Firepower: Desert Storm Ground Assault 4/4

the coastal route to the ground assault the Army's maneuver divisions pulled up stakes of their bases in northern Saudi Arabia and to began their Trek to start points at the border the army attack began with a feint by the 1st Cavalry Division to divert Iraqi attention from the main blow further west simultaneously the 18th Airborne Corps including the French dug a force drove north to seal off the left flank from any Iraqi reinforcements the British 1st armoured division attacked along the wadi Albertine then swung towards Kuwait to eliminate Iraqi tank forces the heaviest blow was delivered by the u.s. army's seventh core which headed north before hooking to the east to confront the Republican Guard G day Sunday the 24th of February was preceded by an intense artillery barrage against Iraqi positions if any branch of the Iraqi armed forces remained of concern it was the artillery not only were there a great many Iraqi artillery pieces but they were the only weapons capable of making concerted use of chemical weapons they were a prime target of Allied air power and counterbattery fire the increased tempo of the artillery bombardments foreshadowed the final plan at 4 o'clock in the morning the Marines the 1st Marine Division of the 2nd Marine Division wants the tax through the barrier system they were accompanied by the 2nd the Tiger Brigade US Army Tiger Brigade of the 2nd Armored Division at the same time over here to Saudi Task Forces also launched penetration through this barrier but while they were doing that at 4 o'clock in the morning over here the 6 French Armored Division accompanied by a brigade of the 82nd airborne also launched an overland attack to their objective up in this area all farm on airfield and we were held up a little bit by the weather but by 8 o'clock in the morning one hundred and first Airborne Air Assault launched an air assault deep in the enemy territory to establish a Forward Operating Base in this location right here US Marine Forces began to penetrate the first layers of Iraqi defensive positions and minefields before the main attack G day Sunday 24th of February infiltrating through the first set of barriers and minefields under the cover of darkness G day began overcast cold and rainy the French dog a horse the westernmost element of the attack again its drive on the as salman airbase a brief tank battle took place on the approaches to the airbase after over running a Suleman airbase the dog a fur was headed north to the Euphrates River to seal the Iraqi troops in the Kuwait theater the door would soon be shut preventing Iraqi reinforcements from arriving and preventing the escape of Iraqi forces westward in the meantime the 101st Air Assault division began their airlift operation deep into Iraq we established a forward airfield called Cobra base from which to stage future air assaults towards the Euphrates River the helicopter operation was the largest on record including not only troop transport aircraft but the larger Chinook helicopters carrying additional fuel vehicles and artillery hours later the 101st cleared out bunkers in the Cobra base area and brought other Iraqi forces under artillery fire [Music] so I can't conceive of another division in the army or in the world that could do what this Air Assault division is done this morning move us all this of people and equipment rapidly put it on the ground we have secured a large area of Iraq in his own heartland and we're prepared very shortly for the division commander to start pushing other people through here we're going to advance from here then absolutely there's nothing as you can well see there ain't nothing to hold out here so this is a way station for future operations and that's that's what we'll do operating out of Cobra base Apache attack helicopters swarmed forward attacking Iraqi tank formations with their precision guided hellfire missiles [Music] vii core attack came next preceded by the armored cavalry regiments the tank and mechanized divisions began they drive into Iraq during the first day of fighting contact with Iraqi units was light and it was apparent that Iraqi resistance would be much weaker that had been expected later that day the British 1st Armored Division swung back eastward to engage Iraqi armored divisions near the Kuwait border in the ensuing encounters over 200 Iraqi tanks and 100 other armored vehicles were destroyed with very light losses to British forces I expected them to fight harder than they did and and we were prepared for that and as we were talking earlier if they had stayed in every single bunker and part out of every baka the result would have been the same they still would have been law would have lost our casualties would have been higher so thank God that didn't happen my view is that their heart just wasn't minute POWs have have said this deserters told us this early on we don't know why we're here we don't know why we invaded Kuwait many many of them said we think it's wrong that we invaded Kuwait so with that kind of psychology and with a force like we had coming down on them where it was certain that they were gonna die doesn't doesn't lend itself to to a force having a really tough desire to hang in there and to to to defend after weeks of aerial bombardment only a few Iraqi units still had the stomach for a fight the Iraqi 5th mechanised division which had ported Khafji tried to resist the marine attack some did fight we had a quite a counter-attack yesterday morning and a good bit of it around my CP v mech division counter-attacks we did a couple things I think that disrupted it we learned where they were assembling and fired artillery right at their assembly points which flushed him out of the oil fields and one thing we were surprised that they were operating in the oil fields with the hot fire and that's really where they came out of largest tank battles took place on the 26th and 27th of February when the seventh Corps encountered Republican Guard divisions new visual records of these battles exist as they took place in poor weather or at night the battles were extremely one-sided the us Abrams tanks were able to stand off at long range destroying Iraqi tanks before the Iraqi tanks were capable of hitting them seven Abrams tanks were hit by Iraqi t-72 tanks but none of the Iraqi rounds could get through the Abrams tough armor one of the most savage battles pitted a troop from the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in a night long engagement against retreating elements of two Republican Guard divisions by morning the Iraqi force had been completely defeated the Republican Guard divisions were defeated nearly as quickly as the regular army divisions with few exceptions the Republican Guard Divisional Commanders had abandoned their troops to their own fate leaving the unit's leaderless and uncoordinated some of the most intense fighting in Kuwait came in the approaches to Kuwait City Airport a tank battle broke out between marine tanks and Iraqi armored units the battle was as one-sided as the Army's tank battles as is evident from this wreckage of the Iraqi tanks on the battlefield Oh take it out call that what hitter was a sable round went in here and just when it goes inside it fragments and just basically wasn't ball inside it's just burning here there's nothing but rubble in here there's no way but it can live in this it's torn to pieces looks like somebody were flagging here warm but to Marine Division is destroyed or captured 14 Iraqi divisions and their drive towards Kuwait City allied casualties were remarkably light through most of the fighting the honor of taking the city was given to Kuwaiti and Saudi army units [Music] [Music] [Music] as Kuwait City was being liberated the tiger brigade an army tank unit providing support to the Marines pressed ahead to cut off Iraqi forces retreating back towards Iraq the road from Kuwait City to Basra became a virtual highway of death as Iraqi forces were smashed by tank fire and airstrikes after four days of fighting President Bush ordered a ceasefire the strategic objectives of Operation Desert Storm the liberation of Kuwait and the reduction of the Iraqi army strength were complete [Music] and as president I can report to the nation aggression is defeated the war is over without a doubt airpower played an important role in the conflict but airpower by itself was not enough the swiftly executed ground campaign by coalition forces secured the defeat of the Iraqi army occupying Kuwait air power played a very very important role I think it had a lot to do with their morale being extremely low air power had had made logistics and resupply very difficult for them so they were hungry and thirsty as you saw as you moved along with one of our task forces on the other hand they was still a hell of a lot of them here alive and well so the bottom line is you still got to come in and and clean it up in this case the cleanup didn't turn out to be the huge fight that we anticipated the Gulf War was one of the most striking victories in modern land combat the Iraqi army though large and will equipped had in the end proven to be a brittle hollow army in contrast decades of training and the deployment of superior weaponry by coalition forces proved too much for Iraqi forces stuck in a featureless desert with nowhere to hide [Music]

Channel: weekdaywings

Views: 1,387,271

Keywords: Firepower, Desert, Storm, Ground, Assault, 4

Id: y658kVb4H74

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2011