After initially being ordered to cease all offensive operations, marines quickly demanded and received permission to launch assaults to prevent attacks if needed.

"We said to them (the commanders): 'We are going to lose people if we don't go back on offensive ops.' So we got the word," marine Maj. Pete Farnun said.

Brig.-Gen. Mark Kimmitt underlined talks between two Governing Council members and sheiks and clerics representing Fallujah representatives were not negotiations, suggesting the military would not be making concessions. U.S. officials were not participating in the talks, which began Friday.

The Governing Council early Saturday issued a statement demanding an end to military action and "collective punishment" - a reference to the Fallujah siege.

Abdul-Karim Mahoud al-Mohammedawi, a Shiite on the Governing Council, announced he was suspending his council seat until "the bleeding stops in all Iraq." He also met Friday with al-Sadr, whom U.S. commanders have threatened to capture.

A Sunni council member, Ghazi al-Yawer, said he would quit if the Fallujah talks fell through.

One of the strongest pro-U.S. voices on the council, also a Sunni, Adnan Pachachi, denounced the U.S. siege.

"It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal," Mr. Pachachi told Al-Arabiya TV.

Meanwhile, in a signal of how U.S. forces face a new enemy in Iraq, two pictures of Mr. al-Sadr hung from a sculpture in Baghdad's central Firdos Square, where one year ago Marines toppled a statue of Saddam.

A U.S. soldier climbed a ladder to tear down the posters, and the military warned that Mr. al-Sadr's followers were planning bomb attacks in the area. Hours later, a mortar hit nearby, shaking two hotels where foreign journalists and contractors are staying.

U.S. troops drove into Kut before dawn Friday, pushing out members of Mr. al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army militia that seized the southern textile and farming centre this week after Ukrainian troops abandoned the city under heavy attack.

A U.S. helicopter struck Mr. al-Sadr's main office in Kut, killing two people, witnesses said. Americans were patrolling the streets during daylight.

Kimmitt said he expected the operation to retake Kut would be finished by Saturday morning.

"We are fairly comfortable that the town of al-Kut is well on its way to coming back under coalition control," he said.

Still, he suggested a move against Mr. al-Sadr's militia controlling parts of Najaf and Karbala would have to wait, because hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims are in the area this weekend for al-Arbaeen, which commemorates the end of the period of mourning for a 7th-century martyred saint.

"We expect that those special cities that are currently observing the Arbaeen will continue to have some al-Sadr presence," he said.

Mr. Al-Sadr demanded Friday that U.S. forces leave Iraq, saying they now face "a civil revolt."

"I direct my speech to my enemy Bush and I tell him...you are fighting the entire Iraqi people," Mr. al-Sadr said in a sermon, delivered by one of his deputies at the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, Shiite Islam's holiest site.

Mr. Al-Sadr, a young, firebrand anti-U.S. cleric, is thought to be holed up in his office in Najaf, protected by scores of gunmen. He has said he is willing to die resisting any attempt to capture him.

Gunmen on the highway outside the capital Baghdad were seen stopping a car carrying two western civilians — apparently security guards, because both had sidearms. The gunmen pulled the men from the car, firing at the ground to warn them to obey. Their fate was not known.

The heavy fighting for Fallujah was prompted by the March 31 slaying of four U.S. security guards. Their burned bodies were mutilated and dragged through the streets by a mob that hung two of them from a bridge.

The Fixed Wing Gunship:
A Cheap and Simple Concept (Gunship I)

The fixed wing gunship was a great developmental and operational success. A few dedicated, innovative individuals brought forth a new concept quickly and cheaply that fit the war that was being fought in Vietnam. The basic gunship concept is quite simple: an aircraft flying in a level turn around a point on the ground (as if tethered to a pylon, hence called a "pylon turn") can deliver fairly accurate firepower from guns firing perpendicular to the line of flight. This concept was first proposed in 1926 and demonstrated the next year. A number of other airmen later advanced the idea, but the Army Air Forces/US Air Force did not pick up on it until the early 1960s. The idea reached Capt. John Simmons at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, through an indirect route. After overcoming numerous rebuffs, he pushed through a modest test program in mid 1963 that demonstrated that a pilot could track a target while in a pylon turn. The breakthrough came in August 1964 when a C-131 armed with a 7.62 mm Gattling gun achieved better than expected accuracy in firing tests over the Gulf of Mexico. The next month, three Gattling guns were mounted aboard a C-47 and also successfully tested. Capt. Ronald Terry forcefully articulated a concept of C-47s delivering accurate and massive firepower to hamlets under attack. Things moved ahead rather rapidly, for on November 2, 1964 Terry helped brief the concept to the Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay, who ordered that the C-47 be tested in Vietnam.

Opposition to the Gunship Concept

There was opposition to the concept. Gen. Walter Sweeney, commander of Tactical Air Command, had two seemingly contrary objections: could the aircraft survive, and if so, would it undermine the Air Force's position in the battle with the Army over armed helicopters? In addition, he did not see how the gunship would work in other conflicts, specifically one in Europe. Therefore, success in Vietnam might saddle the command with a number of aircraft that would prove useless and vulnerable where it really counted, in Europe. Certainly, the idea of using obsolete transports to support besieged hamlets at night, at low speeds, and from low altitudes did not appeal to the airmen, who thought primarily in terms of newer aircraft flying ever higher and faster. Nevertheless, the tests went forward.

Gunships Quickly Prove Their Worth

Terry and his team arrived in South Vietnam in December 1964. The gunship quickly demonstrated that it not only worked but was valuable. On its first night mission on 23-24 December, it helped repel a Vietcong attack on an outpost. The gunship concept would be used in two very different roles. The first was to provide heavy firepower to ground forces engaged in combat in South Vietnam. The other was to interdict enemy logistics in Laos. The aircraft's success continued, but better gunships were coming on-line. On December 1, 1969, US Air Force AC-47s flew their last mission. In November 1966, the C-130 was actually picked as a follow-on aircraft. The four-engined turboprop had much greater flying performance than the ancient "Gooney Bird" and carried much heavier firepower, four 7.62 mm and four 20 mm Gattling guns compared to the AC-47's three 7.62 mm guns. Nicknamed "Spectre," it also mounted an array of advanced Sensors.

AC-130 Tested (Gunship II)

In September 1967, Captain Terry returned to Vietnam to test the AC-130. The evaluations concluded that the AC-130 was "a three-fold improvement over its predecessor, the AC-47. The AC-130 was deemed the most cost-effective, close-support, and interdiction weapon in the USAF inventory. Four AC-130s were sent into combat in Laos before the end of 1968 and proved to be some of the best weapons in the interdiction campaign. During the period January 1968 through April 1969, they flew less than 4 percent of the total sorties against moving targets, yet claimed over 29 percent of the destroyed and damaged trucks. Little wonder why the Air Force wanted more.

Concern about the gunship's vulnerability pushed the Air Force towards heavier armament to increase standoff range. (Larger guns would also do more damage to targets.) in mid-1969, a group that included Major Terry suggested that two 40 mm and two 20 mm guns become the standard armament. They also recommended better sensors (such as low-light-level television and improved infrared), a digital computer to replace the analog one, and a laser designator. A program dubbed "Surprise Package" that incorporated these ideas, got the go-ahead in September 1969. After a month of stateside test flights, the aircraft arrived in Thailand on 5 December for combat tests lasting through 18 January. The evaluators judged the improved model twice as effective as the existing C-130s.

The last effort during the war to boost the AC-130's killing power was to mount a 105 mm howitzer. While to the outsider this appears to be quite a feat, it actually was accomplished very smoothly. The gun saw combat during the 1971-72 dry season campaign and in Linebacker 1, where it proved to be very effective, accounting for 55 percent of the tanks destroyed or damaged.

The C-119 is Resurrected (Gunship III)

The third airframe used as a gunship was the C-119, another obsolete transport like the C-47, however not as esteemed. Nevertheless, it was brought out of semi-retirement to reinforce the gunship effort in late 1968 and became the most numerous of the Vietnam War gunships. The AC-119G was intended to take up the AC-47's mission in South Vietnam: defend hamlets, provide fire support for ground troops, and fly close air support and escort convoys (only until more AC-130s could be brought online). While it served well, it was considered little improvement over the AC-47.

The Air Force thought better of the AC-119K. The K model had increased engine power (two J85 jet engines supplemented the two props), heavier armament (two 20 mm guns in addition to the four 7.62 mini guns), an improved fire control system, and forward looking infrared radar (FLIR). Both AC-119 models proved invaluable and suffered few losses. The AC-119Gs proved worthy successors of the AC-47 for operations in South Vietnam, while the AC-119Ks were not only able to complement the AC-130s, they held their own in the interdiction campaign in Laos. In the overall scheme, the AC-119s were considered a midrange model between the "Model T" AC-47 and the "Cadillac" AC-130L.

The Final Challenge

The last challenge to the USAF in the Vietnam War came in 1972. By then the Communists had improved the Ho Chi Minh Trail into an extensive road net and greatly upgraded its defenses. The North Vietnamese upped the ante by deploying SAMs, both the large SA-2s and shoulder-fired SA-7s. Damage to the gunships increased while truck kills declined. Even escorting fighters could not provide the gunships with the permissive air environment they required. The increased attrition, as well as the 1972 North Vietnamese invasion, forced the Air Force to shift its emphasis.

The main mission of American airpower in 1972 was to thwart the North Vietnamese invasion. Certainly, the gunships played an important role in that successful endeavor.

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