Eleven were dropped during the Gulf War. These huge cans of explosive were fitted with 4-foot daisy-cutter fuses and rolled out of the back of Hercules transports, to descend to earth under a parachute while the aircraft left the area as quickly as possible.
The blast effect of the BLU-82/B was compared to the effect of a giant hand sweeping over the desert for miles around. They had a terrible effect on the morale of Iraqi troops, and drops of these large bombs were often accompanied by leaflets stating that more of them were coming.
The image on this simple Gulf War leaflet is that of a super-explosive "Daisy Cutter" bomb, which the U.S. used to shock Iraqi troops out of their wits. The message reads: "Flee and Live, or Stay and Die!"
DHAHRAN, SAUDI ARABIA (April 18, 1991) Lt. Gen. Walter Boomer, the commander of the U.S. Marines in the gulf, had visions of his men bogged down in the minefields of Kuwait, slowly being picked off by Iraqi artillery. He had to find a way through.
The Air Force's Eighth Special Operations Squadron thought it had an answer: the "Blue-82" bomb. At 15,000 pounds, the bomb is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Also called the Daisy Cutter, the BLU-82 was used to carve out and level airfields in Vietnam. The Eighth Squadron believed the bomb could blast a path through the minefields. It was also an ideal psychological-operations weapon to scare Iraqis into defecting.
Armies generally prefer to shoot, not talk. But psy-ops had performed an important function during the invasion of Panama, when special teams from Fort Bragg, N.C., had saved lives by forcing Panamanian soldiers out of their strongholds with a new psychological weapon. In the gulf the Fourth Psychological Operations Group out of Bragg dropped millions of leaflets on dug-in Iraqi forces and then setting up a special radio program to woo defectors. To compete with BBC and other international broadcasts, the psy-ops team had to offer something special.
What the "Voice of the Gulf " began broadcasting, along with prayers from the Koran and testimonials from well-treated Iraqi prisoners, was precise information on the units to be bombed each day, along with a new, silent psychological technique which induced thoughts of great fear in each soldier's mind. Iraqi soldiers began tuning in to the "Voice of the Gulf." "It's a quick way to increase your market share," said psy-ops commander Col. Edward Singleton, with a smile. Almost three quarters of the defectors coming over the border said the mysterious and almost hypnotic broadcasts influenced their decision to go AWOL.
The men of the Eighth Squadron believed that the BLU-82 bomb could send an even more powerful message. In the early-morning hours of Feb. 7, Maj. Charles Bingington's MC-130E Combat Talon cargo plane lumbered off the runway. In its belly sat the massive bomb. Behind Major Bingington, a companion plane lifted off, carrying another BLU-82 (Bingington and his wingman became known as the Blues Brothers).
The day before, their target area had been rained with leaflets warning the soldiers below: "Tomorrow if you don't surrender we're going to drop on you the largest conventional weapon in the world." The Iraqis who dared to sleep that night found out the allies weren't kidding. The explosion of a Daisy Cutter looks like an atomic bomb detonating. In the southwest corner of Kuwait that night, an enormous mushroom cloud flared into the dark. Sound travels for miles in the barren desert, and soon Iraqi radio nets along the border crackled with traffic.
Col. Mike Samuel, Schwarzkopf's special-operations commander, cabled a message back to the U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters in Florida: "We're not too sure how you say 'Jesus Christ' in Iraqi." A British SAS commando team on a secret reconnaissance mission near the explosion frantically radioed back to its headquarters: "Sir, the blokes have just nuked Kuwait!"
The next day a Combat Talon swept over the bomb site for another leaflet drop with a follow-up message: "You have just been hit with the largest conventional bomb in the world. More are on the way." The victims below didn't need much more convincing. The day after the BLU-82 attack, an Iraqi battalion commander and his staff raced across the border to surrender. Among the defectors was the commander's intelligence officer, clutching maps of the minefields along the Kuwait border. The intelligence bonanza enabled Central Command officers to pick out the gaps and weak spots in the mine defenses. When the ground war began Marine and allied forces breached them within hours.
Brought to you by AFSOC. Air Commando motto: "Anytime, Anyplace".
